Franken Meets with Biden

Democratic presumptive junior Senator from Minnesota Al Franken met with Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday, one week after five-term Pennsylvanian Senator Arlen Specter switched his party affiliation while in office from Republican to Democrat.

After Minnesota's 2008 senatorial election ballots (from six months ago) were recounted, Franken was ruled to have garnered 312 more votes than one-term incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman out of nearly three million cast. Coleman, who switched his party affiliation while in office to Republican in 1996 while serving as mayor of St. Paul, is appealing the recount results in the state supreme court.

"The election process and recount in Minnesota have lived up to the state's reputation for organization, transparency, and bipartisanship," Biden said in a White House press release. "The officials have been meticulous and every ruling has been unanimous."

Unless Coleman's state and federal supreme court appeals overturn his loss in the original contest to the election results, Franken will join first-term Minnesotan Senator Amy Klobuchar, of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party (read: Democrats), in Washington. In that outcome, Franken would also become the 60th Democratic member of the Senate, alongside the House majority of 256 Democrats to the 178 Republicans, during a Democratic White House administration.

Franken, a 1973 Harvard alumnus, wrote three #1 New York Times Bestsellers: Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, and The Truth (With Jokes).

Former Saturday Night Live writer and actor, Franken, is also known for portraying the farcical, inept motivational speaker character, Stuart Smalley, who would affirm daily that he's "good enough, smart enough, and doggone it: people like [him]." Apparently, 312 more Minnesotans think he's good enough, smart enough, and like him than those who think the same of Coleman, for Senate, at least.

Minnesota's political discretion can be contextualized with another unlikely politician having been voted into office. Former professional wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura beat then-mayor Norm Coleman (yeah, the same guy) in the state's 1998 gubernatorial election, serving from 1999 until 2003. Ventura was inducted into the WWE's hall of fame the year after his term as governor ended.

To recap: Coleman, a career politician, was a Democrat but he changed his mind and became a Republican while serving as mayor of St. Paul. Coleman, a career politician who flipped his party affiliation while in office, lost Minnesota's 1998 gubernatorial election to former professional wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura. Coleman, now a Republican, became a Senator and served one term, alongside another Democrat, only to lose his incumbent election to a comedian, partially because he had switched party affiliation a decade ago. Then, another Senator from another state switched his party affiliation to the one from which Coleman had switched, in effect counterbalancing the switch that Coleman had made a decade ago, a week before the comedian who upset Coleman's incumbency met with the Vice President. Whew.