Norm Coleman officially concedes.
Earlier today, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected the last state-level legal challenges by Coleman.
What does any of this mean on a practical level? Not quite as much as many would crack it up to mean.
First, just because you have 58 Democrats, plus two generally supportive independents, doesn’t guarantee cloture. Cloture is something decided on a bill-by-bill, even amendment-by-amendment basis.
Let’s look at a few key issues.
National healthcare? Party-swapping Arlen Specter might vote against cloture, based on opposition to the bill by unions. (In addition to Hagen or Ben Nelson possibly doing that, of course.)
Waxman-Markey? Stabenow might vote against cloture to protect the Formerly Big Three.
EFCA, if it ever gets to the Senate? Nelson or Hagen are obvious cloture-opposition potential.
Foreign policy? Joementum is a guarantee not only to vote against cloture, but take a neocon stance, on anything in the Middle East.
No comments:
Post a Comment