Yammering by Box Turtle Cornyn aside, the Republicans know there’s not much that can be done to keep Al Franken from being sworn in as Minnesota’s next Senator, once he’s certified as the winner of the race. (See the history of Mary Landrieu’s 1996 Senate win for further details.) In fact, as HuffPo’s Sam Stein notes, conservatives are already starting to face the reality of a Senate without Norm Coleman in it:
In a filing on the conservative website, NewsMax.com, author David A. Patten looked at the numbers and saw in them a Coleman-less Senate.
The counting of improperly rejected absentee ballots will probably increase Democratic challenger Al Franken’s lead over incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman according to a new analysis of voting trends, effectively relegating Coleman to filing lawsuits considered unlikely to reverse the outcome of the election.
This is what most of us Dirty Freakin’ Hippies have been saying all along: Franken will win, Coleman will sue, Coleman will lose. Despite the howls from the Coleman camp, their seemingly endless capacity for nuisance suits, the efforts to smear a videojournalism outfit that’s been named one of America’s top ten websites by the Center for Public Integrity, Norm Coleman will lose, and Al Franken will win. It’s really that simple. Sit down, crack a cold one, and savor the moment as Coleman’s people, the RNC, and the entire conservative movement lose their collective minds at the prospect.
In the meantime, you could do a lot worse than following the recount via The UpTake, which has been described by local smarty-pants MinnPost.com writer David Brauer as "the MPR [Minnesota Public Radio] of citizen journalism". That’s a compliment, by the way. Feel free to send them coin, if the spirit moves you so.
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The extent of the Coleman campaign’s stupidity is unbelievable.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/….._1231.html
453 hrs & 23 min
Time for Norm to go-n-blow.
-G
i’m havin a cold one right now ta celebrate fer al. plus got my fingers crossed.
And as I said yesterday, my apologies for Box Turtle Cornyn. We really did try very hard to unseat him down here.
Things could be worse. His name could be Imhoff. *g*
453 hrs & 11 min
Thanks PW,
DIGG!!
Been looking for Al’s roving reporter bit with the satellite dish transmitter on his head. Was it on SNL?
Kudos for the UpTake – great video work. They deserve our support.
Happy New Year!
For Coleman, it’s all about the stall.
To try to pump up his fundraising warchest for his upcoming legal woes, and
to keep another Dem out of the Senate as long as possible.
I thought that was Craigs thing. *g*
453 hrs & 5 min
Speaking of MPR and its relative NPR, can we expect that annoying propaganda organ to change or will this go on and on and on?
PW, last paragraph I think you meant “that’s a compliment”
Coleman must concede. This is a constitutional crisis! Minnesota deserves better — what happened to the “nice?” Oh, and he’s a sore loser. There, did I cover all the bases?
Seriously, where is the drumbeat of media attention on Coleman for stretching this out beyond good sense? It’s over Norm, and so are you. Although I bet he’ll be back for a rematch in 2014.
Happy New Year, y’all!
Thanks, PW, for your tireless coverage of this contest.
Depends on what the FBI finds – fingers crossed
452 hrs & 57 min
Fixed, thanks!
HNY to all, and thanks foothillsmike for the countdown clock.
Sure beats staring at my slow running calendar.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving craptastic gooper. So many instances of Coleman churlish behavior –the one that always sends me over the edge was during the debate with Mondale when he crawled behind adoption to refuse to discuss abortion.
Next time I hear a repug whine about frivolous lawsuits, this sad episode will be so sweet to recall.
Thanks PW, et bonne année!
from wiki
452 hrs & 41 min
It can’t possibly be too early.
Congratulations Senator Franken! ;->
I don’t have any links handy but Howie Klein has mentioned many times that he and Coleman were classmates and even class monitors together in grade school.
And IIRC, he has stated that Coleman was an a** even then.
ROFLMAO.
Thanks!
So how close to the final count will 538.com be? He said 27 votes. Does he win?
I may be paranoid, but I expect a flood of “stolen election” stories in the media. One just appeared, fact-free, in the WSJ. I don’t think that Coleman can win, but his nuisance potential is still something to think about.
If the media are still playing by the Clinton rules, and there’s evidence that they still are, a lot of people may end up believing that Franken may have stolen the election. The Republican game at this point is obstruction, smearing, and sabotage — they know they can’t win. They’re good at their game.
We can count on Maddow and Olbermann to say the right things, and we can count on the WSJ, Hannity and Limbaugh to lie, but the I have no idea how the in betweens will fall. I expect them to take an inane middle road: “Some say that Franken stole the election, but we’ll never really know for sure”.
HNY all! Thanks for the clock, FHM. Thanks, PW for staying on this. I hope they tentatively seat Franken. That would be cool.
Hey Quebecois, what did you end up doing with the autographed photos?
In college Coleman also was a toke buddy with one of the founders of NORML.
Dirt about Coleman that Franken mostly didn’t use.
Franken’s negative ads focussed entirely on Coleman’s political views and actions and his political corruption. He didn’t go into the personal dirt: promiscuous bisexuality, a fake marriage, and stoner New Leftism.
It would be a New Year’s bonus to have Coleman lose his dirty seat in the Senate. Minnesota will be the winner if Franken holds on to win.
I, for one, would gladly contribute for a staff position in Sen Franken’s office whose sole job description would be to call BillO the clown, Limpball and the other RW gasbags every day just to say “Senator Franken’s office calling”
Hi LooHoo, it’s an autograph book, was going to send it to Christie’s, but the market for old stars autograph of the silent era is quite dead. So, I’ll hang on to it for a while. Here it is, enjoy:
http://picasaweb.google.ca/pic…..pRfMfzuk0#
LOL
iirc, another schoolmate — and perhaps classmate, but I don’t recall — of Schumer and Coleman is Down With Tyranny’s Howie Klein, who runs Blue America.
lol
Happy New Year, everyone!
The Republicans grumbled about Mary Landrieu’s close win in 1996, but since she had an ironclad certification at the state level, they couldn’t stop her from being seated. All they could do was embarrass themselves with a bogus “probe” of alleged naughtiness by her — a probe whose prime witness was a guy with a felony record as long as his arm, with a guilty plea to attempted murder to boot.
The Republicans are grumbling about Al Franken’s impending certification by the State of Minnesota as the winner of the 2008 Senatorial election in Minnesota, but once he’s been certified with an ironclad cert — as he will be — there’s nothing they can do about it except whine and try to do another bogus “probe”, which will have even less of a chance now than the one they did against Landrieu had in 1996.
Thanks, Mike, for the countdown.
Time will tell. They don’t hate Landrieu the way they hate Franken. After all, she’s nearly a Republican. On the other hand, the Republican militants hate Coleman too, because he’s only a 90 percenter. You have to remember that we’re dealing mad dogs here.
In my recent tours of the intertubes I’ve seen more discouragement than raging fury. That’s a good sign.
I think that once Franken’s in office two years he’ll be safe. A lot of his opposition came from people who were more familiar with Stuart Smalley than with Franken. (I’m not sure that all of them even knew that Smalley is a fictional character.) With two years in office people will forget that.
The mad dog Republicans think that they lost because Coleman wasn’t conservative enough. I hope they convince the Republican Party of that.
I’m practicing the phrase “get over it!” right now.
WOW….that is exactly what I wanted to say…think of all the times the Rs told us to “get over it” whenever Fla. was brought up. How sweet. And this one wasn’t even stolen.
Great news. Always liked Al. Even tho it’s one more Dem, Spineless Harry STILL won’t be able to get anything done.
Harry hasn’t mastered the art of herding cats. *g*