UPDATED after the jump with more new newspaper editorials.

The Times’ editorial today is a shade less emphatic than the one that ushered former Sen. Tom Daschle out of consideration as President Obama’s secretary of health and human services. Former Sen. Coleman is unlikely to do what Daschle did when faced with “Daschle ought to step aside” and heed the Times’ advice with same-day service.

But the Times’ headline, “‘It’s Over, Norm. O.K.?,’” says it all with a phrase that’s direct and succinct, if borrowed (from former U.S. Rep. and current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough). It’s almost worthy of a tabloid rival like the New York Daily News, which set the standard in the 1970s with the famous “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”

Compare it to the Star Tribune’s editorial headline on Wednesday, “Expedite appeal in election contest,” which said nothing.

The Las Vegas Sun also lays it on the line today in an editorial under the heading “Time to step aside: Republican Coleman should cede Minnesota Senate race to Democrat Franken.” Its kicker: “The longer (Coleman) persists in his charade, the more he hurts his own state.”

The Jamestown (S.D.) Sun today reprints an editorial (“Coleman’s time has run out”) that ran last week in the Albert Lea Tribune — one of the earliest in the recent crop of Minnesota newspaper advice for Coleman. 

Also new today are in-state editorials from the St. Paul Pioneer Press (“we make the case for a state high court review”), the St. Cloud Times (“time to stop fight”), and the University of Minnesota’s Minnesota Daily (“Certify Franken”). (Hat tip: Braublog)

Related: 
Give up, Coleman: Quotes from the election-contest courthouse and beyond
More free advice for Coleman from media, punditry
The conservative case for why Coleman should drop out
As world awaits order in senate trial, sideshows and catcalls continue
Drumbeat grows louder for Coleman to concede soon

Kiplinger.com‘s Washington Matters blog says,

… it’s almost time for Coleman to do the right thing and accept defeat. … It’s almost time for him — and Gov. Pawlenty — to do the right thing and give up this fruitless quest. That means letting the Minnesota Supreme Court make the final decision and not drawing this out unnecessarily with a federal challenge. There comes a point when a legitimate legal right becomes a frivolous lawsuit, and we’re almost there.

In an editorial that appears in today’s print edition, USA Today wrote:

The further Coleman’s case goes up the judicial ladder, the more strained its reasoning sounds. It is one thing to ask a trial court to review the work of election authorities to make sure they carefully followed the law and their own guidelines. It is another to say that in making a series of tough calls on individual ballots, they grievously violated some important legal or constitutional principle. … We would like to think that candidates would put the public interest ahead of their ambitions. They might choose not to litigate elections endlessly.

The National Review has led a conservative drumbeat over the last week announcing that Coleman’s parade is over. Stepping up as the weekend’s drum majorette was Washington, D.C. editor Kate O’Beirne, speaking on the Bloomberg TV show “Political Capital”:

Norm Coleman is not going to get credit for stepping aside graciously if he does it only after he’s exhausted all court appeals. It seems, I think, he was outhustled and outlawyered. It might well be time for him to acknowledge a Franken win.

O’Beirne on “Political Capital” (comments on Coleman begin at the 4:35 mark):

The Star Tribune’s Lori Sturdevant witnessed the ballot-counting at the election-contest trial last week that increased Franken’s margin to 312 votes. In the newspaper’s lead Sunday opinion column, she wrote that that outcome left Minnesotans muttering, “Enough.” She grants Coleman time for one last appeal — but no more:

A state Supreme Court ruling — and pray, make it quick — should be the final word on who won this thing. The certifying and seating of a senator ought to follow hard on its heels. … Granted, a federal court case is an option for a politician who can tap his national party’s deep pockets. But a federal case, running way into the summer and maybe fall, would amount to putting his legal right — and his party’s interest in delay — ahead of Minnesota’s constitutional right to be represented by two senators.

(A Star Tribune news article today, headlined “State’s high court may not be the last word in recount,” explores Coleman’s federal-court options, but the same experts the Strib quotes have told the Minnesota Independent the contest is most likely to end at the state’s high court.)

Newsweek rejects the assertion by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas and National Republican Senatorial Committee chair) that Democrats now urging Coleman to quit are hypocrites in view of Al Gore’s legal efforts after the 2000 presidential election. Labeling the two cases “apples and oranges,” Newsweek notes that Minnesota’s fight is over a lesser seat but has dragged on longer and adds “don’t expect the Supreme Court to step in this time.”

