In this week’s edition of the Schultz Report, David Schultz examines the looming vote recount in the Minnesota US Senate face-off between Sen. Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

Is the situation here another Florida 2000 cage match, as so many pundits are claiming? “No,” says Schultz, “in the sense that we don’t face the same problems as Florida on several counts. In Florida, we had clear evidence of a secretary of state, Katherine Harris, engaging in vote suppression and purges of voter lists. We have no evidence of that in Minnesota. The secretary of state is trying to figure out how to count every vote, and to encourage people to vote. Second, unlike Florida, where we had multiple different technologies used across the state to vote, Minnesota pretty much has one technology to vote.

David Schultz

“Third, unlike Florida, when they actually started doing the recount in the four counties — where the Supreme Court entered in, for good or for bad, was when it reacted to the problems we all remember, where you had people in one county counting ballots differently [from another county]. Is a dimpled chad counted? A pregnant chad? What if it had two of its corners torn loose? In that state, you had wide variance across the four recount counties regarding what was considered to be the intent of the voter. That’s where the Supreme Court entered in and said you had to have uniform standards.

“Unlike that problem in Florida, Minnesota has a state law that describes how you ascertain voter intent. And what the law first says is that, if at all possible, the intent of the voter should be ascertained. And more importantly, the law says that technical noncompliance with the law in terms of how you cast your vote should not be an obstacle to counting votes. The law says that even if you don’t follow [ballot rules] to a tee — even if, for example, you circle a name as opposed to filling in a bubble dot — if you can figure out how that person meant to vote, you have to do it. So the law is very different in terms of establishing uniform standards.

“For all those reasons, we’re not Florida. Where we are Florida is in terms of the ideological battle that’s being waged by the Republicans to attack Mark Ritchie and to cast doubts on what’s happening in Minnesota — anywhere from claiming that Mark Ritchie is the new Katherine Harris to claiming that votes are being manufactured. To that extent, Minnesota has become a powerful battleground, like Florida. And additionally, while Florida was the state that decided a presidency, it is possible that, depending on what happens in Alaska and Georgia, Minnesota could be the deciding state to determine whether the Democrats get 60 votes in the US Senate. If they get 60 votes in the Senate, that means they have the votes to break a Republican filibuster. So the stakes are enormous, and from that score we’re potentially another Florida in terms of the high stakes going on.”

Listen: David Schultz discusses the great recount shootout of ‘08 (and Michele Bachmann’s last laugh on the bailout bill) (12:48)

David Schultz also discusses the Minnesota US Senate campaign in the wake of Sen. Norm Coleman’s re-election kickoff. The Hamline University political analyst says he takes seriously the poll data indicating that Al Franken faces a big challenge in winning over women voters. And he wonders whether the Franken campaign really understands what it needs to do in the race: “I think the Franken campaign is resting on several assumptions that may not pan out. One is their belief that … the Republicans and Coleman have already thrown out all the trash [about Franken]–they’ve already thrown all the bad stuff against our candidate already, and we’ve weathered them, so we don’t have to worry about that. Second, they say that Franken has tremendous support from labor unions and they’re going to help deliver us on election day. Third, they seem to believe there won’t be any problem in terms of capturing suburban soccer-mom votes, which are really critical for success.

“They’ve said, well, those issues just aren’t going to be important about our candidate,” he notes. “I just don’t think that’s realistic. Unions can’t deliver the way they used to. And second, when a lot of the criticism was coming out against Franken a few months ago, no one was listening. Nobody was paying attention to that. Now, as it gets closer to the election and the ads start to hit television… that’s going to hurt. I think the Franken campaign has underestimated the negativity he faces in the suburbs.  Having talked to people out in the Third District, Ramstad’s district–out in places like Plymouth, Maple Grove–they’re very concerned about how women are going to react to Franken’s candidacy. I just don’t think the Franken campaign is understanding that.”

“They’re pretty quick to dismiss at this point evidence suggesting that the candidate might have some weaknesses.”

The Schultz Report: Hillary tumbling; Franken stumbling? (12:03)

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“It’s limbo for both candidates,” Schultz says of the long interregnum between the Democratic primaries in Mississippi and Pennsylvania. In light of the widespread distaste for the nasty turn the race has taken, he adds, both Clinton and Obama “are grasping to figure out, what’s the message? What do I need to do? I don’t think either of them figured to be still fighting this far down the line. They were hoping, probably, to be able to catch their breath, having tied up the nomination by now.” 

Continued: Click on Read More for excerpt’s of Schultz’s remarksOn fantasies of a Democratic “dream ticket:”

“I can’t see [an Obama/Clinton ticket]. First off, it’s gotten so nasty between the two of them, I just can’t see them on the same ticket. In their own respective ways, both of them are rock stars. I can’t see either of them wanting to have the other maybe eclipsing them as vice-president. Finally, I think you have very different motives going on. I think Clinton is saying, well, I’d be happy to have Obama be my running mate as a way of grabbing some of his supporters and portraying herself as the frontrunner.”

On Ciresi’s exit and Franken v. Coleman:

“For the longest time, Franken was both trailing Ciresi in head-to-heads with Coleman, and had tremendous negatives compared to Ciresi. But I think what Franken did was the product of a two-year effort. In 2006, he did an exceedingly good job at fundraising efforts, did a great job in terms of speaking engagements, and really started building party support…. He also benefited from Coleman, in a way. The Coleman campaign, very early on, threw out all the garbage that people anticipated would be thrown at Franken. They brought up things he’d written in his book, and things he’d said. But the fact it came out early, and Franken responded by saying, ‘well, everybody knows that–it’s out there,’ I think that helped him get beyond it. And he’s been very aggressive in the last few months, going to the unions, going to all the community meetings. He’s done a very good job campaigning. Ciresi, I think, never really had the heart to be a campaigner. He never really put his whole effort into it.

“In the next two to three weeks, I suspect we’re going to see [Franken and Coleman] engage each other more. More importantly, somebody–one of the campaigns, or a third-party interest group–will run the first attack ads. The basic rule of political advertising is, define before you get defined. I’m suspecting we’ll see ads trying to tie Coleman to Bush and the war, versus efforts to define Franken as too liberal and an outsider. This is one race where character and personality are going to be a big factor.”