Will the MAGAts fall prey to "The WELLSTONE Effect" or will we repeat it?

Senator Paul WELLSTONE was the much beloved "leader of the populist and progressive wings of the party." When he died in 2002 the term "far Left" wasn't (that much?) in use, certainly not to the pejorative extent of today. My family and I thought of only the Democratic label without sectionalizing, just Blue-all (before the Blue-Red paradigm), but would be thought of now as being " 'regular' mainstream Dems." I knew WELLSTONE was a Dem but wasn't that familiar. I missed the live coverage of the memorial service but the reporting afterwards was all about how many of the Repub senators and others had arrived with the bygone collegiality and our crowd had booed and devolved into a raucous hostility. Later came the backlash.

When I talked to my elder sister by phone and said something about it was all right to react to the Repubs, she said with gravity, "No, but, this was BAD."

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wellstone_memorial_event

On October 29, 2002, four days after the death of Minnesota U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone in a small plane crash and one week before the election in which he was running for a third term, a large public memorial event was held in Williams Arena in Minneapolis in remembrance of the senator and seven others killed in the crash.[1]

In the week that followed, the tone and content of the memorial became a major public focus, with claims by public figures including Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura that the event had devolved from a memorial into a partisan political rally. A poll completed hours before the memorial reflected an eight-point lead for Wellstone's planned replacement on the ballot, former Vice-President Walter Mondale,[2] over Republican challenger and former St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman.[3] A significant backlash ensued against the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) generally and Mondale's candidacy specifically.[4] ....

Coleman's election was a decisive factor in shifting the Senate from Democratic to Republican control, giving Republicans a government trifecta —control of the White House and both houses of Congress—for the next four years. The claimed influence of the memorial on the election ranks the event among the most consequential in Minnesota's political history, "altering the state's political landscape,"[8] with added repercussions at the national and international level. "When Sen. Paul Wellstone’s plane went down in a northern Minnesota bog," said the Minnesota Star Tribune, "it turned the state into the ground zero of American politics."[9] ....

Prominent Republicans began to call for "equal air time,’’ claiming that the memorial was essentially a three-hour campaign ad for the Democrats. Former Republican congressional representative from Minnesota Vin Weber said, ‘‘The DFL clearly intends to exploit Wellstone’s memory totally, completely and shamelessly for political gain. To them, Wellstone’s death, apparently, was just another campaign event.’’[20] ....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wellstone

(July 21, 1944 – October 25, 2002) was an American academic, author, and politician who represented Minnesota in the United States Senate from 1991 until he was killed in a plane crash near Eveleth, Minnesota, in 2002. A member of the Democratic Party (DFL), Wellstone was a leader of the populist and progressive wings of the party. ....

Wellstone was in a line of center-left senators from the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). The first three, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, and Walter Mondale, were all prominent in the national Democratic Party. Shortly after joining the Senate, South Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings told Wellstone, "You remind me of Hubert Humphrey. You talk too much."[12] ....

On January 9, 1999, Wellstone called a press conference at the Minnesota State Capitol at which he said he lacked the stamina necessary for a national campaign, citing chronic back problems he ascribed to an old wrestling injury. His pain was later diagnosed as multiple sclerosis. He thereafter endorsed former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, the only Democratic candidate to challenge Vice President Al Gore.[2] ....

The memorial service for Wellstone and the other victims of the crash was held in Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota and broadcast live on national TV.[43] The lengthy service was dotted with political speeches, open advocacy on political issues, and a giant beach ball batted around the crowd in the style of a beach party. Many high-profile politicians attended the memorial, including former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, and more than half the U.S. Senate. The White House offered to send Vice President Dick Cheney to the service, but the Wellstone family declined.[44] ....

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