No joke! Comedian Al Franken wins Democratic Senate primary

The "Saturday Night Live" guy will now take on incumbent Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, the former mayor of St. Paul, where the GOP's national convention was just held.

With less than half the votes counted, Al Franken was leading his primary primary competition, Patricia Lord Farris, a member of a longtime Minnesota Democratic family, 68% to 28%, in a seven-person field.

Coleman easily defeated his token challenger, some guy living in Italy.

Dean Barkley of the Independence Party will make it a three-man affair in an important competition that will help determine the makeup of the next Senate under a new president. This year the Republicans are defending about twice as many seats as the Democrats.

In other primary news, according to the Associated Press, notorious former Washington Mayor Marion Berry easily won the Democratic primary in that heavily Democratic city for a second four-year term on the City Council.

In their Senate battle, Franken will seek to portray Coleman as a Washington insider, and Coleman will argue he has the experience to better serve Minnesota.

For a three-minute sampling of Franken's standard stump speech, which seems somewhat longer, see the video below. For a six-minute video of Coleman's speech at the Republican National Convention, which seems only twice as long as Franken's, scroll down even farther.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Comments

[Simple Calculations]

Minnesota is becoming such a joke.

[DP]

I'm personally opposed to much of what Al Franken stands for, but he is one of the few celebrities whose candidacy I would respect. He's worked tirelessly to reach out to the voters of Minnesota, and he's got a brain and not just a personality, and so if he does get elected, I hope he represents his state well. He deserved the Democratic nomination, as opposed to people with no credentials or record of activism who bank on their name recognition and the foolishness of the typical American voter.

[asp]

If Franken and Limbaugh are such patriots and care SO much about the US, why wouldn't they do talkshows together and try to solve the US problems, being that they are both so patriotic and all? With McCain and Obama both lying in their speeches and now a fire starter like Franken in politics, we might as well give up.

[Peter]

Not surprised..first they elect a wrestler governor. Maybe Hulk Hogan will be next !!

[malach hamovess]

Al Franken (born in Manhattan) is challenging Norm Coleman (born in Brooklyn) for the seat previously held by Paul Wellstone (born in New York City).
Minnesota, which has a 0.9 percent Jewish population, in an act of religious tolerance reserves one of its two senate seats for a deserving New York Jew.

[Dr. Todd MIller]

As Rush Lumbaugh was the person primarily responsible for the victories of Republicans, Al Franken is perhaps the most important Democrat in exposing the lies of Fox News. He took a dozen Harvard graduate students and fact checked Billy O'Reilly's, Limbaugh and other news personalities and showed that their purpose is to construct false stories. Shortly, after people began to realize that Karl Rove in Company were using deceitful marketing practices to elect candidates in the style of Goebells (Hitler's 160 IQ campaign manager who managed to elect Hiter and his cabinet that all have subnormal IQs). The Republican's response was to use the same "Stop Think" tactics by inventing "Godwin (a person under the Bush Administration who was forced to resign after racist comments) law's which state that we shouldn't allow conversations to degrade into calling Republican's Nazi's. Of course, their setting up a straw man argument. No one accused the Republicans of being Nazi's, they accused them of using Nazi tactics of lying, character assassination and deceitful marketing practices promoted by wealthy right-wing news editors that censor reporter's attempts to tell the truth. Most recently, we have seen it with the false Sarah Palin story which is largely fictional but promoted by the media as if it were true. Al Franken was the first nonpolitical scientist to point out that most people who vote Republican have been misled. For example, Morning Joe right now is claiming that Obama didn't say that Palin (actually Karl Rove most recent actress) is making up her life story. He is attempting to create a deceptive impression of Obama as a weak fighter while they attempt to portray McCain as the new Marlobro man who also died of cancer on the job. Karl Rove understands that most people don't vote on the issues if he and four or five TV new editors make sure that no one can understand them. Then, they vote on his media constructed personalities. Similar to Hitler's early years, many in the U.S. are dying from lack of health care and the media refused to put those stories on the air. Goebells got many people to believe that Germans didn't have to be concerned about one another which is the purpose of the libertarion/NeoCon Moverment. Both Republicans and Nazis used stop think tactics to create disinformation and confusion among the public. Both use tactics that were originally developed by the Tobacco Industry. In fact, Goebells frequently corresponded with the Tobacco industry marketing experts before the war but this time it's not about killing 600,000 Americans a year on a worthless product for 50 year. It's much more serious. The comparisons with a Nazi regime are fair and accurate as is the title of Al Franken's book. Anyone who votes Republican. Isn't a Nazi, they just been deceived the same way that German citizen were deceived by the same dishonest marketing tactics.

[cbmtrx]

asp: "fire starter"? I believe Messrs Limbaugh, O'Reilly & Co. are well established as those responsible for setting the fires; Mr Franken is merely pointing us at the arsonists.

Would you rather Minnesota had just another empty suit in Washington?

[becky]

Good going, Al! Wish I lived in Minnesota so I could vote for you!!!

[E Nelson]

I don't see anyone from the Norm Coleman camp talking about the fact that the Democrats had twice as many people come out and vote than the Republicans. Even with Priscilla Lord Faris getting 71,000 votes Al Franken still got 30,000 more votes than did Norm Coleman. I wouldn't exactly be touting that Norm Coleman had a successful night considering he was only running against a fugitive who lives in Italy. And why did 9% of your Republican party vote for a fugitive living in Italy instead of Norm Coleman?? WOW that should be telling you something.

Republican strategists can't be happy that twice as many Democrats came out to vote as did Republicans in Minnesota.

[Bela Lugosi]

Obama and Franken share the same karma...both will be
eviscerated convincingly regardless of how much red
lipstick they smear their swine lips with....spiritual pestilence will be dealt a mortal blow by the heaven sent
McCain Palin alliance of the herenvolk.

[Visionary]

Interesting paragraph about the D.C. race too -
am I the only one who sees a "Franken-Berry" ticket in 2012?

(ducks out of sight, pursued by rotting vegetables)