I know that there is no good reason, but why would Norm Coleman bother to appeal now that the remaining ballots have been opened and added 87 votes to Franken’s count? He has no hope of overturning the case and the whole process will cost him (and his donors) money. He may even have to pay Franken’s court costs if he appeals. And his reputation isn’t going to improve among Minnesota’s voters. Is Coleman seriously willing to do all this just to delay by six months the day when Al Franken is sworn in as a U.S. Senator?
With Blanche Lincoln and Arlen Specter both saying that they will filibuster the Employee Free Choice Act, there isn’t even a pending piece of legislation that might justify excluding Franken for the remainder of this session. The EFCA is killed for this Congress regardless of Franken’s situation.
Any possibility that Coleman won’t appeal? At what point should the Democrats attempt to seat Franken even without a certificate signed by Pawlenty?
So long as Coleman has money to pay the attorneys he will appeal. Appeal is directly to the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Then when he loses the appeal he will file a federal lawsuit seeking an injunction to prevent Franken from being seated.
Those are what we call known knowns. What we don’t know is what Gov. Pawlenty will do when Coleman loses his Minn. Supreme Court appeal. We do know he won’t issue a certificate to Franken until all the Minn Supreme Court has ruled because that is what he publicly said he would not do. But whether he would continue to refuse to issue that certificate after Franken wins the Minn Supreme Ct appeal? Let’s hope he’s not that stupid.
I think Pawlenty will issue the cert after the MN SCt rules unless Coleman convinces a federal court to issue an injunction against the governor. And I think the chances of that are nil.
And the MN SCt will issue an expedited ruling methinks.
I hope so.
Coleman will appeal ad infinitum for three reasons:
GOP leaders clearly see at least one of those three happening and are now committed to it, even if Coleman would rather be doing something else.
I’m still trying to figure out why Coleman worked so hard to postpone the inevitable. Republicans just can’t handle rejection. They honestly can’t.
It is all about the EFCA. Every day Franken is delayed is a day corporatists can weaken support fo EFCA. Until those funding the Coleman fight start paying a price for it, it will go on.
EFCA is doomed. The President is a Blue Dog and only gives it public lip service. Look at the differential treatment of Wall street brokers and union workers.
Even now, the Treasury department is considering using dummy companies to avoid the Congressional tax on bonuses, while the union is asked to drop pay and benefits to non-union levels.
No, the Democratic Congress and President will not pass EFCA and all of us union members were chumps to donate to Obama.
Certainly some truth in what you say.
The political labels have shifted so far to the right (even while public opinion has shifted left) that Obama would have been considered a moderate/conservative dem 20 yrs. ago, yet today he is frequently pegged as a liberal.
If the repubs have the senate votes though, it’s hard to see how Obama could do much in terms of EFCA. I think the real villains at work here are the senate dem leaders–Reid, etc. If they made EFCA a priority, they certainly would be capable of pulling legislative stunts enough to get the thing through.
But they won’t.
Hi, and welcome back to “simple answers to simple questions”, where we cut right to the chase.
Today’s question comes from Booman, who asks “why would Norm Coleman bother to appeal now that the remaining ballots have been opened and added 87 votes to Franken’s count?”
Answer: because he’s an asshole.
Thanks for playing, and we’ll see you next time!
At what point should the Democrats attempt to seat Franken even without a certificate signed by Pawlenty?
In my eyes, not until all the appeals are exhausted. Waiting until that is done is vindication for us for what happened in 2000 with Gore v. Bush.
participating in a double standard is vindication, how?
What double standard? robertdsc seems to be suggesting holding Franken to the same standard he wanted Bush to be held to.
Frankly, I don’t think that the question is even going to come up in the Senate. If I understand the law in MN correctly, once the election is certified and all of the state-level appeals run out, the governor is required to sign the paperwork. If he refuses, Franken’s team can get a court order forcing him to sign it – and making it a felony if he refuses to do it.
Once the paperwork is signed there’s little the Republicans can do about it – they can filibuster, but boy will they look like even bigger dictatorial assholes than they look right now. Plus they’ll need to convince Snowe and Collins both to be dictatorial assholes with them, since I don’t think they’ll get any Democrats to join their filibuster. I find that outcome doubtful for some reason.
What I meant was that I don’t want the process short-circuited in any way. Coleman, it appears, will lose every appeal. Once that happens, Franken will win fair and square with no doubt about it.
Contrast that with the Dubya debacle and you may see where I’m coming from.
I think it’s silly for liberals/democrats to pretend there is a process when it’s clear that there is not. After Bush v. Gore, we know that the Federalist Society judges don’t even want to fake following the constitution and are only interested in power.
Following process during a coup attempt is suicide.
Seems to be a new RepubliCon fad– Democrats by definition cannot be able to win elections, so that if in fact they do, it must mean there was voter fraud, miscounting of votes, malfunctions in the Electronic Voting systems (maybe they’re just being accurate as compared to programmed to skew republican?)… the list of excuses goes on…
WHat worries me almost as much as this load of horse dung is that ~24% of Americans still think Bush was a good Prez….think about that–1 in 4? How can it be that many are in need of psychiatric assistance?
A random thought occurred to me yesterday about this. What would happen if the Senate Dems decided to try to seat Franken now? Obviously the reeps would attempt some sort of legal maneuver or whatever they could find to derail it.
But the issue would instantly leap from the back burner of the news cycle to front-and-center in public awareness. And it seems to me that the case might end up going straight to the SCOTUS if it were presented as a ‘constitutional crisis’ that a state should be denied full representation so long after an election. That might shortcut a lot of the bs and waiting.
On the current track, I think even 6 months is an optimistic timeline for eventually seating Franken. Most of what I read suggests that the reeps will do their best to make this drag out a year or more if they can. They can’t win it, but they can delay it as long as the Dems keep playing by the GOP rules of engagement.
the senate guru has taken the position that coleman is buried in debt (with mortgages on his house) and needs to get a lucrative wingnut welfare job after this is over.
His plan is to please them with blocking franken for as long as possible and then hope a grateful bunch of right wing wackaloons will pay him off with a high paying sinecure.
His future earnings depend on him dragging the contest out for as long as poosible threby denying the Senate Democrats a 59th vote.
With Norm just follow the money and you’ll know what’s what.