Yes, there is still a Senate race going on, as unbelievable as that may sound, a week away from Christmas. Al Franken has been challenging Norm Coleman hard for a Minnesota Senate seat in an absurdly close race that has involved numerous recounts and disputed ballots.

Franken has been behind for a long while now, but now the Minneapolis Star Tribune is projecting that Franken is going to be up by 89 votes when all is said and done. How did we get here? Well, it’s a bit complicated.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the canvassing board considered Franken's challenges, which gave a slight gain to Coleman's lead (Franken, after all, was challenging ballots that were, perhaps erroneously, awarded to Coleman during the recount). But the Franken campaign also gained some votes during the two days; the canvassing board awarded him dozens of ballots that had been wrongfully determined to be non-votes or under-votes.

By Thursday, the canvassing board had moved onto the pile of Coleman challenges, and with it, Coleman's lead quickly dissipated. It became clear early on that the Senator had challenged many ballots simply because they favored Franken and had a minor (non-disqualifying) clerical error. The board began plowing through the votes until, by late afternoon, Franken found himself down by only five.

As it stands now, it seems likely that Franken will end this process with a lead wider than even his campaign expected. Earlier projections, from the Associated Press, Star Tribune and Franken himself, suggested that Coleman would lose the race by roughly 20 votes or less. And this tally doesn't even take into consideration the legal and political battle being waged over wrongfully rejected absentee ballots, which the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled, on Thursday, should be counted.

Got all that? Sure you do. Even if Franken wins, it won’t have much real effect on the Senate, besides perhaps the place being a little funnier, because the Democrats will now have 59 senators. Sixty is the magic number needed to overrule filibusters, and since Saxby Chambliss won in the Georgia recount, that possibility is now out the window.