Wanna Take Bests On How Much Longer It Will Take To Seat Al Franken?

Update: Coleman just conceded. I guess he does plan to run for office in Minnesota again after all.

The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled, as expected, that Al Franken is the winner in the Minnesota Senate Race. The verdict was unanimous. And I have my doubts that he’ll be seated any time soon.

The post-recount race has seen a weird convergence of factors that all worked together to delay the inevitable. Coleman has been massively funded by the Republican party, because they’re running out of votes in the Senate and need to keep Franken out in order to make filibusters possible. Tim Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota, is a Republican who wants to run for President in 2012 (and will not run for re-election as governor). And the hapless Democratic Senate leader, Harry Reid, couldn’t try to seat Franken early because he tried to block the seating of Blagojevich appointee Roland Burris, and the same arguments he used against seating Burris could be used against seating Franken without a certificate from the Governor.

I really wouldn’t assume that Coleman will just stop now, or that Pawlenty will simply give in and agree to seat Franken. The one thing that might dissuade Coleman from a federal appeal is that he may still have some hopes of running for Governor himself. But if he doesn’t, then he’ll have lots of donations to work with in funding any attempt to keep this going for several more months.