The Minnesota Senate race recount will never, ever end, and everyone in that cold and desolate state has obviously proven to be a complete buffoon. Let's meet one of those buffoons now!
Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, currently fighting to protect his seat from vile comedian Al Franken, got some good news and some bad news this week. The good news? Minneapolis officials lost 133 ballots, and they just gave up on finding and counting them. Those 133 ballots would most likely have given Franken a net recount gain of about 46 votes, based on the voting habits of Minneapolitans. So Coleman's 192-vote lead is looking good, as the board of elections moves to considering the thousands of challenged ballots. But here's the bad news: Coleman's under investigation by the FBI!
Despite the best efforts of Young Jeezy, T.I., and Ludacris, the Democrats look to be stuck at 58 seats in the US Senate, two shy of the magic filibuster-proof majority. Georgia's runoff election between Senator Saxby Chambliss and challenger Jim Martin (pictured, above) is going on right now! And turnout seems to be low. Meanwhile in Minnesota, Al Franken faces some pretty damning math in his recount battle with Norm Coleman. Already, the age of Hope and Change is over!
How's the Minnesota Senate Recount going? 538 says "Projection: Franken to Win Recount by 27 Votes." Really, guys? 27 votes? Nate Silver is overplaying his hand. Though if this turns out to be correct, he will be Appointed God of Numbers and we will be obligated to worship him as our new Reptilian Overlord. [538]
The recount in the Minnesota Senate race between asshole comedian Al Franken and regular asshole Norm Coleman is underway! And the campaigns have lawyers standing by to challenge every vote. So Drudge has had this image up all day, with the headline "DRAMA: Franken Is Challenging This Ballot." Yes, bullshit, obviously. The voter intent is clear. On the other hand, the Coleman campaign is challenging this ballot, this ballot, and this ballot. The whole recount system is obviously broken, the well-intentioned voter intent laws are being manipulated by the campaigns, and this nonsense will not be over with by the end of the year. Or, you know, Al Franken is stealing the election, whichever one you want to believe. [MPR via Wonkette]
Before he goes to bed every night, Al Franken watches the Kevin Spacey HBO take on the 2000 election, Recount, and cries himself to sleep. After an acrimonious Senate race, Franken's battle with longtime Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman is still going on after Coleman appeared to have won by 725 votes. As that margin changes in the fallout from Election Day, tears have flowed on both sides, and the recount doesn't even begin until Nov. 18! After 100 more Democratic votes popped up in St. Louis County, Norm Coleman's team got even angrier than they were during the campaign — and if you'll remember, they called Al Franken a child molester during the campaign. 2000 ain't got nothing on 2008:Located in Minnesota's Iron Range, a tiny precinct had 100 more votes for Franken — but the machine carried a date of Nov. 2. That was just an honest error, but that didn't stop the Coleman campaign from bloviating: "Obviously, this is highly suspicious. They found 100 votes, and it's statistically impossible that all 100 votes went to the two Democrats, even in St. Louis County," said Coleman flack Cullen Sheehan said. This is the same campaign that asked Franken to concede on election night. Like in Florida, the state is likely to see movement on both sides of the ledger during the recount. Just when you thought you never wanted to hear the word Diebold again... Although all votes in Minnesota are recorded on paper ballots, they are scanned by Diebold machines that are routinely found to be in error. (Diebold's even getting sued, Gizmodo reported today.) The recount will be by hand, and thus could take until the end of the year. AP reporter Brian Bakst argues this morning that the election is going to be decided by the undervotes — ballots that recorded a preference for presidential candidate but not for Senate. Some of these ballots might not have been properly scanned by machines, and they might break for Franken.
In the Senate, the Democrats picked up five seats. But hey, guess what? Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman barely held on to his seat. With all the precincts reporting, Coleman's won by 571 votes. Which means recount time! Poor comedian Al Franken should've won this, but a third party candidate took more of his votes than Coleman's (instant runoff voting, anyone? please?), and also he didn't run a very good campaign, and also Minnesotans, like many Americans, are in love with the idea of a divided government as some sort of good thing, because we all remember how well that worked in 1994, when the government shut down, as a stunt. And hey, let's check in on Alaska, the retarded child state America forgot it adopted until this year, when it nearly crashed the democratic car into a tree. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who is a convicted felon, won his reelection campaign! Stevens, convicted just last week of seven counts of corruption, has a 4,000 vote lead over his opponent, some boring non-corrupt Democrat. There are still 50,0000 absentee ballots left to count, so you know, this could still go either way. But honestly, Stevens is probably a lock. Good work, Alaska.
Will the Democrats get 60 seats in the Senate? Will Obama win in a landslide and have a MANDATE? Ugh. No, and yes, respectively. Dems are looking good in the Senate but not 60 seats good. Obama will get over 50% of the popular vote, the first time any Democrat's managed that in a generation. That sounds like enough of a mandate to us. What else? Coleman/Franken The Minnesota Senate race will be down to the wire. Franken is ahead at the moment but it's close. Exit polls look decent for him, but that third-party guy might hurt him. Michelle Bachmann The insane Minnesota congresswoman might pull this off—she's ahead at the moment but the write-in Repub challenger might kill her hopes. Ted Stevens The Alaska Senator and convicted felon faces a tough fight but, you know, Alaska loves that corrupt asshole. Alaska polls close late. Proposition 8 Lord knows what's going on with California's gay marriage initiative. Whites want the gay marriage, blacks and latinos are divided. Cautious optimism?