The last word from the weekend goes to the off-the-wall, satirical blog Political Championship Wrestling, which early on perceived the Coleman-Franken fight as a no-holds-barred grudge match. In PCW’s alternative universe, real-life politicians battle like professional wrestlers, dealing out bodyslams and wielding folding chairs. In a new installment, Minnesota’s Senate election rivals “celebrate being named the best feud of 2008 by restarting it. Franken and Coleman brawled at the podium mere seconds after being presented with the awards.”

I call as my first and only witness — the Pioneer Press itself!

Pioneer Press, today you submit that ”what we have here is a statistical tie.” You say “there is no mandate to be found in the ‘random errors’ produced by our imperfect measuring instrument.” And even as the election-contest process you’ve said you respect remains underway, you conclude that holding a new “do-over” vote — a solution you now welcome seeing “on the horizon” – is the only way to settle this election.

It’s a very convenient time to reach that conclusion, don’t you think, now that the court has again seen fit to shrink the universe of ballots that could provide a reversal for Coleman? Why the sudden-onset despair from an editorial page that has — with the odd exception now and then — cheered on the state’s patient, painstaking approach?

Let’s sample what you’ve had to say on the subject since you endorsed Coleman last fall. What, for example, did you say on Nov. 18 about letting the system work?

It’s not necessarily pretty, but the system is working. Competition and the institutions that support rule of law are doing what they’re supposed to. As all of the legally cast and counted votes are recounted, a process Minnesotans can be proud of should lead to a result they can believe.

And what did you say on Nov. 25 about letting the election contest run its course?

… a court contest seems highly likely. … A discrepancy in totals, a “missing” ballot or two, a rejected absentee — all may fit the bill. Let us hope that whoever jumps into court first has the decency to wait until the last pile has been collated and the totals posted.

And what did you say on Dec. 30 about our prospects for deciding an apparent tie?

Let us say it again. We do not know who won. How we decide a statistically tied election is more important right now than who is declared the winner. It will take time. We can get through it.

And what did you say on Jan. 4 about allowing Minnesota’s process to play out?

Because this process involves human beings, it has required corrections and judgment calls. But, slowly, painstakingly, everyone involved, from election officials to the two campaigns, has pursued the answer to the question, who won? There’s form and substance to the process of finding that answer, and it needs to play out — in Minnesota. The U.S. Senate, along with partisans favoring one candidate or the other, should just sit tight while Minnesotans reason their way to a decision.

And what did you say on Jan. 6 about the election contest being part of that process?

Coleman plans to file a legal challenge, known as an election contest, today. … No one wants an interminable trial of Minnesota’s election system. But Coleman has a right to make his case.

And what did you say on Jan. 7 about allowing our process to settle an close election with its inevitable errors?

Errors happen, and at some point, neutral referees need to make a call. Will a two-month legal fight will produce more confidence in the result? Maybe not. But it is the procedure spelled out in Minnesota law and it could put all remaining issues before neutral arbiters one more time. … While we do not expect instant results, we do want and need the finality of a ruling based on the best evidence available.

No more questions, Your Honors. I rest my case.

With those fixes made and one no-longer-timely sentence dispatched, the Pioneer Press set about breathing clean Minnesota air into a wheezy editorial from Wall Street for the (dubious) benefit of local readers, many of whom will see the column for what it is — tainted and undeserving.

The recession sees the major dailies’ editorialists cutting back on costly opinions — by either picking favorites without naming the issues they like them for, as both the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune did in the U.S. Senate race, or beating a wholesale retreat from making a pick at all, as the St. Paul Pioneer Press did in the presidential contest.

The right-wing slide of the dailies’ editorial pages drew wide notice — and the Strib’s pick of Republican Sen. Norm Coleman is a milestone in that descent — but the two Twin Cities rags’ simultaneous tilt away from judging candidates on issues is just as remarkable.

In its 2002 endorsement of Sen. Paul Wellstone’s stand-in, former Vice President Walter Mondale, over Coleman and Dean Barkley, the Strib editorial board wrote:

The agenda promoted by President Bush and largely embraced by candidate Coleman looks like this: shortchanging children and skimping on the elderly; committing the nation to endless consumption of fossil fuels; favoring corporate America over working America; bullying U.S. allies and neglecting U.S. neighbors; and mortgaging the federal budget so that Congress can keep a tax cut tilted heavily toward the rich. That’s not much of a future — yet it could become reality if just one Senate seat shifts from Democratic to Republican hands.

This year, the Strib editorial board wants to see Coleman stay in the Senate, but it’s silent on the particulars of what he ought to do there.

The leadership qualities that he has developed ought to matter more in this year’s election than at other times, when issues might count for more. The world is changing rapidly. Today’s issues may not be tomorrow’s.

