Al Franken Losing Ground in Minnesota Senate Recount

How about as unproductive as the last EIGHT! Both parties have had a part in stonewalling the other party by using the filabuster. I seriously hope Franken does not win as a filabuster proof Democratic Senate might be the end of this country! Without a filabuster proof Senate, Democrats will be able to pass reasonable legislation, but won't be able to shove total Socialism down American's throats!

Our political process has become downright scary to me. The "winds of change" should not be measured by looney tune ratings charts. Our gov't has been taken hostage by the sorely misinformed, hence Franken & followers.

Hope abounds for Minnesota,, perhaps they've not quite given up their icon of "the land of a thousand lakes (or 10k,w/e)" for the "land of a thousand loonies"....

A political & gov't IQ test should be implemented as a requirement for voting now.. The health of our hijacked political process demands it....

Once again, see Nate Silver's running commentary at fivethirtyeight.com. The most important thing to know about the "margin" quoted in these reports it that it's meaningless. The reason is that if the challenge is to a ballot that both the machine and the initial judge counted as legally cast for one candidate, that ballot is *deducted* from that candidate's total until the review board resolves the challenge, which doesn't happen until the recount is over. (The result is different for challenges to other kinds of ballots -- those where the machine and the judge disagree, or where both said there was no legal vote -- but the "legal-legal" variety is by far the most common challenge.)

Given that Coleman has challenged more ballots total than Franken, it stands to reason that Franken would have lost more votes. But that also means that he'll get more votes back (because the most likely resolution of a "legal-legal" ballot is that the challenge is rejected and the vote counts), so 55% is well within expectations.

(In any case, Coleman's current "slim 170 vote lead" is actually *smaller* than his 200-plus at the beginning of the recount. Presumably this is due to ballots that were *not* challenged, but were improperly recorded in the first place (be it via human or machine error), and corrected in the current phase of the recount.)

But don't worry, the Dems are unlikely to get to 60 even if Franken wins. Unless Obama can find time to go down to Georgia and get out the vote for Jim Martin. But I don't expect him to -- he's obviously got a lot on his plate, and under the circumstances I think he's happy to deal with 58 or 59. (This may change if Franken does come out on top so there's any chance at all of 60, but I'm not sure that will happen before the GA runoff, or in time to do anything about it.) Of course if he *really* wants 60, he can just give a Cabinet post to one or two Republican Senators from states with Democratic Governors (;-). And not send up anything liable to be filibustered before their Dem replacements take office.

I wrote:

>This may change if Franken does come out
>on top so there's any chance at all of
>60, but I'm not sure that will happen
>before the GA runoff, or in time to do
>anything about it.

It won't. The GA runoff is *this coming Tuesday*. And Chambliss has a comfortable lead in all polls I've seen. So it looks like 59 is tops, even with Franken.

Franken looks like the Joker in the Batman movie. An evil looking Dufus

Franken is now winning & notice the old post dates? Because you're on the wrong blog, you fool!