From Senator Al Franken – #1 bestselling author and beloved SNL alum – comes the story of an award-winning comedian who decided to run for office and then discovered why award-winning comedians tend not to do that.

This is a book about an unlikely campaign that had an even more improbable ending: the closest outcome in history and an unprecedented eight-month recount saga, which is pretty funny in retrospect.

It’s a book about what happens when the nation’s foremost progressive satirist gets a chance to serve in the United States Senate and, defying the low expectations of the pundit class, actually turns out to be good at it.

It’s a book about our deeply polarized, frequently depressing, occasionally inspiring political culture, written from inside the belly of the beast.

In this candid personal memoir, the honorable gentleman from Minnesota takes his army of loyal fans along with him from Saturday Night Live to the campaign trail, inside the halls of Congress, and behind the scenes of some of the most dramatic and/or hilarious moments of his new career in politics.

Has Al Franken become a true Giant of the Senate? Franken asks readers to decide for themselves.

As the person who personally got Al Franken elected to office the first time around, I’m sure I’m in this book in several places. I haven’t checked yet, but I thought you should know about the book.

Bachmann almost lost her re-election to challenger Jim Graves last year. I’m convinced that had the election been held a few weeks later, Graves would have won. Recently, internal polling data from within Bachmann’s campaign became known, and showed that as of a couple of weeks ago Bachmann was actually behind Graves. Bachmann’s response to this polling was an ad buy; the Bachmann campaign started up early with local ads, clearly indicating one thing and strongly suggesting another. For one, Bachmann had decided to run for re-election as of several days ago. She bought campaign ads. That’s pretty clear. Two weeks ago or less, Michele Bachmann was a candidate for re-election to the sixth district and was spending money on that campaign. This is a fact that must be taken into account in figuring out what is going on. The second thing this indicated was that she was nervous about the polling data and felt compelled to start early.

Then, suddenly, she announced that she would not be running. You don’t decide to run for re-election and actually craft campaign ads and buy air time for the ads and put on the air if you are not running. “I’m Michele Bachmann and I approved this message” means, very clearly, that she was in fact running for re-election. Why, then, did she suddenly stop running for re-election? Even with poor polling numbers, this does not make sense. The polling numbers were not abysmal. She was about five points behind, very close to the margin of error. This is not a number that in and of itself would recommend abandoning a campaign. Also, the numbers were known to her campaign before the ad buy.

There are two other possible explanations for her withdraw, I think. One is that something bad is about to happen and she is bugging out before that occurs. The other is that she noticed that there was another office up for election and has decided to run for it. Let’s examine those two possible explanations.

The most likely explanation for her withdraw is probably that her recent attempts to negotiate away a law suit being filed against her failed and she’s about to be dragged into her own little Watergate, or other civil or criminal legal problems loom that her campaign knows more about than we do at present:

Someone from Michele Bachmann’s 2012 presidential campaign team stole an email list off of Barb Heki’s laptop. This list was from the evangelical home school organization for which Heki played a leadership role… She sued.

…

Today, the court scheduled the trial.

… and later that day Bachmann made her video bowing out of the campaign.

A second explanation is that Bachmann noticed that the Junior Senator from the State of Minnesota, Al Franken, is up for re-election and, at the time she made her plans to announce her withdraw, had no serious challengers. This is the preferred explanation among local Minnesota pundits. Why? Not because it is the best explanation, but because it is the coolest explanation. Al Franken only barely won his seat during the last election, but there are very specific reasons for that, and these reasons simply don’t apply today. Senator Franken went from never having held elected office to being one of the most respected and effective Senators in Washington. How did he do that? He is a) very sincere about his public service and b) very smart. Well, also, his hard work and the excellent support from his family and staff and all that too. Bottom line: The people of Minnesota understand that Al Franken is a great senator and he will be re-elected.

Al Franken isn’t just a great Senator, but he is also one of those guys we watch for the entertainment value, and I’m not referring here to his earlier career as a comedian satirist. Have you seen him in action? Here’s an example. I would not have wanted to have been a grasshopper living in Little Al Franken’s yard when he was a little boy in Ednia, Minnesota.

That was Subtle Al. Here’s another:

Here’s Al with a very smart witness trying to trip him up. Starts at about 1:27:

Not in chambers, about Fox, and reforming our Math education system at the same time:

And here is Al Franken eating a lawyer before lunch:

For comparison, here is Michele Bachmann:

Can you imagine it? A Franken-Bachmann campaign? Pure Political Squeee. Bwahahaha to the Nth power.