Headline: "Andover man shot with crossbow, beaten with bat, run over, burned." Subhead: "Gruesome details and accusations of embezzlement are laid out as two siblings are charged with killing their brother. Also charged was the girlfriend of one of the siblings." Opening scene:
Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman is a scummy asshole and also, usually, a surprisingly good politician. (You'd kinda have to be to be a New Yorker with a sham marriage to a wannabe Hollywood actress and still win in Minnesota.) He's the "which way is the wind blowing" style of campaigner, and now he's suspending his campaign to... no, sorry, he's "suspending all negative campaign ads" as of today. It's a great little stunt, actually. Coleman's running against Al Franken. Franken basically didn't have a chance in hell of winning, until a) Obama began surging and b) the economy went into a tailspin. Suddenly, Obama is occasionally polling in the double digits in Minnesota (a double-digit Obama victory may be the only way for Franken to get into office), and, even worse, Franken is sometimes outpolling Coleman (Franken is up 9 points in the most recent Star Tribune poll, which is an outlier, but Coleman's lead seems to be shrinking everywhere else). The campaign's been vicious and negative by any standard, but especially for Minnesota, where campaigns have always seemed a little more polite. All this was before a video of Coleman's spokesman disastrously not defending Coleman's gifts from wealthy businessmen swept across the internet. Finally, MSNBC points this statistic out:
With thousands of "Family Values"-type conservatives descending on St. Paul, Minnesota, for the Republican National convention, area locals-who are largely Democratic, progressive and, yes, gay-are being asked to do their best to make the visiting Right Wingers feel more at home in a series of fun commercials which urge, "The Republicans Are Coming... Make An Effort." One example after the jump.
Headed to the Twin Cities for the GOP convention? Here are the bars that will be observing the temporary 4 a.m. bar-close in convenient map form! The thing is tho they're pretty much the worst fucking bars in Minneapolis (and St. Paul, which has like one good bar period). Stick with the strip clubs! [SaintPaulitan]
Heading to the Republican convention? You could do worse than follow the advice proffered in today's Times "36 Hours in" column on the Twin Cities, penned by Minneapolitan David Carr. It's full of good advice for restaurants, culture, and entertainment. And bars. There are really just a couple of our favorite places that he missed: you can get a good (for the midwest) pizza and a cheap pitcher of Summit at Pizza Luce on Lyndale Ave. If the lot's full, there's usually street parking readily available a block away on 32nd and Garfield. Just make sure to lock up! [NYT]
Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty just might be our next Vice President! If McCain pulls this thing off. Which would be, wow. Pawlenty holds all the advantages as a running mate of a Charlie Crist—young, inoffensive, kinda popular, governor of a potential swing state—without the "probably gay" thing. He's just possibly gay. Now let's lay out the problems!
Oh hey, that empty threat former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura issued to run for Senate? Well because of all the goddamn attention he got from the media he's actually going to do it. He's gotta keep having reasons to show up on The Tonight Show! Now Ventura will run against repellent prick Senator Toothy Coleman and less-repellent comedian Al Franken. Because hey, that race was not yet enough of a fucking freak show! [ABC]
This last weekend, comedian and writer Al Franken won the Democratic-Farmer Labor party nomination for Senator from Minnesota. He'll face incumbent Republican Norm Coleman in November. It will be an odd and embarrassing race for everyone, but mostly for Minnesota. On his own merits, Franken can't win. But Coleman is a scumbag and preening moron almost as "out of touch" with his constituents as the former SNL performer. So naturally Coleman is playing his trump card already: Minnesotans are old fools incapable of understanding irony. Which is why they've accused the dude who wrote Stuart Saves His Family of writing "porn," and why Franken is now only telling jokes off the record.
Because Minnesota cannot bear not being the laughingstock of a nation with plenty of contenders to that title, they may very well elect comedian Al Franken to the United States Senate this year. Or perhaps Jesse "The Body" Ventura, the noted Predator star and former professional wrestler. And governor of the state. Great work, guys. (Well, Ventura doesn't actually seem that inclined to run. He's just threatening to because he so dislikes Franken and Norm Coleman. Which, yeah, we do too, but we'd still rather see Carl Weathers in that seat. Someday all of our elected officials will have their political resumes replayed on TBS every Saturday afternoon.) [KARE11]
Comedian Al Franken is running for Senate out in the frigid wilderness of Minnesota. He's running against Norm Coleman, an oily scumbag whose best argument for remaining a senator is that he's not comedian Al Franken. It will be a bitter and dirty race. The GOP is painting Franken as an out-of-touch Hollywood liberal, which is untrue: he's an out-of-touch New York liberal. They can't use the New York Jew line against him, though, as Norm Coleman is a real New York Jew. And Coleman's "wife" is a political prop—she lives in Hollywood, of course, where she is trying to be an "actress." So this is what they're trying on Franken now: he didn't pay his taxes once.
