David Trinh

The big story of the day in Minnesota is obviously Franken’s triumph over Coleman at the MN Supreme Court, a victory which Democrats hope will finally cement their 60 vote filibuster-proof majority in the US Senate.  Once you delve a little deeper into this case though, it’s not immediately clear that this victory will change the legal limbo in which Franken has found himself.  Notably, the Supreme Court decided to forgo directly ordering Gov. Pawlenty to sign an election certificate that would seat Franken, instead the Court simply suggested that Franken was ‘entitled’ to his certificate.

Essentially, this means that Minnesotan voters will get representation when Pawlenty and Coleman are good and ready to give it to them.  Without a direct order to sign the election certificate, Coleman is free to appeal his case to the US Supreme Court, litigation that could drag on into September.  However, while I’m relatively confident that Coleman could prolong this dispute even longer if he wanted to, I doubt he will choose to do so.  (Yes, I know this prediction will be moot in about a half an hour when Coleman gets in front of the cameras for his press conference.)

I say this only because over the past few weeks Republicans have been largely silent about this contest.  Everyone knew Coleman was going to lose his legal challenge in front of the Minnesota Supremes—a fact underscored by the unanimous decision in Franken’s favor—so one would think that if Republicans intended to keep fighting they would have been softening Franken up for a challenge to his credentials on the floor of the Senate or a show battle at the US Supreme Court.  It’s an understatement to say the GOP lately has tended to be rather shrill over partisan issues such as this one, so my hunch is their silence betrays their own belief that Norm Coleman is about to give up the fight.