The Pioneer Press wouldn’t go there, either, in its endorsement of Coleman over the weekend. Issues, smissues:

We do not agree with either party’s approach to every issue. We know there are those who will vote based purely on those issues or on party allegiance. You don’t need our help to do that. We try to get away from the scorecard and look at the candidates in full. On that basis, we see Coleman as a gifted politician who could help forge a new national consensus without abandoning his conservative principles.

But in its 2002 endorsement of Coleman, the PiPress didn’t have a problem naming issues:

We also have reservations about Mondale’s abiding faith in big government … an enthusiasm for high taxes and command-and-control economic policies that we cannot fully share. A particular worry grows from the need for Washington to find the political courage to modernize America’s great entitlement programs for the elderly — Social Security and Medicare. … In summary, we believe Coleman’s basic priorities are sound — containing federal spending and taxes, strengthening defense, and facing the challenge of restructuring entititlement programs while adding prudent, affordable prescription drug coverage within Medicare.

The PiPress that year mustered the guts to opine in the midst of the pre-election tumult following Sen. Paul Wellstone’s death; but this time around, taking a side in a presidential contest two years in the making proved too much. So the Strib’s Obama-Coleman picks on Sunday stand out not only for their ticket-splitting but for finding their way to print at all.

Here are some other Minnesota newspapers’ endorsements in federal races, with excerpts to show that most managed to cite issues to back up their picks:

Minnesota Daily for Dean Barkley, Independence Party U.S. Senate candidate:

The Barkley campaign strives to be “issues-based” and runs only positive ads. Among other principled ascetics vowed by Barkley is a refusal to pander. He countered Franken’s $5,000 college student tax credit proposal with discipline: “I’m not going to … promise tax credits and new programs because we’re basically $11 trillion in debt.”

St. Cloud Times for Barkley:

… [H]is stands on many issues, while far from shocking, invoke a sense of realism and moderation missing from the Coleman and Franken campaigns. For example, he supports capping federal spending the next four years to put America on track toward reducing the federal debt.

Marshall Independent for Coleman:

Coleman knows this region of the state, and he’s well-schooled and accessible on issues particular to our area such as the Minnesota Highway 23 corridor. We haven’t always agreed with Coleman’s stances or his votes in the past and it’s likely we won’t in the future, but he’s shown himself to be knowledgeable on energy, transportation and other important rural issues.

Rochester Post-Bulletin for Coleman:

We applaud his opposition to drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and we admire the fact that he’s played a key role in creating a new national energy policy.

Mesabi Daily News for Coleman:

Coleman has been a champion of mining initiatives, including his wholehearted support of non-ferrous ventures of PolyMet near Hoyt Lakes and Franconia Minerals on Birch Lake near Babbitt.

The American Jewish World (newspaper of the state’s Jewish community) for Franken:

Franken has proposed a number of initiatives to aid our rural economy, expand educational opportunities and access to health care, and develop sustainable alternative energy options to grow jobs and redress the outflow of dollars to foreign oil producers. If the federal government can come up with $700 billion for Wall Street bankers (the New York Times reported the cost of the bailout at $2.25 trillion), surely we can prioritize money for a bailout of our cities and crumbling infrastructure.

St. Cloud Times for Elwyn Tinklenberg, DFL candidate for U.S. House:

He is an ardent supporter of improving transportation options, … backs reforming No Child Left Behind and … advocates for a responsible withdrawal of U.S forces from Iraq and an increased U.S. presence in Afghanistan. … Incumbent Rep. Michele Bachmann has simply made too many serious errors in judgment to deserve a second term.

Rochester Post-Bulletin for Tim Walz, DFL -1st District:

The Post-Bulletin endorses Tim Walz for a second term in the First District, because after less than 22 months in office, we’re impressed by his level of involvement in significant, meaningful legislation. His fingerprints are all over the new Farm Bill, and he was the driving force behind an increase in the mileage reimbursement rate for veterans who must travel to receive medical care. He’s also been a staunch advocate for wind energy and other renewable fuels that already are bringing jobs to the First District.

Star Tribune for Walz and U.S. Rep. John Kline, R – 2nd District:

Democratic incumbent Tim Walz has earned a return trip to the U.S. House after an energetic first term focused on high-profile issues in his southern Minnesota district — agriculture, veterans’ affairs and renewable energy. … Kline has stressed the role of diplomacy and the power of economic sanctions.

And as posted here last week, the Eden Prairie News and Coon Rapids Herald for Erik Paulsen (R) and Ashwin Madia (DFL) in the U.S. House, respectively.