I came home, turned on the idiot box, and Norm Coleman is conceding. Apparently you only have to win 5-6 times in Minnesota, but good on Norm for doing the right thing after pursuing all his legal rights in the election.
That would be Senator Al Franken to you, btw. How long before Ben Nelson becomes a Republican?
*** Update ***
The DOW was down 80 points today. Who will be the first wingnut to blame today and any future drops on “market fears about ‘Democrat’ control of the Senate?”
I’m gonna go with someone from the American Thinker.
dr. bloor
Forty years ago. Why do you ask?
REN
Looks like Norm is planning to run for Governor to me.
Davis X. Machina
That’s “President Ben Nelson”. Remember the stimulus bill? He’s BFF with President Susan Collins.
mai naem
nananananananananana hey hey hey good bye
Don’t let the door hit your ass Nahm.
Ugh
This makes it hard for the GOP to filibuster seating Franken and makes it easy for Pawlenty to issue the certificate. I think they made a calculation that further appeals would be too damaging (not to mention fruitless) and this way Pawlenty can sign and still remain a viable candidate for 2012.
asiangrrlMN
@REN: Unfortunately, I second this. I heard on MPR that if Coleman wants to be governor, he needs to concede this race and then disappear for a bit before starting to stump by Thanksgiving.
This is assuming that he isn’t in jail for his nefarious donor-dealings, of course.
Senator Al Franken, bitches! If this doesn’t push Limbaugh clear over the precipice, I don’t know what will.
Oh, and John, I am not giving any credit to Coleman at all in this one.
P.S. John, I would say the same thing to Al Franken if he had pulled this crap. For once, it’s not a partisan response.
JenJen
Tamron Hall really did just say, in so many words on MSNBC, that this is excellent news for Republicans.
Death By Mosquito Truck
Congratulations to Senator Franzen.
sparky
hmmmm…coincidence or wingnut event->
redstate = 500 – Internal Server Error
JK
One down, one to go. Now that Norm Coleman has called it quits, when will that arrogant, lying, bible quoting scumbag Mark Sanford do the right thing and resign?
asiangrrlMN
@JenJen: I’m afraid to even ask, but what did she say?
David Hunt
He jumped over that edge into the Abyss a long time ago. There was a time when I could listen to him for twenty minutes before he said something offensive enough for me to switch the station. These days my average might be thirty seconds.
JK
Hopefully, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity,or Glenn Beck will also be pushed over the precipice.
Comrade Stuck
This is so cool. For the wingnuts, having Al Franken as a US Senator will be like getting a wedgie every day of the week, for at least six years .
minn-mud-boy
They better call in the radiation experts, because Rush Limbaugh’s head is going to freaking explode. I mean really explode. Maybe it should, then we can move along and get our train back on the tracks.
smiley
I don’t know what committee(s) he chairs but I doubt he’d want to give them up to be part of the minority. Who knows though.
The Moar You Know
I will be damned. I thought he’d go federal for sure.
Michael D.
In other words…
“It’s not the result of the will of the people. It’s the court’s result.” Colman may as well have also said.
GregB
Coleman reportedly decided to concede when the Minnesota Supreme Court denied his last ditch request to have Al Franken rousted from his bed by the National Guard and shipped to Costa Rica.
So sad.
-G
David Hunt
I haven’t been following the events with Sanford, but if the only thing of substance is that he was caught having an affair and has been subsequently acting like an ass, then I don’t think that he should resign. Marital infidelity is simply not grounds to get run out of office, even if you make a monumental ass of yourself after you’re caught. We can’t afford to have being an ass to disqualify you from holding political office. We’d lose virtually every elected official in the U.S.
Unabogie
I called Pawlenty’s office, and wouldn’t ya know it, he’s out of the state and can’t sign the certificate until he gets back.
Oh, fate!
asiangrrlMN
@David Hunt: I want to see actual frothing at the lips. I want to see Limbaugh drop to the ground in a quivering mass while he babbles about end times. Heh heh.
Senator Al Franken, bitches!
Unabogie, he’s in DC for some GOP thingie which he immediately cancelled upon hearing the joyous news.
