Is Minnesota's Long Nightmare Over?
It appears so (at least insofar as not having two Senators is a "nightmare" and the U.S. Supreme Court declines to enter the fray).
[OOPS. I see now that Eugene beat me to this.]
Is Minnesota's Long Nightmare Over?
It appears so (at least insofar as not having two Senators is a "nightmare" and the U.S. Supreme Court declines to enter the fray). [OOPS. I see now that Eugene beat me to this.] |
I think it's quite clear than Minnesotans are split exactly evenly between the candidates to within the precision of the measuring apparatus.
Of course, "no senator" was not an option (pesky Art I), so we don't know their opinions on that matter.
How very pragmatic of you, Pragmatist.
They were split evenly at election time, but they're not split evenly on whether it was better to keep the seat empty while Coleman kept pursuing appeals, or if it would've been better for Coleman to concede, and have Franken seated: seating Franken is far more popular.
I voted for Coleman largely because I didn’t want to risk Obama having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate so I would prefer having no Senator to having Franken (or Klobuchar).
I suppose that those who believe that the “recount” was a farce could always respond by boycotting the 2010 census so that Minnesotans are “undercounted” and perhaps lose a House seat and an electoral vote to a red or purple State.
Democrats: Not so democratic.
Democrats: Not so democratic."
Some things are too important to leave up to the will of the people.
That's why, supposedly, there's a Constitution.
Something about not denying suffrage to any state!
If a state doesn't field its proper quota of senators, can the senate constitutionally proceed without "denying" suffrage to a state lacking proper representation?
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."
H. L. Mencken
Tir gan teanga, tir gan anam!
It comes down to this: very minor election night issues aside, Franken made his case and Coleman did not. There are probably a few minor reforms that would help the system function more smoothly going forward, and I wouldn't mind an automatic run-off election like some states have (it would seem like a more fair way than having lawyers try to break what amounts to a tie), but that wasn't our law at the time of the election.
I think back to Sonny Bono. Many people laughed when he was elected to the House. But he turned into a valuable resource for the Republican leadership. He was intelligent, thoughtful, and polite. He used his sense of humor to (often self deprecating humor at that) to disarm arguments. He was a person that people could work with and achieve results.
I feel that Franken will continue his practice of insulting people who disagree with him and will vote the party line with little thought about the consequences...and he will be the crucial vote for ending debate. I think the country will suffer.
Has Al Franken brought an honest sense of humor to anything since his SNL days? That's what surprised me most about his running, he'd acquired a more modern rep as a somewhat nasty, eccentric guy in the Bill Mahr/Richard Belzer mode. Whatever his beef, Coleman has come off as whiny, but Franken has never struck me as being good-natured.
Well, I'll certainly be laughing -- at him, though, not with him.
See you all on the other side.
Well, that A&B stuff pretty much established his lack of good nature.
See you all on the other side.
That's not doing much for Minnesota's House delegation.
What basically happened was that once it was clear that this thing was close, county election officials in Democratic counties decided to be much more liberal regarding whether a vote counted than either the law allows or they would have been otherwise. Absentee ballots that didn't have a witness signature got counted anyway, ballots that were counted on election night but couldn't be found for the recount were counted anyway. And so on. In short, the election officials in Democratic counties knew that if they simply made all judgement calls in favor of counting a vote, this would favor Franken. Election judges in Republican counties refused to play along. So while I don't think Franken stole the election in the sense of actually producing votes from nowhere, I do think the majority of the evidence leans me to believing that if a uniform standard was used, ANY uniform standard, as long as it was the same across counties, Coleman would have won.
The problem was that while Coleman was able to present evidence that this was probably true, he wasn't able to prove it. So in that case, the court correctly ruled that Franken wins, because that is Minnesota law.
But it is bad law. It leaves too much discretion to partisan election judges, and in this case it probably changed the outcome.
Because for too many people in the US today, even on this blog, a Republican losing is always "not the correct result".
(For the record, the same goes for a Democrat losing, just not so much on VC.)
Well, it worked so well in King County to put Christine Gregoire into office as governor, I'm not surprised to see this--and expect even more in the future.
martinned,
Read up about the 2004 Washington State gubernatorial election fiasco before you say that...
"It will be interesting to see if he brings a sense of humor"
Why should he start now? There are plenty of Dem (and Left) funnymen. Alas, Franken has never been among their number, even, or especially, in his SNL days. What an embarrassment.
Not God, cheating Democrats. "You say our man lost by 500 votes? Why, I just happen to have 600 votes for him here in the back seat of my car! Now we won!"
Of the many things we see eye-to-eye on, this may be the one where our views most perfectly coincide.
Nick
But Norm needs to consider whether God is trying to send him a message. How can any halfway competent politician lose to both Jesse Ventura and Al Franken?
"On the other hand, if I were a Republican, I'd be embarrassed by the sour grapes whining in this thread."
It's certainly not the optimal approach, Republican or no. Funny thing is, for my summer job, I'm working for a standardized-test grading company grading NCLB-style tests for one of the states mentioned in this thread. We've been "renorming on the fly" (i.e. loosening our rubrics to boost scores, in some cases to the extent of rank farce) to better fit the score distribution the state needs to meet its improvement goals.
Caligula sent a horse to the Senate. Minnesota is just sending part of the horse.
With Franken in the Senate and with the Democrats sporting control of the presidency, Congress, and a filibuster proof majority in the senate(something the Republican party has never had) I believe we will see some very bad, very expensive policies and programs come out of DC.
"I think I am entitled to be bitter."
Yeah, but Republicans aren't supposed to be big on entitlements. Nor bitterness.
And if I were a Democrat, I'd be angered and ashamed that my side would blatantly cheat to win. But then again, those emotions are proabably disallowed by Alinsky Rules, where winning is the only thing.
"And if I were a Democrat, I'd be angered and ashamed that my side would blatantly cheat to win. But then again, those emotions are proabably disallowed by Alinsky Rules, where winning is the only thing."
If it were blatant, it would be provable in a court of law. The pursuit of power as an end in itself tends over time to claim itself as a victim, so if that is indeed what is going on, let's see how things play out.
What is more likely in a thead?
J. Aldridge quoting Bingham approvingly?
Or geokstr quoting Alinsky approvingly?
And what does this mean about geokstr? Discuss.
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