Matt Yglesias

Franken Wins Again

From the Star Tribune:

After a trial spanning nearly three months, Norm Coleman’s attempt to reverse Al Franken’s lead in the recount of the U.S. Senate election was soundly rejected today by a three-judge panel that dismissed the Republican’s lawsuit.

The judges swept away Coleman’s argument that the election and its aftermath were fraught with systemic errors that made the results invalid.

Apparently Coleman has more fruitless appeals to make, so the seating of Al Franken can continue to be delayed.

It’s worth remarking a bit on the incredible solidarity the Minnesota GOP is showing with their colleagues’ broader interest in obstructing the inevitable here. Representatives John Kline, Erik Paulsen, and Michele Bachmann, along with Governor Tim Pawlenty, are all seeing their quest to get Minnesota’s fair share of pork and other parochial interests undermined by the fact that their state only has one Senator. Normally, I would expect politicians in that kind of situation to put the interests of themselves and their state ahead of the interests of their political party. In general, the level of party discipline that the Republicans have been able to muster in 2009 (thus far) is really impressive and goes against a lot of conventional wisdom about how the American political system operates. I hope some smart political scientists are doing some thinking about this.

Making Frankenaid

Apparently the right-wing is secretly really psyched that Al Franken won, because now they can criticize him! Or something. As Dave Weigel observes, there’s a certain lack of logic here. It’s worth considering that Franken had a lot of obstacles during this campaign that won’t be a problem as he runs for re-election. A lot of folks had trouble taking a comedian seriously as a potential Senator. By 2014, everyone will be used to the idea. And time has a way of making “carpetbagger” concerns go away.

Beyond that, I’m fairly certain that people are going to come to see that like him or not, Franken is deadly serious about progressive politics. His career transition really didn’t happen all that suddenly, and certainly wasn’t the most obvious or easy thing for him to do with his life. But he did it because he thought it was important. His past career gave his opponents a certain amount of fodder for criticism, but going forward you’re not going to see anything like that. No seat is ever safe in Minnesota, which is both pretty closely divided and has a habit of sometimes electing real liberals, but the toughest race for someone with an unusual background is the first one.

One to Watch

The Franken-Coleman race in Minnesota should have us all on the edge of our seats not only because the polling is so close but because the public polling shows such a large third-party vote. Over ten percent of Minnesotans (and in some surveys closer to twenty) are currently telling pollsters they’ll vote for Barkley, but the historical pattern is for third party voters to fade away at the last minute once it becomes clear that their man is stuck hopelessly in third. Will that happen? If it does, which way will his supporters break?

Nice Folks

I was talking to my grandfather over the weekend, and we agreed that, as best we could tell, people in Minnesota were unusually nice and friendly. And now I’ve got the proof in the form of these maps showing personality characteristics by state.

First the “agreeableness” map:

And now the “extraverted” map:

As you can see, people in Minnesota are extraverted and agreeable — friendly, in layman’s terms. The maps also confirm one’s stereotype-based suspicion that the Northeast is full of neurotics.