Mere speculation: Did Franken go to D.C. to vote on Lieberman?

Al Franken is in Washington, D.C., today. Why? To meet with Democratic Party leaders, goes the official explanation. But why now, just as the U.S. Senate recount on which his political fate rests is getting under way?

Granted, Franken’s presence now in Minnesota might not be necessary or even helpful. But his absence uncomfortably recalls Al Gore’s fiddling while George W. Bush’s forces burned through Florida during the 2000 presidential recount. Shouldn’t Al be here, if for no other reason than to make use of his USO chops to rally the troops from behind the front lines? But perhaps Franken went to D.C. for another reason altogether.

Franken has just learned a very hard lesson in how every single vote matters. Perhaps he took it upon himself to travel across the country to cast a provisional ballot in the Senate Democrats’ vote this morning on whether to strip U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., of his committee chairmanship. (It wouldn’t have made a difference after all — Lieberman won handily.) After all, Lieberman helped Coleman during the campaign, so a Franken “no” vote would only have been returning the favor. And Franken wouldn’t want to risk a homemade absentee ballot, mailed from Minnesota, getting improperly rejected.

OK, didn’t happen — as far as we know. But crazier things have been done and said. Franken’s tangled fortunes with Lieberman — the Dems’ hopes for 60 Senate votes rides on both their backs — go back at least as far as the simpler times of 2000, when each man joked about a Franken-Lieberman presidential ticket.