Magic Number Or Misery For The Democrats?

June 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Congress 

This morning the Minnesota Supreme Court handed down its decision in favor of Al Franken in his eight-month battle with incumbent Senator Norm Coleman over the narrow margin of the election to determine the occupant of Minnesota’s seat in Capitol Hill’s upper chamber. Soon after, Coleman announced that, instead of taking his battle to the level of the Federal courts, he would concede defeat, leaving the way open for the onetime Stuart Smalley to take his seat.

(Richard A. Baker, the Historian of the Senate, was quoted as saying that Franken’s swearing-in would mark the first time a professional comedian had ever become a Senator. It’s hard to read that statement with a straight face. For example, for two terms in the 1950s and the 1960s one of our Southern states was represented by a very amiable gentleman, now deceased, who did not make much of a legislative mark, but was renowned in some circles for his habit of throwing empty bourbon bottles out of the window of his quarters in the Senate Office Building after consuming their contents. If Rick Perlstein can guess who that was, he gets a free steak dinner from me.)

On the surface, Franken’s victory looks like the ultimate triumph for the Democrats. Thanks to Arlen Specter’s defection from the Republican side of the aisle they now hold 60 seats, the supposed filibuster-proof majority. But Franken’s arrival, as no doubt many Democratic senators – perhaps even one as obtuse as Harry Reid – are aware, constitutes a mixed blessing at best.

As I said once or twice at TNN earlier this year, Franken’s career has been spent doing and saying things more or less antithetical to the usual background of a United States Senator. For well over thirty years he made his living being provocative and, not infrequently, insulting. The snide, snarky remark is sure to come more readily to his lips than genial words of consensus. Once he goes on C-Span and opens his mouth – and, indeed, he will be one of the Senators handling the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor – he is sure, sooner or later, to come up with utterances that will provide prime fodder for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and all their colleagues in the worlds of talk radio and cable TV commentary. Before long, even our Vice President might seem the model of thoughtfulness and discretion.

So a major task facing the Democrats, if they want to improve their numbers come 2010 rather than lose seats, will be to find some way to muzzle old Al at the right moments – before the watchword across the media becomes: “….and doggone it, people don’t like him.”

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