So, you can see that no matter how unlikely it may be that Michele Bachmann would actually have quit her seat in the house in order to run against Al Franken, we insist on keeping it on the table as a possibility because, well, it is something to live for.

There is a third possible explanation for Michele Bachmann’s withdraw; A better offer from Fox or some other corporation. This has been suggested by various commenters but I think it unlikely. Yes, expect such a thing to occur at some time in the future, but I believe that Bachmann truly sees herself as a savior of The Constitution and will generally act with that motivation before other considerations. Of course, the first and third explanations can be linked. If she is facing high costs from impending legal battles, bowing out and getting a nice contract with Faux News would be the thing to do.

Finally, I would like to express my great relief that Bachmann is bowing out. It has been a great burden to me … as the person who got her political career started, feeling responsible all these years for having created this particular horror. Now, finally, I’ll be able to sleep nights.

Stay tuned. And, beware of falling boots.

I personally put Al Franken in the Senate

Al Franken is about to be seated as the Junior Senator from Minnesota after a long and costly battle between loser Norm Coleman and Senator Franken. Al won the election by just a few hundred votes, and three of those votes are mine.

So, we have me and about 100 other people just like me to thank for overthrowing the Coleman Regime. Let this be a lesson to all of you who have the opportunity to vote and do not, or who have the opportunity to go out and work for a few hours for a candidate but do not. You are missing out.

How did I get three (or maybe more) votes for Al? Well, one of them was me. I voted for him, so that’s one vote. The other two were trickier.

For months before the election, numerous volunteers carried out a well organized campaign on behalf of a number of Democratic Party candidates. During this time, I did not do that much for Al. I blogged for him, and I donated some money, went to one fund raiser, and so on, but most of my grassroots work was for my local congressional candidate, Ashwin Madia. But the way things are organized here, you end up doing stuff for the whole ticket, so I found myself on the phone talking to people about Madia, Franken and Obama. For several weeks, most of those phone calls were to people who either hated Democrats or were already voting for the Democrats. I don’t think I convinced anyone to change their mind, and I probably didn’t convince anyone who was not planning to vote to go out and cast their balllot. But, I and thousands of other volunteers did, incrementally, add important detail to the database off of which we were making these calls. Which led eventually to the moment of truth.

The moment of truth was the weekend before election, when this database is used to deploy volunteers across the landscape to personally visit likely Democratic Ticket voters to make sure they are on board, make sure they know when and where to vote, and make sure they are really going to go and do it.

It was a breezy, sunny day with a lot of dead leaves laying around all over the place. The leaves are good because they bring people out of their houses. This way you can walk around on the streets and talk to people without having to knock on every single door. Most people you talk to while canvassing are in fact inside their houses and you’ve got to knock on the doors, but if you can get someone outside raking their leaves and don’t have to ring their doorbell the conversation almost always goes better because they feel less intruded upon.

So one of the votes I got was simple. This was a person who was totally into voting for Franken (and Obama and Madia). She was a fairly recent immigrant from East Africa. She had been informed, I think by a Republican Operative, that she could vote on line, and thus was planning to be out of town. I helped her to understand that this was not true, and got her to change her plans, and showed her where to vote and so on. I’m pretty certain she went and voted for Franken because of this conversation, and otherwise, may not have.

The other vote was a bit tricker. I was heading for one of the houses of possible Franken supporters but the guy who lived there was out in front raking leaves. So we started talking. He was a recently retired police officer. I started the usual patter by asking if he was going to vote for Madia.

“Sure, I like him. Definitely voting for him.”

Then I asked about Franken.

“No. What an asshole.”

He did say he’d be voting for Obama. On further questioning, he told me that he had gone to school with Franken, and that he was a total jerk, and he just couldn’t bring himself to vote for the guy. I agreed, hey, if you’re going to be an asshole in grade school, you’ve gotta pay the consequences later on when you want to run for Senator. Some people won’t vote for you.

And I left that issue to the side (for the moment) and we started talking about other things. We talked about veterans and the war, education, health care, all the issues of the day, and he had a pretty much straight down the line Democratic Farmer Labor party position on each one. As does Franken, for the most part.

