Tomorrow’s expected confirmation of Al Franken as the winner of the Senate race in Minnesota is kind of a big deal.
I’ve followed Franken since his early days as a comedy writer, through the late ’90s and early part of this decade as an author, and then as a radio host on the then-fledgeling Air America. He has made me laugh and think, and I’m grateful for both.
I’m also happy that a Democrat is getting the seat that Paul Wellstone most likely would’ve been re-elected to in November, had he not been tragically killed along with his family in a 2002 plane crash. Wellstone and Franken were friends, and I recall Franken’s pledge to run after the seat went to Coleman in 2002. Franken did it the honest, if excruciatingly difficult and long, way.
And of course, this close a tally (225 votes are expected to separate the two candidates) really underscores, for Minnesotans as well as Americans in every state, the importance of voting. As long as they’re properly counted, yes, every vote does count.
Now, of course, the real fun begins, with Norm Coleman promising to keep waging legal battles for the election he clearly lost, and the Senate GOP caucus threatening to filibuster the seating of Franken as the 111th Congress convenes this week.