Vraiment L'Étoile du Nord

Minnesota does finally appear to have elected Al Franken to the Senate in place of the ghastly Norm Coleman.

But Democrats should consider that that would have meant a filibuster-proof majority, had not Obama's appointments alienated the morally and socially conservative foreign policy realists of Georgia, who would otherwise have swung behind his candidate as, attracted certainly by his foreign policies and also in many ways by his economic populism (an attraction of which morally and socially conservative foreign policy realists have a long, if intermittent, history), those of like mind had swung so heavily and decisively behind him for President from sea to shining sea.