Then we got to the idea of the Congress becoming Democratic and Obama winning. We talked about how the house was going to be overwhelmingly Democratic, but that it would be really close in in the Senate. Without mentioning Franken by name, we talked about how the difference between a filibusterer-busting majority of 60 and a not quite adequate majority of 59 would be one senator. We talked about how some of the races were going to be really close, and this could come down to just a few votes.

We had covered a lot of ground, and we stood there for a moment catching our breath, silently watching the leaves he had raked up redeploying themselves across the lawn in the erratic northeasterly Fall breeze that reminds us Minnesotans that Winter is never far away. Silently, we just let our own thoughts have their way for a moment or two.

Then I said to him, “Your voting for Al, arent’ you …” Not a question. Just a friendly statement.

“Yea. I will,” he said. “Damn him.”

“It will be funny if he wins by one vote,” I said.

“Yea. It would,” he said. And I walked away.

And at roughly the same time, on the same afternoon, one hundred other Democrats each stepped solemnly away from the lawn or front porch of a voter who, because of the conversation they just had, was now going to vote for Al.

It is too bad, in a way, that 99 of us didn’t fail to do our jobs that day. Because if Al actually did win by one vote … well, that would be really funny.

^{Photo courtesy of Chad Davis}

Do you remember The Ad? The ad that made everyone in Minnesota who kinda didn’t like Norm Coleman go over the line and realize that Norm Coleman is the scum of the earth? You can read about that here but I’ll summarize it for you briefly and tell you why I even bring it up.

When Al Franken was running for the Senate, he would often tell a particular story about Paul Wellstone. In this story, Senator Wellstone is running along side his son, who is, in turn, running second or third in a cross country race as part of his high school track team. Paul, known for his energy, is running along side his son for the entire race. And near the end, he moves in close, running sideways along side Junior and encouraging him. Franken, at this point in the story, imitates Wellstone running sideways, flapping his arms and yelling “You can do it! You can take him! You can do it! You can take him!”

This is a funny, engaging, and indeed poignant story. For those of you who don’t know, Senator Paul Wellsone was widely loved by Minnesotans, he died an untimely and violent death while Senator, we ran a good Democrat to take over his seat but stupidity prevailed and Norm Coleman took Wellstone’s seat. In essence, Franken is taking back Wellstone’s seat from Coleman. When I’ve seen Franken tell this story it brought tears to my eyes, and that was true of everyone in the room.

Then, the fuck-head Republicans did the worst thing they could do. They took video of Franken telling this wonderful and engaging story … the part where he is imitating a father encouraging his son at a race … and cut that into an ad that made Franken look like a raving maniac, telling voters that if Franken won the election he’d soon get busy yelling at them and being a violent freak of some kind.

They were caught. They were embarrassed, I think, but they never did apologize. And they will never live it down.

But that did not stop them from using the same footage again. For reasons that are beyond me, the swearing in of Al Franken to his justly earned Senate Seat prompted the Republican Fuckwads to make an anti-Al Franken ad for Youtube, and it uses that same footage.

Hey, Republicans. In case you didn’t notice. We can see you. In fact, the whole world is watching.

The judges indicated to Coleman that additional fines would be charged if his shenanigans continue. They also indicated that “In the event this sanction fails to deter future conduct on the part of [Coleman’s] counsel, the court will not hesitate to impose harsher sanctions, up to and including dismissal [of the case].”

The essence of the unethical behavior by Coleman: Republican election judge Pam Howell had been on the sand a couple of times last week, but was pulled off the stand as the result of documents she secretly passed to the Coleman lawyers. The crux of her testimony seemed to be unverified hearsay about a Souh Minneapolis (= Democratic) election judge stuffing a ballot box. But the Coleman camp and Republican Howell also seem to have bee in cahoots, and worked out the exposure of evidence that seemed to (ineffectively) support Coleman’s claim, but the suppression of evidence having the contrary effect.

The Franken side begins its arguments today, and is expected to call hundreds of voters (quickly, they claim) to the stand to state that their absentee votes were not counted, and to have testamony from some election officials as well.

The court contest so far, while Coleman’s team had the helm, has resulted in several changes to the actual election count, but wiht a shift in favor of Franken instead of Coleman. It seems that part of the Franken strategy is to demonstrate how relatively easy it would be to increase the Franken lead even more … by a couple of hundred votes, perhpas. The other outcome of the Coleman effort has been to throw the entire election into doubt suggesting that it be thrown out. However, this claim seems to be without merit, and the Franken team now has the chance (and responsibility) to demonstrate this.

Soucres:

MinnPost
Star Tribune