Senator Franken

MANIFESTO

It looks as if Al Franken will ultimately win the contested Senate seat in Minnesota. Eric Kleefeld at TPM has an outstanding post on how the race has gone.

Kleefeld points out that

What's become clear is that the vast, overwhelming majority of [Republican incumbent Mark] Coleman's challenges have been efforts to not get ballots counted for Franken.

Notwithstanding Kleefeld's somewhat tortuous syntax, the point is—as it always is when it comes to Republicans and these types of races—that the only way Coleman hopes to win is by disenfranchising people who voted in good faith and, more importantly, legally. This has been the Republican strategy since the beginning of the millennium, and if it worked in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004, then, by God, it's worth a try in Minnesota in 2008.