Two leading players in the new-media stunt known as the ”Twitter War“ compared themselves to Minnesota’s Senate rivals. Kutcher tweeted “now I know how Al Franken must have felt” when the race looked tight on Thursday. After the actor bested the network today, CNN host Larry King said, “I’m not a sore loser. I’m not gonna pull a Norm Coleman and take this to the courts.” (h/t noahkunin)

King’s offhand sobriquet for the former Minnesota Senator comes only two-and-a-half weeks since a Media Matters critic took the nation’s press and commentariat to task for failing to call Coleman a “sore loser.” In the interim, however, a Minnesota court has ruled that Franken won by 312 votes, and Coleman vowed to appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court and perhaps the federal courts as well. 

Here’s a video clip of Kutcher on “Larry King Live” tonight (King’s “Norm Coleman” comment comes at the 5:00 mark):

KING: I’m not a sore loser. 

KUTCHER: No, you’re not. 

KING: I’m not gonna pull a Norm Coleman and take this to the courts. 

KUTCHER: You have been gracious, very gracious. 

And here’s the “Al Franken” Twitter message that Kutcher sent Thursday. 

As of the time of this post late Friday, Kutcher had 1,118,658 followers on Twitter while CNN still lagged with 1,046,927 — for a combined total of more than 2.1 million — still about 800,000 shy of the 2.9 million votes cast (and then recounted by hand)  in Minnesota’s 2008 U.S. Senate election.