SpotWeld
I kinda want Al Franken to declare “Kneel Before Zod” or something to that effect…
slag
@Comrade Stuck: I think this definitely falls under the category of: “If it pisses wingnuts off, it’s good for liberals”. An ancillary aspect of Josh Marshall’s bitch-slap theory of politics. That’s aside from it being mathematically good for liberals, of course.
scarpy
@ smiley 4:26
Nelson doesn’t chair any committees. he’s only three years into his second term and doesn’t have a whole lot of seniority relatively speaking. He does have a subcommittee chair, but i don’t know how that stacks up compared with the temptation of hogging the spotlight for the rest of this Congress.
of course, he’ll get that either way, as the prized 60th vote.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@JenJen:
Yeah, what asiangrrlMN said. Fill us in already. We could always use some more good laughs.
@JK:
Sanford understands why some people want him to resign. That should be reason enough for Sanford to continue being governor, no?
David
Franken’s speech:
QUITTER!!!
BDeevDad
Rush pulls a @PeteHoeker
Coleman is just like the Iranians
dmsilev
@asiangrrlMN:
It’s hard to see how this could be any worse, in terms of damage to what little remains of Limbaugh’s sanity, than Obama’s election. Rush already was 95% of the way towards gibbering, baying at the moon, and thinking that he’s Napoleon. Franken’s election may add another few percent of derangement, but honestly, how can we tell the difference?
-dms
JK
@David Hunt:
The extra marital is sex is one thing, but going AWOL for several days just so you can laid is too much for me. Sanford let his horniness took precedence over his obligations to the people of SC.
LD50
Won’t happen for a while. Senators never switch to the minority party, Jeffords notwithstanding. As it is now he has all those plum committee seats and he gets to terrorize Reid.
asiangrrlMN
@David Hunt: Go through the gazillion threads about it. He also just took off without handing over the reins. In SC, that means that no one was in charge while he was gone. Plus, there is suspicion that he used tax payers dollars to canoodle with his mistress. Now, today, he says there have been other women. All of this after he refused to take stimulus money to help his state. I think there are plenty of reasons he should resign.
JK beat me to it. Dang.
LanceThruster
The Saff
Hurrah! I was following his campaign last year and even made a few donations. I bet he’ll do a good job representing Minnesota. I hope he’ll go back on Letterman, too.
LD50
@David Hunt: It’s not the fucking, it’s the lying about it, disappearing to do it, and doing it on the taxpayer’s dime.
drluba
It’s not Limbaugh’s head that will probably explode, but Bill O’Reilly’s……….
gex
Gotta love Balloon-Juice. They give us a thread to discuss Sanford and we talk Coleman/Franken. So naturally we talk Sanford in the Coleman/Franken thread.
Charon
@asiangrrlMN:
Do sane people in MN actually believe this? Or for that matter even MN repubs? I’m in Iowa, so obviously the politics are somewhat different, but I would have thought that there was no way that a man who had just conducted and lost a drawn out and unpopular legal challenge and was living under a cloud of alleged wrongdoing would have a shot at the governorship, at least this election cycle. In four years or whatever, I could see it but not now.
What’s the reasoning behind the Coleman for governor idea? I would really appreciate some one the ground intelligence.
mai naem
Paul Wellstone’s gotta be smiling down from up above today.
Rusty Nails
OT: but the headline on Drudge right now is warning us all of Obama’s EVIL EYE.
So is Obama using his evil ways to destroy the world like Sauron with his ACORN army? Or is he more like the hypnotoad trying to use his eye to turn us all into gay, commie, burka wearing, healthcare using Obamabots?
Ash
@The Cat Who Would Be Tunch:
I’m not sure if this is what Jen Jen was referring to, but Hall kept going on and on about how now that there’s 60 Dems, they have to basically reform everything or people will think they failed.
gex
@Charon: I doubt it. I think it’s the only tactic amenable to running, but the last time he ran for governor he lost to a professional wrestler.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@David Hunt:
And that would be bad why?
Although, I agree, Sanford shouldn’t resign, at least not for having committed adultery, any more than Larry Craig should have resigned for tap dancing in the men’s room, or Bill Clinton should have resigned for off-label cigar use.
