The open question in Minnesota's Senate race is no longer who will win, but when he will be seated. As TPM's Eric Kleefeld outlines, Al Franken has effectively won, but because Norm Coleman is playing the part of a sore loser, Minnesota's senate seat runs the risk of getting caught up in GOP partisan politics for many more weeks.
On Sunday, the state canvassing board will finalize the post-recount numbers, which will show Franken maintaining his lead. Under normal circumstances, that would be that, and the election process would be over. But Norm Coleman has pledged to challenge the results of the election, offering a series of arguments that will certainly fail, but could delay the seating of Al Franken for weeks.
Coleman wouldn't stay in office, but by keeping Franken out of the Senate, he'd be giving the GOP a big political boost.
The key point here is that Norm Coleman's situation is basically hopeless. At this point, the primary goal of his legal strategy is to boost partisan Republican efforts to block the economic recovery stimulus package and other important domestic agenda priorities.
To give you an idea of just how frivolous Norm Coleman's argument is, consider that the centerpiece of his claim is the contention that the state Supreme Court should adopt new rules governing the tabulation of absentee ballots.
With a New Year's Eve noisemaker that could further prolong the U.S. Senate recount, Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign asked the Minnesota Supreme Court late Wednesday to scrap the reviews of wrongly rejected absentee ballots underway across the state and instead have all such ballots reviewed by state and campaign officials in St. Paul.
Recall that just two weeks ago, when he was leading the ballot count, Coleman enthusiastically supported the Supreme Court decision guiding the tabulation of these very same ballots:
"We're very happy with the decision," said Coleman campaign attorney Fritz Knaak, who said he and Franken's attorneys are working to negotiate an understanding on how improperly rejected absentee ballots will be identified.
Now that the vote totals have changed, the Coleman camp suddenly opposes what they once supported. Now they are suing for the right to cherry-pick ballots to be counted in their favor. Not only is their last-minute lawsuit a complete reversal of their earlier support for the ruling, but the disingenuous nature of their "count every vote" claim becomes clear when you consider the fact that just days ago, the Coleman campaign demanded that a ballot cast lawfully by an election judge be dismissed.
DULUTH - Shirley Graham was astonished to learn that a lawyer from Norm Coleman's campaign on Tuesday blocked her absentee ballot from being added to the U.S. Senate recount.
"I'm an election judge," said Graham, of Duluth. "I expected to be the last person whose ballot wouldn't be counted."
So where does this leave us? Should Democrats just sit back and patiently wait it out as Norm Coleman and other Republican partisans try to game the legal process to deny representation to Minnesota in the U.S. Senate? Or should Democrats take a stand and demand the GOP quit playing politics with the recount?
The clear answer is that Democrats should take action. They are right to block Rod Blagojevich from appointing a Senator to the seat he was trying to sell, but to be consistent, they also need to fight to seat Al Franken, who was lawfully elected in an untainted process.
So what steps can Democrats take?
I would argue for a three-pronged approach:
- Democrats should urge Republicans to call on Norm Coleman to step aside. Once the canvassing boards report the final vote totals on Sunday, Democrats should call on Norm Coleman to either give up on his partisan challenge (as he had pledged until recently to do), or to continue with the challenge but support the provisional appointment of Al Franken to the seat. The key point here is that Norm Coleman wants to avoid looking like a partisan sore loser, but if Democrats don't put pressure on him, he'll never worry about being seen that way, and will have no incentive to quit dragging the process out.
- If Coleman refuses to stand down, Democrats should urge Gov. Pawlenty should appoint Franken to the vacancy to demonstrate his bipartisan commitment to fair elections. Assuming Norm Coleman remains committed to his frivolous legal challenges, Democrats should call on Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty to break with GOP partisans and appoint Al Franken to the Senate seat which will by next week be vacant if Franken is not sworn in. Once Coleman's challenges run their final course, Franken would remain in the Senate, albeit now as a duly elected senator.
- The Senate should recognize the canvassing board's final tabulations, and seat Franken over the objection of partisan Republicans. If Coleman and Pawlenty refuse to transcend party lines, Senate leaders should recognize the canvassing board's results as at legitimate returns for the state of Minnesota and seat Franken, perhaps only on a provisional basis until Coleman wraps up his lawsuits.
I don't mean to minimize the difficulty of getting the hyper-partisan Republican party to stop playing games, but unfortunately Norm Coleman and the GOP are leaving Democrats with no other realistic option than to ratchet up the pressure and play some hardball.
If Democrats cave into the GOP's partisan tactics, they will kissing away a key vote for everything from the economic recovery stimulus plan on down the list. After they spent so much time justifying their decision to offer Joe Lieberman the Homeland Security Chairmanship on the basis of how important it was to have as many Democratic Senators as possible, and (correctly, in my view) blocking Blago, if Senate Democrats don't make seating Al Franken a top priority, they will have shot what little credibility they have left as responsible public officials.
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