What will shape the outcome of the 2018 elections nationally and in Minnesota?

Democrats lead in races for both Senate seats and the governorship, but only in one case — Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s 53-38 percent lead over Jim Newberger — does the race appear to be noncompetitive.

These 3-D cases test the limits of what is speech and implicitly, whether a right to bear arms means obtaining the plans to build your own gun.

Let’s consider several aspects of the primary and post-primary situations to parse the big question.

The confusion at the DFL convention suggested the renewed timeliness of the Will Rogers’ crack from 1935: “I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat.”

How has the state and national political world changed?