Enter Al Franken, Stage Leftish

John Colapinto writes:

Like Hillary Clinton in 2001, Franken enters the Senate as someone both blessed and burdened with the kind of celebrity that can summon a press scrum at a moment’s notice but can also create resentment among colleagues; also like Clinton, he has been reviled by Republicans.

The day the Minnesota Supreme Court declared him the winner, Senator Jim Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, called him “the clown from Minnesota.” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, had previously declared that any effort to seat Franken prematurely would result in “World War III,” and he had suggested that a federal challenge could keep Coleman fighting in the courts for “years.” Such rancor, however, seemed to have vanished, at least for the moment. At his swearing-in, Franken was welcomed by repeated rounds of applause from his fellow-senators—including Republicans—who had shown up in force for the ceremony. Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, gave him a bear hug on the Senate floor, and, later, in the hallway outside, Franken received a similar embrace from none other than Inhofe. He was still glowing from the reception. “Yesterday was a magnificent day,” Franken said at the breakfast. He went on, in a telltale deadpan, “And my feeling is that, um, if we can just make every day—” The room exploded in laughter.

link: Al Franken joins the Senate: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker