Is It Franken Vs Normie?

Juan Cole at Informed Comment appraises the Minnesota Senate race. He sees Franken as formidable and Coleman as "hilarious".

Al Franken is proving himself a formidable political fundraiser as he revs up his campaign to be the Democrat who faces Neoconservative Senator Norm Coleman in the '08 elections.

It is tiresome that some observers dismissed Mr. Franken because he is a humorist. Lots of comedians have served in the US Congress, though few had been professional humorists before being elected.

Norm Coleman himself has said the most hilarious things. His positions on various issues are listed at this page (scroll down and look on the right). He wants to increase the number of people carrying concealed weapons in Minneapolis (after what happened at Virginia Tech, is that a good idea?), wants to fund the Iraq War indefinitely and no questions asked, opposes auditing contractors with Defense Department contracts in Iraq, and wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned. Like Joe Lieberman, he seems to be preparing his constituencies for a brutal aggressive war on Iran. He's just a barrel of monkeys.

Mike Ciresi seems to be falling behind on fundraising by a formidable 3 to 1 margin. But he still polls unfavorably against Coleman.

You have to take Franken's candidacy very seriously," said Carleton College political scientist Steven Schier. "He is a political figure with a national network, and being able to draw that money from outside Minnesota is something Mike Ciresi can't do."


There are still significant hurdles. Despite Franken's fundraising success, he has yet to capitalize in the most recent head-to-head poll. A May Mason-Dixon poll showed Coleman leading Franken 54 percent to 32 percent, with independents preferring Coleman by a 16-point margin. A plurality of respondents said they had an unfavorable opinion of Franken.


Franken also faces a challenging path to win the Democratic nomination. In Minnesota, candidates are traditionally chosen through the party's statewide convention -- set for June 2008 -- making the nomination process fairly unpredictable. At the convention, the nomination is determined by a small core of the party's activists. Having strong organization in all of the state's counties is more important than having boatloads of cash. Both Franken and Ciresi -- and four other long-shot candidates -- have said they will abide by the results of the convention.

Ciresi has secured the endorcement of Betty McCullum, but is not getting the attention that Franken is. Time will tell.