I've seen a lot of progressives panicking over yesterday's Rasmussen poll and today's MD poll showing that Norm Coleman has jumped into a small lead over Al Franken.
Here's some reasons to cheer up:
Tonight's Public Policy Poll shows Franken leading Coleman 45 to 40, with Barkley at 14.
This comes on the heels of a series of polls all showing Obama pulling away from McCain in Minnesota. The bigger the spread, the bigger the coattails for Al Franken.
More good news: The breaking Coleman donor scandal has made the MSM. Won't easy be for Coleman to spin this one, since he now looks a lot like Ted Stevens. Maybe he'll try a pathetic distraction tactic, like suing Al Franken.
Here's one more: Nate Silver's comments, brilliant-as-always, on this race over at 538:
Minnesota remains too close to call, if tilting very slightly to Al Franken. The key factor here is the support for independent Dean Barkley, who is still polling at about 18 percent, but much of that support is likely to collapse by election day. From parsing the SurveyUSA cross-tabs, it appears that about 29 percent of Barkley's vote comes from Democrats, 20 percent from Republicans, and 51 percent from true independents. Also, roughly two-thirds of Barkley's voters are pro-choice. This means that the race is probably Franken's to lose, but with so much advertising on both sides, it can be hard to drive a message.
This was echoed by Bob Gieger today on Huffington Post in predicting a Franken victory:
Franken has pulled slightly ahead in the polls, but it's not that small percentage that's going to carry this election. It's the 15 to 20 percent consistently being polled by Independent Dean Barkley and I suspect a whole swath of Barkley's supporters will peel off in the voting booth and go to Franken -- helped by the fact that Coleman has inexplicably decided to target Barkley with negative statements about his role as former Governor Jesse Ventura's chief of staff.
Let's quit grousing about Al and win this one for Paul Wellstone!
Update by request: Coleman new funny money scandal:
On Monday, Paul McKim, the founder Deep Marine Technologies, filed suit against Coleman’s longtime friend Nasser Kazeminy and several other investors for mishandling the company’s finances. McKim claims Kazeminy — who owns about 50 percent of the company — asked him to funnel cash to Laurie Coleman through the insurance firm she works for in Minneapolis, the Hays Companies. McKim says he objected to the arrangement, but acquiesced after Kazeminy threatened to fire him. The Iranian-born businessman, one of Coleman’s top supporters in Minnesota, "coerced [McKim] into approving the first monthly payment of $25,000 from DMT to Hays," the court documents state. Two additional $25,000 payments were made in 2007.