The hope all along for Norm Coleman in the still-unresolved Minnesota Senate race was that he would get enough of the votes counted today by that three-judge panel to erase Al Franken's 225-vote lead.

Not only did that not happen, but Franken's lead is now up to 312.

Coleman, the one-term Republican senator who has been out of the job since Jan. 3, had originally asked the judges to consider looking at 1,700 previously rejected absentee ballots. That number eventually fell to 1,100. When they got the news last week that only 400 or so ballots would be looked at, Coleman's task got much more difficult; some 79 percent of them would have to have gone his way.

And that's not what happened today.

First of all, only 351 ballots were allowed. Of those, the judges awarded 198 to Franken, the Democratic candidate, with only 111 going to Coleman. That gave Franken 87 votes on top of the 225 lead he already enjoyed, and now the margin is 312.

Coleman's hopes for a favorable verdict today, never great to begin with, are all but dashed. Benjamin Ginsberg, one of his attorneys, has said for quite some time now (and said again today) that he plans to appeal to the full state Supreme Court, arguing that too many Minnesota voters have been disenfranchised.

Reading comments on blog posts is hardly a scientific approach to learning what the folks back home are thinking. But here' are two particularly brutal ones directed at Coleman posted today that accompanied Kevin Duchschere's post for the Minnesota Star Tribune:

jorge016: Norm you've now been defeated by a professional wrestler and a comedian. How humiliating it must be for such a political statesman like you. Maybe you can move to Chicago -- the Illinois governors spot seems like a great fit for you.
mmhoffman57: Do you remember that kid growing up? You know, the one that if you didn't let him play first base he took his ball and bat and went home? Or if he was losing at Monopoly he kicked the board over? The Eddie Haskells of the world? That's our Norm. P.S. Norm. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. P.P.S. Norm. Please take your ball and bat and go home, please, please.

Then again, there were also some nasty comments aimed at Franken today on the post by Dave Orrick and Rachel Stassen-Berger at the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

What a Huckster: Give it up Frankin, you are a joke not a Senator. We hate you here in Minnesota. Go back to wearing diapers on Air America!
kwoods: Chicago is known as the ballot stuffing city, and Minnesota as the judicial ballot thieves. Whenever someone wants a political election instead of a voter election, he/she will flock to Minnesota like Franken
.

No word yet on what, if anything, Democrats in Washington are planning; as I speculated on Thursday, there is a widely reported scenario by which the Dems in Washington attempt to seat Franken and the Republicans block it. We'll keep you posted.

categories: Washington Senators

2:52 - April 7, 2009

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