Bob Collins
The nation’s heavyweight political bloggers have rediscovered the Minnesota Senate race for some reason this week. It comes on the day Al Franken took a semi-victory lap around the Capitol, and the day before Franken’s team ends its case in the election trial.
The Hill reported that Sen. Harry Reid discussed committee assignments with Franken.
The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, who writes The Fix says the average Minnesotans “wants to move on from this story, the better for Franken — thanks to the fact that he currently leads the race. Voters pay only marginal attention to elections in the immediate run-up to an election, and generally see politics as tangential (at best) to their daily lives.”
Maybe, but that’s what people were saying a week after the election, too. But ask almost any Web editor how their Web traffic is for a Franken-Coleman story, compared to almost any other story, and it’s almost certain that the Franken-Coleman race remains a high priority for news consumers, even though they are, indeed, sick of it.
The L.A. Times also weighed in on the race in its Top of the Ticket blog, taking a whack at Franken for sounding like a politician, and using this clip as evidence:
Franken, for the average Minnesotans back here, stopped being a comedian almost two years ago, and has been a politician ever since because, well, that’s what people who run for political office are.
The Left Coast also makes a funny over an old-timer’s observation that they should just flip a coin, oblivious to the fact that Minnesota law requires exactly that in the case of a tie.
And finally, Michael Barone has just posted a column on his US News & World Report page saying it’s time to revote the race, apparently oblivious to the fact there’s no provision in Minnesota law for such a thing, according to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.
(MPR file photo/Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)
