Reid says it's over for Coleman, but Franken stays in Minnesota

After two months of counting and recounting every eligible ballot in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race, Al Franken has won fair and square and will be the state's next U.S. Senator. Nonetheless, he won't be in DC tomorrow as the rest of his class gets sworn in because Norm Coleman is vowing a legal fight to delay the inevitable.

Lest there be any question over how this will turn out, Harry Reid has flatly stated that it's over for Norm Coleman.

"Norm Coleman will never ever serve [again] in the Senate," Reid told Politico’s Manu Raju. "He lost the election. He can stall things, but he'll never serve in the Senate."

...Reid added that he will not be trying to seat Franken in the Senate on Tuesday.  When asked if Franken would be sworn in tomorrow, Reid said: "No."

In his victory statement today, Franken said he was "ready to go to Washington and get to work just as soon as possible." But a Franken campaign spokesman said he has not yet made plans yet to travel to Washington.

Despite the fact that Al Franken is still in Minnesota, RNC chairman Mike Duncan is accusing Franken of having stolen the election.

Fortunately, Duncan is on a bitter little island of his own. Nobody (outside of the far right) who's looked at the situation thinks that Coleman won the election.

It might not cause that much harm to humor Norm Coleman for a short period of time, but Democrats need to spell out Coleman's legal wrangling for what it is: petty, obstructionist tactics from the GOP in the middle of a national economic crisis.