The current, Judicial phase of Minnesota's Senatorial election recount continues on at its glacial pace. Who knows, my state might actually have a second sitting Senator by the time the seat comes up for reelection in 2014. Maybe.
In the end, one would of course hope that all properly-cast Senatorial ballots will be counted, and may the candidate with the most votes win. But that's just the problem: one of these two giant douchebags ultimately has to win the election.
We have satirist Al Franken, a singularly unlikable carpetbagger who, when he trailed preliminarily at the polls, believed that "all Minnesotans' votes should be counted." But now that he has a slim recount lead, that deeply-held belief seems to have evaporated into thin air, replaced by his self-serving argument that rejected absentee ballots should not be reconsidered.
And then there's Normie Coleman: former Democrat who turned Republican when he felt the political winds of Minnesota shifting slightly to the right, former Bush Administration lockstep lackey who then tried to remake himself into a bipartisan hero after Democrats regained congressional control in the 2006 elections. Needless to say, his views on both electoral challenges and absentee ballots similarly changed after the recount's first phase went against him. (I have often argued that the man has no actual beliefs other than the belief that he should have power over his fellow citizens while suckling endlessly at the public teat.)
No matter which of these odious characters emerges as the nominal victor of this recount process, his less-than-six-year term will be marred by a cloud of illegitimacy, by the belief of a substantial fraction of Minnesotans that the Senator does not deserve the office he holds, that the fix was somehow in.
Until 2015, Minnesota seems destined to be represented by one-and-a-half Senators, at the most.
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