Time For Norm Coleman To Throw In The Towel, Take 23

Who's the bigger sore loser?

As of yesterday the official number of votes by which Al Franken is now leading sore loser Norm Coleman in the "election" to Minnesota's second Senate seat has risen to 312. That's right, after months of fighting and millions of dollars wasted in Coleman's frivolous law suit, he managed to gain 111 votes-- while Franken gained 198 votes, a net positive of 87 for Franken.

Of course none of this matters one bit to the Republican obstructionists behind Coleman's battle-- primarily McConnell, Kyl and Cornyn. They know that Coleman has no chance to win. They just want to delay-- for as long as possible-- Franken being seated. And there are plenty of grassroots Republicans-- those without functioning brains beyond being able to repeat what they hear from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and the other GOP strategists. Take Michele Bachmann supporter Jim Bendtsen in Anoka County, just north of the Twin Cities. Bendtsen, 54, was quoted in USAToday yesterday regurgitating just what he hears from Limbaugh. He says "he's willing to forgo a senator if it means slowing President Obama's agenda. 'I'm in favor of keeping Franken out of office as long as possible,' he says. 'The more votes Obama has at the federal level, the more damage I think he's going to do to America.'"

And for all those who would prefer to see America fail than watch Obama succeed, that kind of talk is pretty standard. Yesterday Franken's attorney explained that it's all over for Coleman but Republican obstructionists don't care about Coleman or Minnesota-- just advancing their cause: obstruction. These are the people who really believe in "4 more years."

“I think we are done,” Franken attorney Marc Elias told reporters after the counting. “It’s no more complicated than this … More Minnesotans voted for Al Franken than for Norm Coleman.”

Asked about Coleman’s pledge to battle on, Elias said, “I don’t think there is much of a case on appeal, candidly.”

Even Republican-oriented newspapers and far right extremists are starting to give up on Coleman's counterproductive tactics. Ramesh Ponnuru in the National Review: "I think it's time for him to give up this fight." Today however, eyes shift east as official absentee vote counting gets under way in the contested election for Congress in NY-20. It's all tied-up now but Nate Silver says the trend is Murphy's friend in this case. He explains that there seems "to be a relatively higher proportion of absentee ballots returned in counties where Murphy performed well on election night. For example, Columbia County, where Murphy won 56.3 percent of the of the vote last week, accounted for 9.8 percent of ballots on election night, but accounts for 15.3 percent of absentees. Conversely, Saratoga County, which is a Tedisco stronghold, represented 36 percent of ballots on election night but only 27.2 percent of absentees."


UPDATE: GOP Still Obstructing Minnesota Senate Resolution

Today's NY Times mentions, despite partisan fanatics like Mr. Bendtsen, that Minnesota really does need two senators, just like everyone else.

“I keep hoping that it will end,” Ms. Klobuchar, a Democrat elected in 2006 to her first term, said this week, adding that her biggest concern is a doubling of requests from ordinary constituents in need of help-- with a missing Social Security check, say, a stalled adoption in Guatemala, or a tangled problem with veterans’ benefits.

“The system,” she said, “was set up for two senators for a reason.”

...A political scientist at the University of Minnesota, Lawrence R. Jacobs, said that given the deluge of requests for help from those losing jobs, homes, everything, Ms. Klobuchar was “a little like the Dutch boy trying to plug the dike.”