As Minnesota goes, so what!

Whether the President can raise taxes only in Minnesota is doubtful, but with the deficit being what it is, it's worth a shot. Perhaps the 1984 election results give Mr. Reagan that much White House latitude. Beyond that, who is to say? What is certain is that folks will be analyzing the voting results for weeks to come.

We are now entering the period when analysts and commentators begin talking to themselves more than to others. To the average consumer, if there is such a thing, it all seems like trying to analyze why more people select vanilla ice cream over strawberry.

It always helps American politics to have a close race like the last one. I speak, of course, about the neck-and-neck contest for the state of Minnesota. Mondale finally won it, but no one knows why. So far, no one has implied it was a racist vote - or whatever you would call it, with so many Norwegians running around that state. My own conclusion on the Mondale win is that Minnesota is the only state in the Union that wants its taxes raised.

And why did Ronald Reagan win all the other states? It may simply come back to the reasons people select vanilla instead of strawberry. They like it better. Besides, in vanilla you get the pure bean. In strawberry there is a foreign ingredient.

This being Walter Mondale's first, and avowedly last, time he runs for president, it is not surprising to make mistakes. One might have been made in the early stages, getting so many different kinds of people to support him. He simply collected the entire nationwide anti-Reagan vote, which includes a multitude of very awesome bedfellows. Maybe just strawberry isn't a good comparison. It was more like heavenly hash.

Anyway, vanilla ice cream won, even though strawberry - or heavenly hash - had lots of trimmings.