It’s a running discussion, whether newspaper endorsements mean anything in a modern world where crazy Uncle Steve and a few hundred Russian bots can create a groundswell of enthusiasm for the dimmest of political bulbs. But this morning’s Strib shout-out for Don Samuels over Ilhan Omar in next Tusday’s DFL primary may be a bit different in that, unlike a Republican primary, it’s talking to a mostly sanity-based audience.

The endorsement comes within a (very) long recitation of Samuels’ activist-within-the-accepted system bona fides. And there’s no disputing that at age 72 he’s covered a lot more ground than Omar, who is 39.

But as I read the endorsement I was reminded again of something I tell cranky lefties rolling their eyes at positions the Strib Op-Ed page takes on a range of issues. And that is that big newspapers (TV news doesn’t risk opinionated stands) are almost by definition a status quo entity. They see themselves playing a stabilizing role, calming and shushing the hormonal impulses of the fringes. In football terms, news organizations like the Strib prefer, and with their opinions they play a game between the 40 yard-lines. A little wiggle over this way, then a little wiggle back. Never too far or too much. But rather everything at mid-field, far from the over-heated end zones.

This is by way of me saying that I’ll vote for Omar again next Tuesday. Not necessarily because I see her as a more disciplined bureacrat, or even as the Strib argues for Samuels a more imaginative legislator, but because I see value in what the Strib sees as her excesses.

Omar is invariably lumped in with “The Squad”, the band of firebrand liberal women that includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. The women, all under age 50, representing barely 1% of the current Congress, yet are constantly irritating Washington’s Democratic leadership with loud demands for an aggressive, progressive agenda. And on the flip-side they are perpetually inflaming the nightmares of Trumpist Republicans who see all women of color as the deepest kind of threat to “the American way.”

These are both qualities hard to quantify but which I find appealing … and valuable.

It’s absolutely true that Omar has stepped in it more than once. In her first term, she exuded more than a bit of the entitled attitude that comes with being a good-looking woman — (a lot like the ‘tude that comes with star athletes, guys like Aaron Rodgers for example, who have pretty much always lived a rareified, revered existence substantially different than their peers.) She seems to have learned to modulate her public comments a bit more in her second term.

I suspect that her much-quoted remarks about Israel and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and Muslims in general did very little to stoke her appeal to the Twin Cities’ and U.S. Jewish community. But, for what it’s worth, what I heard in what she was saying, or trying to say, was that today’s Israeli government, only recently and perhaps only temporarily, released from the claws of the rigidly conservative, deeply corrupt Benjamin Netanyahu was the central issue … not simply that Israel is a Jewish state and all Jews are racists.

And what informed audience is going to deny that about Netanyahu and Israel’s version of our bat shit conservatives?

More central to my point here, what American political figure is going to make a consistent point of that? Of drawing regular attention to the crude and frankly ugly, counter-effective ways conservative Israeli governments have behaved in the Middle East?

I know nothing about how well Omar’s office has provided constituent service, but if it’s average it’s good enough, and if it pays particular attention to the Fifth District’s Somali population, that too is tolerable.

The Strib clearly sees Samuels being a better agent for Minneapolis’ black community. But I have a hard time imagining Omar neglecting the north side’s problems, despite her, um intemperate anger over name-your-favorite-Minneapolis-cop-killing of an unarmed black constituent.

And a final note to the bad faith crowd forever playing purely team-oriented politics. Ilhan Omar, AOC and the rest of the scary hyper-liberal “Squad” bear no resemblance — none — to the appalling freak-show idiocy and recklessness of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Bobert, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert, Madison Cawthorn, Jim Jordan and on and on … and on and on … down there in the Republican end zone.

Omar still has plenty learn. But she’s engaged in serious, valuable progressive messaging and legislation. And she remains a unique voice in a Congress badly polluted by authoritarian dimwits and musty, status quo bureaucrats.

So yeah. I’m voting for her, again.