Minnesota's Senate race now comes down to 5 votes

[kpete]

Source: Star Tribune

Minnesota's Senate race now comes down to 5 votes

By PAT DOYLE, Star Tribune


Seven months after the election and Minnesota still isn't fully represented in the US Senate. This is an outrageous situation. How much … read more longer will this drag on? Resolving this should be a priority for everyone involved and the process should be sped up. Can't the people involved work a little overtime - anything to get the job done (like the rest of us do to get our jobs done)? This close election shows some weaknesses in our methods that need to be corrected so it doesn't happen again. Elections should be won or lost at the ballot box, not in court. Minnesotans have a right to be represented by two senators now.

Now it comes down to five votes.

Almost seven months after a U.S. Senate election that was too close to call, five justices of the Minnesota Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday on whether problems with absentee ballots justify reversing a lower-court ruling that declared DFLer Al Franken a 312-vote winner over Republican Norm Coleman.

...........................

A decision upholding the lower-court ruling could end the protracted struggle and allow Franken to join the Senate, giving Democrats an invincible majority. A ruling for Coleman wouldn't return him to the Senate, but could keep his hopes alive and delay a final decision for months.

Read more: http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/senate/46508587.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUac8HEaDiaMDCinchO7DU

[madaboutharry]

1. I do think that Norm Coleman committed

political suicide by failing to conceed with dignity. He allowed himself to be used by the RNC. He is too shallow, vain, and downright stupid to have figured that out. This is the positive side of this entire mess.

[jwirr]

2. And hopefully he will take pawlenty down with him.

[riverdeep]

3. From Coleman's point of view, once he lost, and he knows he lost,

his political career was over at that point. The pubs will take of him. He'll get a cushy job somewhere for the rest of his life, to him, that's worth it.

[peacetalksforall]

7. What he did was just a continuation of his term as Senator. He was set up

from the very start to be a Republican lap dog. His role was to get interviewed and say something that seemed to indicate that not all Republicans were in lock step with McConnell or Boehner and Cheney/Bush. They used him to make it look as though there were some thinking Republicans in Congress. Why bother. He always voted the way he was told in the end. Always.

He took on tasks that were embarrassingly transparent. His most embarrassing moment for the audience was getting chewed up and spit out by Gallagher.

But, the role he is playing now in the orchestrated stalling of the swearing in of Franken will be the the first written in his bio.

The Senator who helped the empirical and barbaric invasion on Iraq by the United States, UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia in the first decade of the 21st Century failed mankind.

The footnote on his life will be his comment after the death of Paul Wellstone.

What a legacy.

I'm not sure that the Senate stall is over. The other Republican is involved. The Governor of MN (who wants to be Republican President) can still block-stall the certification (as I understand it.

[bluestateguy]

4. But remember Al Gore was the sore loser

He conceded 38 days after the 2000 election, and Gore, yes Gore is the sore loser.

How many days since the election last year?

[krispos42]

5. INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING

That is all.

[riverdeep]

6. I agree about the time thing.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Think about how much stronger legislation would have been had we not had to cater to the pubs. Of course, that's assuming that the dems want to vote a certain way. When it comes to something like credit card reform, where the dems are swimming in lobbying money just like the pubs, I'm not so sure of that.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

12. I may well be mistaken, but I don't recall once yet this session when an item failed by one vote

Not that that makes what they've done to Franken any less wrong. It does go to showcase how the Republicans have done nothing but waste time and money stalling the inevitable, with no valid, defensible reasons even for their own supporters in the state.

[madrchsod]

8. "invincible majority" ?

not with the democrats in this senate. there are to many democrats willing to sell out to the highest bidder.

[asjr]

9. And that hurts!

[jkappy]

11. Yup! 60 Democrats In Name Only! n/t

[mucifer]

10. It all reminds me of lieberman who was patient, even invented his own party. But, in the end he

got to keep his seat. (Yeah some differences lieberman did win an election, coleman didn't.) I just have a bad feeling about this.

[question everything]

13. Read more about the judges here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8441975

(I did not think it merited LBN post...)

[Posteritatis]

14. Minnesotans: smack anyone around you saying "what does one vote matter?" from now on? (nt)

[Honeycombe8]

15. Crikey. At least we know that Franken won't give up. Right? Right.

What a celebration it'll be when he's finally seated!