Nobody takes seriously the Coleman suggestion that the election in Minnesota is so close that a rerun is the only way out. But Coleman's donors can count, and they see the power than adding a Sen. Franken to the Democratic caucus would have and and will have. One more vote on the stimulus package would have allowed the White House to more easily split Spector, Collins and Snowe. It is not hard to imagine that a Franken vote could have kept in tens of billions in expenditures on public transit and education.
And the Franken vote would have allowed the appropriations omnibus bill to pass this week as well, as the recession accelerated.
Surely the Coleman legal team is costing less than a few million a month, while preventing valuable stimulus efforts from proceeding and requiring a stop gap budget. For those who want Obama to fail, this is the cheapest possible strategy. And with sufficiently well funded lawyers operating in the very polite and fair Minnesota courts (eventually to go to the Federal courts), this strategy could work for months.
It is highly unlikely that serious health care reform and global warming legislation can pass without another vote. Anyone want to go check the donor records for Coleman and report back?