On the main site, Matthew Vadum makes the case for Norm Coleman continuing to fight on, but place me in the Scott Johnson camp in thinking that Franken did not steal the election. In an election this close, there is simply no way to know beyond doubt who really won, the losing side will always feel jilted, and there are always enough irregularities to give comfort to those who are looking for evidence of cheating. The thought of the obnoxious Franken being a U.S. Senator is nauseating to me, but objectively speaking, I think the election and recount was a fair and open process. It doesn’t help Coleman’s credibility that when he was ahead, he and his representatives were making the exact opposite arguments as when he was behind — on whether the process was fair, on whether certain ballots should be counted, and on whether the trailing candidate should concede. In these situations, it’s like a contoversial call at the end of a crucial playoff game. The fans of the losing team may argue that they were screwed, but that’s why you don’t want to be in a position in which one call by the referee could determine the outcome of the game. Similarly, if Coleman didn’t run a poor campaign and squander a lead that was once in the double digits, he wouldn’t have had to worry about whether a shift in a few hundred votes would determine the outcome of the election.