As the recount in Minnesota continues to search for what exactly it was that voters intended when they headed to the polls, the public comments from the two sides have grown increasingly acrimonious and occasionally ridiculous.  In particular, conservatives are employing a strategy of making Al Franken's interest in seeing the recount completed as a petty power-grab by a Hollywood elitist who should not be trusted. The suggestion is that Franken will push forward with legal challenges, and will not stop until he is the unquestioned leader, and that a more patriotic individual would simply concede.  These accusations are being made despite the fact that Senator Coleman himself has admitted that he was wrong to ask Franken to step aside.

Clearly, the effort here is to cultivate public sentiment against any result from the State Canvassing Board that reveals Al Franken to the leader.  In a refrain of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, Republican public relations people have already declared on several occasions that Senator Coleman has won the election, and that the recount is simply an effort to steal it.  Indeed, every conservative talking head from Bill O'Reilly to Rush Limbaugh has offered conspiracy theories as to how the will of Minnesota voters is being violated.  Their statements are misleading.  The State Canvassing Board has not at any point declared a winner. It has only proceeded with the recount mandated by state law. 

The contest now, therefore, is to create the impression of having won.   This is why both campaigns continued to challenge ballots at an astonishing rate until yesterday, when Al Franken's campaign withdrew 633 challenges.  Coleman's campaign, apparently worried that the move might harm their efforts to make Franken seem petty, saw his challenge withdrawal and raised it by a full 17 today, despite having saying numerous times up to now that they would not withdraw challenges until the recount had concluded.

Yet the rhetoric effort plows ahead.  Yesterday's quote from Senator Coleman's lead recount attorney, Fritz Knaak demonstrates this when he says, "I'm presuming he's strategizing with his Democrats about his Senate floor strategy to ignore the will of Minnesota voters."  Knaak also says that they are "skeptical" about the 171 votes found Monday in Ramsey County that had not previously been run through machines, and netted Franken a 37 vote increase.  Their skepticism exists despite the fact that counting the ballots allows the precinct's vote total to match the number of voters who signed in and registered at the polls, which was not the case on Election Night.

More prominent examples abound recently.  Katherine Kersten, the resident far-right columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, penned in yesterday's edition a farce in which this recount drags on until 2015, when an ultra-liberal Supreme Court simply hands the election to Franken.  It's important to remember that Franken has done nothing to prolong this process.  His only challenge to the process so far took place within the time line of the recount, and he stated he would accept the state canvassing board's decision to not review the over 12,000 rejected absentee ballots.

Most likely, Republicans are worried that the longer this goes on, the less likely that they will be able to claim a win.  They are aware that recounts can actually correct  the result reported on Election Night, and their best attempt at preventing that correction from occurring is to make the process seem invalid and sketchy. As of Wednesday, December 5th, those are the plays, and that's the score. But there is still time left for team democracy to make a comeback.

Areas of Focus:

Counts & Recounts, Democratizing Elections (Liberty Tree)

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