F.U.N.C.

Al Franken’s Committee Assignments

Yes, thanks to the obstructionist wankery of ex-Senator Coleman, Al Franken is getting the following:

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Special Committee on Aging
Committee on Indian Affairs

Now, these are all okay committees, and Franken on three committees is better than Franken on none at all. (In fact I’d argue that Franken should have taken either Health or Aging anyway, since he was instrumental to debunking Bush & the GOP’s anti-Social Security, anti-health care myths.) But does Gillibrand deserve to be on Foreign Relations more than Franken does? Why shouldn’t Franken get a role in Homeland Security, Armed Services, or Government Affairs? Not only has he spent much of the past eight years debating policy and expounding on his views, but he’s actually been in Iraq & Afghanistan to visit the troops.

I suppose that Gillibrand has experience from her whole two years in Congress that will prepare her for Foreign Relations. And who knows? Maybe Mike Bennet has learned a lot as superintenent that he can put to use in Homeland Security debates. And Roland Burris, who almost surely will either resign or be primaried in a year, willd definitely enjoy those prestige spots on Armed Services, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security.  But it sure would have been nice if Reid or Durbin could have maybe asked Franken when he visited if there were any committees he was interested in after he was declared the winner in the recount.

Because here’s the thing: Coleman knows he won’t win his lawsuit. His only goal is to piss off the DFL. Well, mission accomplished: but along the way you’ve managed to cripple your state’s say in Senate matters, leaving small-name senator Amy Klobuchar – whose committee assignments are entirely domestic – to pick up the slack.

It’s incredibly disappointing to be honest. I hope the next six years give Franken a chance to elbow his way into the important debates that will rock the Senate during the Obama presidency. Not only is the Senate short on progressives, but it’s short on Democrats with vision and determination. Leaving Franken like the proverbial last kid picked for dodgeball hurts my party, my state, and – I believe – my country.

Franken for the win, yo

Recount latest: Franken now leads by 50 – TwinCities.com.

With only mistakenly rejected absentee ballots left to tally in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount, Democrat Al Franken has a 50-vote lead over Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

It’s still hard for me to believe we’re at this point. When I was out canvassing for the DFL, most of the people I spoke to were supporting Obama, leaning Obama, or neutral. (The few McCain supporters I met didn’t hate Obama, but opposed him on ideological grounds. The one exception was the angry Dittohead who told me Obama was a socialist and slammed the door when I tried to talk to him.) On the other hand, people were actively hostile to Coleman and Franken equally – the people who told me they were voting Franken seemed to do so with resignation, and the people who were voting Coleman sheepishly explained it away as better the devil you know. I know many of them probably went into the voting booth and, faced with a choice of two despised men, filled in the circle next to Barkley.

That’s why I resigned myself to another six years of Coleman, the man who called himself better than Paul Wellstone in every way, representing my state. I still went out and talked my mouth off for Franken, pleading with people by telling them Franken was a real progressive who hadn’t come up through the gofer system of politics, who wouldn’t be beholden to special interests or the whims of his party leaders. My spirits were further beaten down as I saw the “comic books” sent out by the RNC, talking about Franken’s supposed rape jokes and saying Minnesota needn’t be “ashamed” of its senator. Nasty, provocative, and totally ignored by the media: those will always stand out as the dirtiest part of Election ‘08 to me.

As the election results came in, I was — well, I was very drunk, so my thinking wasn’t totally clear. But I was shocked at how close the results were. I knew Coleman would declare victory if it got close enough, but I was unprepared for how close it was. Still: I was more confident than I’d ever been that we would get fair results. Franken knew what went wrong in 2000. The last thing he would do was let the Coleman camp get away with legal tricks. As time went on, I was also impressed by my state’s legal system. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie went on The Rachel Maddow Show and said that the right wing could smear him as much as they wanted (they were calling him a communist on Fox News) but that they wouldn’t get their hands on the election results. The state Supreme Court also shocked me in the most pleasant way as they ruled unanimously for Franken’s side time and again. Not bad considering that they’re mostly Pawlenty and Ventura appointees.

I’m positive now that Franken won. Looking at the results, I can see that the Democratic get-out-the-vote machine in the state was far better than I could have anticipated. And while Barkley took a bite out of both sides, he didn’t take as much as I’d feared – and far more of Coleman’s side than I’d dared to hope. And thanks to my state’s commendable recount system, I’m positive now that Franken will be seated as Minnesota’s next senator. That’s the kind of sentence that seemed crazy to me in so many ways a few months ago, but I write it today with complete certainty.

So… I guess in a way, you could say that for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really  proud to be a Minnesotan? Yeah, that works.

Oh, and just to rub it in the right-wingers’ faces — Mark Ritchie for Governor 2010!