What's the use of having a lone ranger who is on the wrong side of every 433-2 vote in Congress? Ron Paul has almost no influence in the House even though he's been there a while.
We're probably not going to know who is going to win the Coleman-Franken race until tomorrow. With 76% precincts reporting Coleman has a slim lead but its been flipping between him and Franken all night. There's already talk of a recount. In other MN news of national interest Michelle Bachman is leading El Tinklenberg 47% to 43% but no winner is yet projected.
Fraken will easily catch him and take it by a couple of points, Hennepin and St Louis counties are the biggies with votes left. It will end at 59 I believe. The only catch is if the exit polls are way off in Alaska and Stevens returns, I give that a 1 /10 shot at best. 59 is not a bad number, it means you have to get some coop from the few Rep moderates left in the Senate to get major changes done--not a bad check (even from this Liberal's point of view).
The Dem party has to be bummed about the Oregon and Alaska senate races. Looks like the GOP hangs on to both of them and Franken is down in Minnesota.
The AP has declared Coleman the winner with about a 700 vote lead. There is going to be an official recount starting in a week or two so this might not be resolved for another month. Bachman has won as Tinklenberg conceded around 12:30AM.
The Coleman/Franken/Barkley race is the poster child for voting. Even though one may think their vote is wasted in the Presidential election, there are always other races where one's vote matters. There are probably a number of Democrats and Republicans kicking themselves right now for not voting and making the race even tighter or giving Coleman enough of a lead to forego a recount. In addition, the strong amount of support Barkley received, probably cost Franken the election.
Breaking News: AP Uncalling race for Coleman in MN. At around 7AM this morning the AP had called the race for Coleman but now are saying that call was premature. On NPR they are saying the vote count is down to around 500 lead for Coleman out of around 2.2 million votes cast. Coleman is planning on issuing a statement at 11AM.
Not exactly most polling showed that Barkley was drawing support about evenly from both Republicans and Democrats. The one race where the IP probably cost the Democrat the election was the 6th district Bachmann race. Tinklenberg had both the Democrat and IP endorsement but an unendorsed IP candidate, Bob Anderson, ran and got a very surprising 10% while Bachmann only won by about 3%.
Star Tribune is showing Coleman up by around 350 with 100% reporting. Apparently 1/2% or less is an automatic recount, but Franken will want the recount (and rightfully so) regardless.
For going with the man he believes in? Supposedly that is what Obama is supposed to do. To be more than just a party man, but that is all he is. That is all most liberals are. They vote together, when somebody doesn't follow, they cry.
I was going by these comments in the Star Tribune: "Returns showed Barkley trailing a distant third, but also pulling enough Democrats and independents to possibly cost Franken the race." "Contrary to earlier indications, the exit polling showed that Barkley made a bigger dent in Franken's support, pulling slightly more Democrats than Republicans into his camp."
