I doubt people are completely blaming this on Coleman. I mean, Franken is forced to mirror each of Coleman's arguments in court (You found these ballots, well, we found more using your own system) and most people aren't on the ball enough to know that Coleman is really just a proxy for Cornyn at this point. This close election has essentially just become a senate vote at this point.
But it's not like the Democrats can get GOP Senators to agree to vote to give the Democrats another Senate seat, no matter how frivolous the lawsuits are. I mean, any GOP strategist can say that the longer and more muddled Franken's trial it is, the better the GOP is once Franken gets seated. And that's not even counting the essential vote Franken could cast for various big bills coming up.
so yeah, I don't expect anything to happen soon. Which is kind of unfortunate for Minnesota. Coleman's counterargument, for the record, is that if Reid would declare the seat vacant, then Pawlenty could just appoint Coleman to serve until this lawsuit thingy is settled.
It might actually be better for the Democrats to get Kennedy to retire. They'd need the same number of additional votes (they'd only have to get to 59) to break the cloture, but once the special election is held in MA and Stephen Lynch is the new senator (I hope I didn't ruin the surprise, but it's what will likely happen, trust me), then the Democrats will get a more consistent vote.
I would not want Lynch from MA. Of the MA delegation, he definitely drank the most of the Bush/Cheney Kool-Aid. I'm thinking more Richard Neal.