Playing hooky, on the other hand, might be grounds for demanding his resignation if he made a habit of it, or was unavailable during a real crisis. As it is, public humiliation alone seems to be sufficient punishment.
JK
@David Hunt:
Even David Brooks applying tortured logic seems to lean in favor Sanford resigning. On Friday’s NewsHour with Lehrer, Brooks said there was something a little more admirable about Sanford than other adulterous politicians because he seems to be genuinely in love as opposed to just wanting to get laid. Brooks said that because Sanford seems to to be love, that he’d likely have difficulty concentrating on governing.
Let Sanford resign so he fly down to Buenos Aires and fuck his mistress to his heart’s content without screwing over the people of SC.
Cyrus
@Charon:
Is it unpopular? Genuinely asking. It seems like the kind of thing that would be unpopular, but what do I know, I’m a SWPL effete coastal liberal. Is there polling on this? Was it as clear to everyone in Minnesota that Coleman never had a chance as it was for people in left-blogistan?
jake 4 that 1
@JK: He has to introduce his wife to all of his mistresses first. Say 10, 12 years.
David Hunt
To all the guys who gave the extra info on Sanford, thanks. Lying about the affair, I don’t care about. Lying is an implicit part of an illicit affair. Using taxpayer money to finance your illicit affair is probably fraud, i.e. a felony. I could get behind an argument to oust Sanford over that. Not that anyone could make that stick. Just go ask the Governor of Alaska about her travel per diem. It’s still worth demanding he resign over.
As to the disappearing without notice…Is it really that important that you be able to find a governor at a moment’s notice? If there were an execution scheduled, I can see it, but what else does he have to deal with immediately? I strongly suspect that he tried to make sure that anything that required immediate attention was taken care of to so that it would be easier to keep his trip to Argentina a secret. I don’t know enough about state government to know if this is a big deal.
Tonal Crow
@BDeevDad:
I think we need to send him the entire state of Wisconsin to accompany that whine.
Charon
@Cyrus:
These two articles are both from April (out of date I know, but the best I could find on short notice) and each references a different poll showing that Coleman’s crusade was unpopular in Minnesota.
REN
@ Charon
Mn is notably short on recognizable Dems and starting any race in the state with name recognition is a leg up. Remember that Pawlenty won re-election in a Dem wave year. Very close to half of the voters in Mn voted for Coleman in this election, and I wouldn’t expect much less in a Gubernatorial election with a relative unknown Dem.
gex
@David Hunt: Emergencies aren’t predictable. Federal responses to severe weather events that cause a lot of destruction require that the governor first declare a state of emergency or something like that.
Other issues involved were traveling internationally without notifying the embassy. A person of Sanford’s position has access to national security information, not to mention the fact that wealthy Americans make great kidnapping targets in the exact place that he traveled to.
So fraud, abandoning the state he is in charge of, risking national security, and that’s just the quick list off the top of my head.
JK
It absolutely is that important. A major state emergency might require deployment of the SC National Guard.
There are actions that only a governor has the authority to implement. Playing hooky is a big fucking deal.
If SC’s Lt Gov wasn’t himself so unpopular right now, Republicans would have thrown Sanford out of the door the second he finished that pathetic fucking news conference.
JK
A song for Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and all the other whining crybabies in the Republican Party
Wah Wah – George Harrison
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn2UH2eiuQo
REN
@ gex
Never forget that Jesse Ventura was a Navy Seal as well. Along with being a movie actor. People knew who he was, and the meme in the media before Ventura came on the scene, was more about the dismal lack of choice and who was going to be the loser.
Was Ventura ever governor material? Good question , but listening to his interviews I note that he tells it the way he sees it, whether or not it was helpful to him, and sticks to the Navy code of not telling lies.
This is rarely a successful tactic in politics.
Zach
Larry Kudlow, obviously.
Edit: He’s discussing it on his show at 7 tonight: “The Al Franken factor: A filibuster-proof senate” if you want to verify. It’s practically certain, though. The biggest political news of the day that has to do with Democrats winning is always cited as a reason for a decline (and vice versa).
