Dept. of Totally Pointless Polling

Boy, that poor Al Franken. He finally gets declared the winner of the Minnesota Senate race after the Minnesota Supreme Court rules in his favor and his opponent concedes, and now this:

Less than a week before Senator-elect Al Franken (D-Minn.) is set to be sworn into office, a new national poll shows that 44 percent of voters have an unfavorable view of the former comedian and liberal radio host.

Golly. I'll bet Al is really grateful that Politico felt it necessary to publish those results, so he can go about the business of ignoring them completely.

Let's review here. I don't think that Sen.-elect Franken has, for one minute, forgotten that he won by the wafer thin margin of 312 votes out of 2. million cast. (To the person who, years ago, told me that he didn't bother to vote because it didn't matter anyway, thus demonstrating why he and I would never be friends, I say "So there!") So he could reasonably assume that about 50% of Minnesotans would have a negative opinion of him, as they expressed that sentiment by voting against him. That is why he has said he plans to keep his head down, and do the work necessary to build a reputation based on solid policy.

But, he probably doesn't care about poll numbers right now because he just got elected and won't face another election for five and a half years. It's not enough that this totally worthless poll Politico hawks gives us a result anyone who's paid the slightest bit of attention could have guessed. It's also about a politician who has five years to work on his political cred before he starts having to worry about poll numbers.

And finally, since debunking ridiculous political filler from an online political site that glories in its own relevance is such fun, it should be noted that the poll was a national poll, and Franken is a state candidate, so the results are not only obvious and premature, they are also utterly moot.

Strong work, Politico! Thanks for keeping us informed!