The counting is not fully completed yet, but 350 of the 400 or so rejected ballots have been reviewed, and Al Franken, who was previously ahead by 225 votes, is now ahead by 312–a gain of 87 votes. Which means that even if the all of the remaining 50 or so ballots go to Coleman (unlikely as 60% have gone to Franken on average), Franken still comes out with more votes.

This hurts Coleman more than just because Franken widens his lead; it also demonstrates something that Nate Silver points out, which is that the votes Coleman claims were not counted to his detriment actually break for Franken more. In short, if a higher court, at Coleman’s request, judges that even more absentee ballot be counted, it will almost certainly just result in Franken getting even more votes.

Coleman says he plans to press ahead anyway with an equal-protection appeal, but as Kevin Drum points out, such an appeal is unlikely to win–Coleman would have to show not just that there were differences in how ballots are counted from county to county–such differences exist everywhere–but that the differences showed bias or worked against an entire class of legitimate voters, something that can’t be demonstrated in Minnesota. Unless Coleman seriously wants to challenge based upon ideas such as that unregistered voters–whose votes Coleman wanted counted–are being discriminated against because they couldn’t vote.

Coleman cannot effectively claim that the court acted inappropriately–the process was about as fair and painfully even-handed as could possibly be asked for. The only out I can really think of is for Coleman to claim his legal team was incompetent bordering on malpractice–so much of their case was very badly handled. But then, there was nothing of substance for them to work with, so the lawyers can hardly be blamed–they had to go to court with a legal argument that amounted to little more than “because our guy didn’t win.”

The general sense is that Coleman has simply lost, and even some conservatives are saying that he should give up. Not Congressional Republicans, of course–they want Coleman to hang on until the very last appeal possible so that Franken will not be seated. The Republican Party sense of Democracy at work: we didn’t win, so we want to deny the voters representation as long as possible.