MNpublius.com

Yesterday’s decision by Ramsey County District Court Judge Dale Lindman marks the 4th defeat in court for Norm Coleman’s legal team.  Four times Coleman’s legal team has stepped into court and lost to Franken’s legal team.  How many times have they faced off?  You guessed it, four.   Is this an indication of the quality of Coleman’s legal arguments, the difficulty in arguing against counting all properly cast ballots, or just the ineptitude of Coleman’s legal representation?  I’m not sure, but none of the above garner the legal team much credibility as we head into the meat of the recount.  On the other hand, Franken’s team has been knocking them out of the park; succeeding at every confrontation.

But Coleman’s credibility problems don’t end there.  Time and again their official statements have later proved to be falsifications, misconceptions, intentional obfuscations, or straight lies.  Team Franken notes (my list paraphrases theirs) that Judge Lindman’s rebuke of Coleman’s claims is just the latest in a series of embarrassments for team Coleman:

• On Tuesday, for the third time, Coleman claimed he had been “declared” the winner.  But the Secretary of State (you know, the guy whose job it is to track this stuff) had this to say: “Candidates can say anything.  Minnesota law is very clear that any election within a half a percent is not known until the completion of the recount.”
• In addition to Coleman’s suit about 32 ballots being found in the trunk of a car being thrown out, the whole story about the ballots being in the trunk of a car was completely debunked.
• The media has also seen fit to debunk the “shenanigans” (their word) Coleman claimed Team Franken was engaged in during the canvassing and the courts dismissed the related claims as well.
• Relatedly, on Tuesday the State Canvassing Board agreed with Team Franken that the issue of improperly rejected absentee ballots should be considered, directly refuting the various press releases and talking points Coleman had put out claiming that doing so would delay the recount.

I realize that Team Coleman is incredibly frightened right now and is pursuing all avenues of attack in the interest of discrediting the recount process in the event it turns for Franken — or better yet, preventing all ballots from being counted — but all these ludicrous statements and false attacks are seriously eroding their already limited credibility.  But, hey, if they want to systematically undermine their own message, I certainly won’t complain!