A Very Franken Christmas

By Bill Kavanagh:  It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Minnesota for the Al Franken campaign.  Under the Franken tree (it’s a secular family celebration— I know, I know, Hanukah is still in the air, but hey, don’t mess with my semi-musical lede), there’s a very big present and it looks a lot like a Senate seat.  While the big box under the evergreen ornaments probably won’t be unwrapped until after some extra special judicial wrangling into January or February, the shape of the seat itself is increasingly clear under all the wrapping.

 The Minnesota Supremes have now ruled in Franken's favor over a Coleman challenge.  Oh, there will be more challenges, I know— over unallocated votes from some 1,600 absentee ballots which were left uncounted due to clerical errors (everyone agrees these can only help Franken), and also a challenge over some 130-150 votes the Colemanites believe to have been double-counted, due to machine malfunctions. There will likely be at least one more major court challenge—after all this is done.  It may even be up to the US Senate to finally decide the credentials of its last remaining unseated member from the November 2008 polls.

 But Franken is ahead at the end of the canvassing board count, by 47 or 48 votes, depending on your source.  It’s now more likely than it has been throughout the incredibly close ballot counting and recounting that, in the battle to unseat Norm Coleman, Al Franken will emerge victorious— and take back a Senate seat that was once occupied by the upper chamber’s most progressive member, Paul Wellstone. 

 What makes this extra-holiday-special for the Minnesota Farmer Labor type Democrats is that Franken can finally feel the likely possibility of success after a grinding six-year mission to take back the seat. Former comedian and then political talk host Franken began to think about celebrating this moment back in 2002, after focusing his outrage on the lies perpetrated in the scurrilous Rove-inspired, wingnut talk-show spread, fact-lite, accusation-heavy hatchet job done on his lifelong friends in the late Senator Wellstone’s family and among the Senator’s close associates.

 It was the ruthlessness in way that Rove & Co. abused the untimely death of Wellstone in a plane crash before the 2002 election that seemed to have motivated Franken to leave behind a successful comedy career for a more political life.

 For those who don’t remember the specifics, Paul Wellstone, always a real fighter for the poor, the underrepresented, those in need, for rank and file labor, and the victims of aggression or ignorance, died very shortly before the 2002 elections when his campaign plane, blinded by bad weather, went down in the cold Minnesota autumn.  His wife Sheila, his daughter Marcia, and several other campaign workers, as well as the two pilots, died with him in the crash.  Soon thereafter, because of an enormous outpouring of tribute and grief from grassroots supporters, his memorial service was moved to the University of Minnesota’s Williams Arena and featured a long stream of friends, allies, and recipients of Wellstone’s seemingly endless generosity, many of whom spoke in memory of the professor-turned-politician.

 The entire three-hour celebration of Wellstone’s life had the air of a progressive revival meeting, with a mix of political and personal reminiscences (personally, I watched it all on C-Span).  At one point, during the ceremony, the presence of Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott on the jumbotron engendered a smattering of boos in the audience.  Lott and Governor Jesse Ventura walked out of the memorial in protest—and soon thereafter was born a campaign out of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and the usual wingnut corners to fight against Democrats “using Wellstone’s death” to political advantage.

 The spectacle of right-wingers, most of whom hadn’t attended Wellstone’s service, and who had never given Wellstone personal respect during his lifetime, capitalizing on the bad manners of a few of the grieving members of a 20,000-strong crowd in order to gin up anger against Democrats and progressives in the 2002 Senatorial campaign pissed off Al Franken.  Franken, who had been at the memorial himself and who had not been able to discern any inappropriate ruckus at the time, was moved to fight back against the right wing noise machine.

 Franken began his serious activism as a writer, radio host, and eventually as a Minnesota Senatorial candidate in the years since.  His first book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, told the Wellstone memorial story from his point of view and also began his personal campaign to unmask his opponent, Norm Coleman, as a political opportunist. Franken sacrificed economic opportunity in the entertainment business to take on the unglamorous struggle to bring reality and balance to the spin of American politics. Franken became the most popular of many citizen journalists during the Bush era who waded into the maelstrom of post-9/11 reactionary-ism and spoke truth to the powers that be.

 Franken’s work since 2002 embodies the spirit of citizen activism: to fight for the underrepresented in an period when the power of big media and big corporate power ran relatively untrammeled.  His work as the only big ticket on the upstart Air America radio and as a progressive voice who challenged, by name (Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh), many of the right-wing talk giants and their concocted campaigns against individuals and groups because of religion or a willingness to speak out was invaluable as an example. Franken gave a platform to many writers from the blogosphere on his show before it became de rigeur to quote bloggers.

 In short, Franken became a real mensch in the progressive world.  That he might now become a real thorn in the side of the powerful in the Senate is welcome news indeed.  Merry Chistmas!

***

(For more on the status of the MN recount, see: TPM, Talkleft, dworth at Kos, MN Startribune, Sam Stein)

Comments

[Buck Naked Politics]

HI Bill,

Happy holidays to you!

[Bill]

..and to you! Happy New Year.

Let's hope it brings us some of the good things we seem to have missed out on this past year... peace, prosperity, etc. Even one of those would be nice.