(POL) Coleman challenge thrown out by Minn. Supreme Court
 

Minnesota Supreme Court calls Al Franken the winner - Manu Raju and Josh Kraushaar - POLITICO.com

From what I'm reading, Coleman would have to raise a significant amount of money to keep the legal challenge going to federal court, and there's no real chance of it being successful. So the Dems now have the mythical 60.

Except that they didn't "force" Pawlenty to sign the certificate, so he could always say that he's waiting for Coleman to decide to appeal more. They will stall as long as possible, and in the end people will grow even more tired of the antics than they already are.

Well the report is that Coleman has conceded.

Yeah, at the risk of having them compelled to issue the certificate via writ of mandamus. But apparently Coleman tired of shoveling money down a black hole.

It's about damn time

SI

This is great news. As people at the Daily Kos and Huffington Post have noted, Harry Reid has no excuses now as to why he continues to drag his feet. He has to start pushing through some of the Democrat policies or risk losing his majority leader position. Both sides of the aisle are extremely interested to see if he will actually lead his party now.

To paraphrase JimG, the Democrats should step on the Republicans' throats at this point.

They should, but they won't. The Dems can never get their stuff straight or together- it's too diverse of a party. Just wait, now that everyone thinks they're the crucial 60th vote, there will be lots of stupid bargaining.

SI

Yep. The Republicans would push through all sorts of crap if the tables were turned. But the Democrats will try to play nice. :(

I know there's some element of that. But the bigger tent group also has a lot more disparate voices

SI

Congrats to Al Franken, I liked one of his books.

Hitting the 60 number is nice even if too many of them aren't liberal enough.

It's not necessarily a bad thing- that they aren't all super liberal, I mean. Sure, I think a lot of liberal ideas than their conservative counterparts but working in the best interests of everyone, as a whole, is what we should be striving for. Unfortunately, the system kindof allows for a lot of crap to get in the way of that.

SI

A. Whitney Brown 2010!

And it begins. Bernie Sanders is saying that the 58 Democrats and 2 Independents should force an up or down vote on the health care bill and override any filibuster attempts.

Bernie Sanders Demands Democrats Commit To Stopping Health Care Filibuster

I can't believe that Al Franken is about to be a Senator.

Why do you say that?

to be fair, this is the state that elected ex-wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura as Governor. I think the cold does a number on their collective brain cells.

Norm Coleman was running against Ventura when he was elected governor, so there's your connection.

Is that from a David Vitter sketch?

Eliot Spitzer. Close though!