Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race has finally, mercifully come to an end. The Minnesota Supreme Court voted unanimously to reject Norm Coleman’s court challenge which means Al Franken is the winner by a little over 330 votes.

Lincoln-Douglas this U.S Senate campaign definitely was not and serves well as an example to why the 17th Amendament needs to be repealed. It was an unedifying brawl of back and forth accusations and counter charges that polluted the public airwaves for a year. Neither candidate was well liked outside of young Wellstonian leftists for Franken and neocon YRs for Coleman. Franken barely won despite Obama’s big win in Minnesota and Coleman let a 15-point lead over his rival slip away during the last month of the campaign. Instead of being big winners both candidates wound up losers, an election that was essentially a tie.

Watching Neocon Norm get his comeuppance is pleasing to the eye but he’s not done with politics just yet. The fact that Governor Tim Pawlenty is moving on to run for President gives Coleman a path back to public office he would not have had had Pawlenty decided to run for a third term. It made it that much easier to concede the race to Franken after the Minnesota Supreme Court’s decision instead of fighting to bitter end all the way to the U.S Supreme Court. Indeed one could say that Coleman now has the chance to run for the office he always wanted in the first place, the one he planned on running for before Dick Cheney shanghaied him to run against Wellstone back in 2002. Indeed, being governor will be a lot more fun than a minority senator. Whether he wins the GOP nomination, and the field will be a crowded one, depends on how Republicans react to him.  Are they bitter at what happened and will rally to his side, or will they support somone else, a fresh face? After all, Coleman is now 1-2 in statewide races and would have been 0-3 if Wellstone hadn’t died in a plane crash on the Iron Range. There’s no strong evidence he can someday carry a majority of Minnesotans. Plus he has to deal with lingering accusations of corruption against him

As for Franken, what kind of Senator will he be? Well he better not try to be another Wellstone even though he holds his old seat. Wellstone’s passion was genuine because he was a passionate man and and the passionate flowed from him so easily because causes influenced so much of his life. A passionate Franken comes across as an obnoxious partisan from the Twin Cities suburbs like the talk show host he was. Instead he had better recapture the wit and humor that he made his bones with for so long as a writer and actor which was suppressed in his campaign to its detriment. That’s what he’s good at, not polemics.