anderson cooper

Thanks for the memories. Now please go away. Yes, we’re talking about you, Rudy Giuliani. And you, Wolf Blitzer. We no longer wish to be a swing state. Henceforth the residents of the state of Minnesota promise to vote reliably Democratic. Or Republican. It doesn’t much matter which — just as long as you people promise to stop showing up in our little slice of the frozen tundra seeking to feel our pain. But to memorialize the horrors visited upon us during the (still ongoing) campaign season, we offer — in honor of our favorite member of the Statewide General Election Canvassing Board — the G. Barry Anderson Awards.

The campaigns of Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman slowed their ballot challenges on Tuesday in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate election recount, setting aside only 60 ballots of the 36,238 recounted for future review by the State Canvassing Board. That suggests that Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s message about reining in challenges may have gotten through to the rival camps. But with U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss’s win putting a Democratic 60-vote majority in the Senate out of reach, whither CNN’s Anderson Cooper?