Zandar
If it’s not Kudlow, it’ll be Larry Laffer or John Carney at Investor’s Business Daily or Jennifer Rubin at Commentary.
Booby prize: Jim Cramer.
gex
@REN: Yes, I know. I didn’t vote for Ventura, but I found him refreshing as a politician. He was direct, he spoke his mind, and it wasn’t all manufactured 30 second soundbites designed to obfuscate or send dog whistles.
You take all the fun out of mocking Norm.
REN
@gex
Sorry about that. I am in no way, shape, or form, a defender of Norm Coleman. Mock away friend, I’ll be more than happy to join in.
rikyrah
Senator Al Franken.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
God bless America…this is a wonderful country.
gex
@REN: I got nothing else. I’m just ready for Coleman to go away. I need to recharge for his indictment or his gubernatorial run, whichever comes first.
Xanthippas
So Franken won 9-0, right?
tcolberg
Whoa whoa, slow down there with the contradictions and oxymorons. We’re still reeling from the idea of Senator Franken.
drillfork
@REN:
Actually, Norm was quite a few votes short of half the voters. So was Al. The third-party candidate, Dean Barkley, got something like 15 percent of the vote (including mine for what it’s worth).
That said, I agree with you. Assuming he doesn’t go to prison, Coleman has an excellent shot at replacing Pawlenty in the governor’s mansion. Minnesota Dems are a rather unimpressive lot, and have been for going on 30 years. Franken is a native, but let’s face it, he’d been away for decades. And he was the best Dem this state could come up with.
On the bright side, I may get one more chance to vote against Norm…
LD50
In the vast majority of jobs, disappearing without notice would get you fired. Why should being a state governor be different?
Gus
If you want to see some nice wingnuttery, go to the St. Paul Pioneer Press web page and read the comments. Apparently ACORN stole the election for Franken.
Gus
And it’s a guarantee that the eventual governor won’t have to win 50% or likely even 45%. We like our third party candidates here.
JGabriel
David Hunt:
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
.
asiangrrlMN
Jesse Ventura won on name recognition alone. He got light rail pushed through, which is good, but it was only because he wanted it. That’s how he governed.
I would like to believe that Norm would have no chance of becoming governor (yes, I do believe he’ll be running), but my state is fucking crazy when it comes to governors. We haven’t had a Democratic one since….I wanna say Perpich. Yup, Perpich in 1991 (the year he left office). So, no matter how blue we are nationally, we can be pretty damn red locally.
Which is why I’m hoping that Normie will be indicted and tossed into jail so he can’t run for governor.
Gus
Rudy was my family dentist (before I was born).
Gregory
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
I disagree with your qualifiers. Disappearing from work, with no word, for a couple of days will get almost any regular person fired unless they had a darn good excuse, and no, kiting off to South America to experience tragic doomed love isn’t it.
Now, if he had been on some top-secret mission negotiating a solution to the Iranian crisis, that’d be one thing. But as it is, Sanford’s disappearance is grounds for demanding his resignation, full stop.
Wile E. Quixote
I think the qualification for being forced to resign should be “would this behavior get your ass fired if you weren’t an elected official?” So while cheating on your wife probably won’t get you fired from most jobs disappearing for four days and being out of contact with your employer so you can cheat on your wife will get your ass fired. Sanford should go, the man is too irresponsible to be a governor, and if the Republicans are going to be the family values and morality party then the least we can do is go along with them and hold their feet to the fire when they’re caught flying to South America to cheat on their wives, blowing strangers in airport men’s rooms (and cheating on their wives), going after teenage congressional pages (but at least Mark Foley wasn’t married), etc, etc, etc.
Augustine
In honor of MN’s other wise fool, I think the title of this post could be edited as follows:
Augustine
ok, can’t use strikethrough inside blockquote?
Cyrus
@REN:
Well, he was the most qualified gubernatorial candidate in the cast of Predator. If nothing else, we can always be grateful that Ventura puts Governor Schwarzenegger in the proper perspective. (To be fair, though, Schwarzenegger wasn’t the worst gubernatorial candidate in Predator either. As bizarre as it sounds, that distinction goes to this guy.)
@Charon: Thanks.