Archives for November 2008

I’m no great fan of Barack Obama. His election will be historic, and he will provide both an inspiration and a desperately new face for America to the world. And he’s smart and competent. That said, he’s proven his corporate centrism on far too many issues (including, most recently, his enthusiastic backing of a $700 billion that I suspect we’ll soon come to widely acknowledge as a criminal looting of the treasury) for me to be much impressed. And Joe Biden, from his whoring for credit card companies to his war on drugs mania to his disastrous plan to partition Iraq, is a neat encapsulation of what is vile about many Senate Democrats.

But it doesn’t matter. In Washington state, our electoral votes are a foregone conclusion. The presidential race is strictly a spectator sport here. And, as Darryl has been demonstrating nightly, one with a pretty much foregone conclusion.

Similarly, I’m not all that worked up about this blog’s special obsession over the past two years, Burner/Reichert. Darcy would make a great Congressperson, and Reichert is a lousy one; I really hope she wins. But it’s not my district.

Where I (and most of us) will be most affected and can make a difference is in the race that concerns me most right now: the race for governor.

Four years ago, I did not support Christine Gregoire. I found Dino Rossi repellant, but after eight years of the execrable Gary Locke, I also had no love for yet another do-nothing centrist Democrat. I wound up voting for (and publicly endorsing) the Libertarian candidate, Ruth Bennett.

Once the election dust settled (without the help of my vote), though, a funny and very rare thing happened: I was won over by a politician who did a much, much better job than I expected.

Mind you, there’s still quite a bit I don’t agree with Christine Gregoire on. (And sorry, but if we can mock Sarah Palin’s faux-folksiness, I’m also not on board with the calculated effort to rebrand “Christine” as “Chris.”) In particular, Gregoire’s handling of the Alaskan Way Viaduct controversy has been both ham-fisted and wrong. But generally, Gregoire has been exactly what Locke was not: a leader who gets things done. She’s brought the legislature to the table and helped hammer out compromises on several key contentious issues. Her fiscal and executive management of the state, contrary to Rossi’s propaganda, has been exemplary. She balanced the budget, got voter-mandated education monies funded (unlike Locke, who simply ignored the voters); she used economic good times to invest in needed expenditures that had been slashed under Locke; and she also set aside money for the inevitable slow times that are now upon us. Does anyone doubt that, if elected, Rossi would have done none of this, electing instead — just like his party’s national leaders — to use the economic good times to simply give tax breaks to the wealthy?

Gregoire also deserves credit for respecting voters — not only by getting education funded, but also (much as it galls me) by pushing for enactment of Tim Eyman’s successful measures. The contrast couldn’t be clearer: Dino Rossi has shown time and again his contempt for voters, from his flagrant violation of campaign finance laws and his idiotic party label (“prefers GOP”) deception and his cynical effort to exploit Obama’s coattails to his fantastic (in the literal sense of the word) transportation plan to his consistent efforts to avoid fessing up to policy stances, especially on social issues, that are wildly out of step with this state’s electorate.

Even so, Rossi would not be making this race close if Gregoire’s story had been told effectively. Instead, she has proven herself in two campaigns now to be as bad a CEO for her campaign as she is good as a CEO for the state. Over the last 18 months I was repeatedly assured, by people who should know, that Gregoire’s people understood that they’d run a dreadful campaign in 2004, and that it would be fixed this time. Instead. Rossi — with an able assist from this state’s ever-pliant media — has skated by on his deceptions and a blizzard of negative ads that, until recently, have mostly gone unrefuted in any meaningful sense. Rossi has been allowed to define Gregoire and set the agenda for this campaign, an almost inconceivable feat given that Gregoire’s the incumbent. Even though Rossi is, if anything, even more repellant and dishonest than he was in 2004, Gregoire’s campaign incompetence could easily cost her the election, and us a very good governor.

But every poll shows this race within polling’s margin of error — which it certainly was in 2004 — and so even though many of us have already voted, this is one race where the next 24 hours could make all the difference. Get out the vote. Talk up the governor’s race among your friends, co-workers, relatives. Don’t let Dino Rossi’s dishonest and illegal campaigning carry the day. If it does, it not only establishes an awful precedent for how statewide campaigns are to be run, but it sets us up for a long four years in our state, years in which many people will needlessly suffer from Rossi’s budget priorities. And it will cost us the best governor we’ve had in ages.

Obama	McCain
100.0% probability of winning	0.0% probability of winning
Mean of 366 electoral votes	Mean of 172 electoral votes

Yesterday’s analysis showed Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by (on average) 369 to 169 electoral votes.

There were 18 new polls from 14 states that add into today’s analysis. The polls show some races tightening up slightly, and McCain gets the better of it.

Now, after 100,000 simulated elections, Obama wins ’em all. Obama receives (on average) 366 to McCain’s 172 electoral votes—a gain of three votes for McCain since yesterday. The simulation results still suggest that Obama would win an election held today with 100.0% probability.

The long term trends in this race can be seen from a series of elections simulated every seven days using polls from 02 Mar 2008 to 02 Nov 2008, each time including polls from the preceding seven days (FAQ):

Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.

Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.

In a nation that impeached a president for lying about a blow job, and in a state where confusion over the wording of a Harvard diploma qualifies as a front page scandal, you’d think our local media would jump on evidence that Dino Rossi perjured himself just days before the gubernatorial election, right?  Well… not so much.

Two new depositions of Master Builders Association board members were released over the weekend, and so far our local media has turned a blind eye, despite the fact their testimony directly contradicts that given by Rossi, and sheds new light on the Republican’s role in the ever expanding Buildergate scandal.  And no doubt the most damaging testimony relates to a phone call Rossi made to MBA President Doug Barnes in May of 2007:

LOWNEY: How long was your conversation with Mr. Barnes.

ROSSI: I don’t recall.

LOWNEY: Do you recall talking about any financial contributions.

ROSSI: That, I don’t think so. No, I don’t recall that.

LOWNEY: Did you talk about the 2008 governor’s race?

ROSSI: No.

Well, that seems pretty cut an dried. Amongst the many things Rossi couldn’t recall during his deposition was any conversation about financial contributions. But when asked whether he even talked about the 2008 governor’s race during his telephone call with Barnes, Rossi definitively replies: “No.”

Unfortunately for Rossi, that’s not the way Barnes recalls the conversation:

LOWNEY: And what other issues did you speak with him about?

BARNES: Discussed the latest wedge with BIAW’s approach to us on this funding for the governor’s race.

LOWNEY: And what did he say about that particular issue?

BARNES: Mr. Rossi didn’t have specific — he listened and talked with me about what our differences were. There was no real: Okay, here’s a conclusion, here’s an answer, here’s a — it was more just listening: What are the issues that you have?

Huh. So Rossi claims they didn’t talk about the 2008 governor’s race, while Barnes says they not only did, but they even talked about funding for it. And just as important, Rossi “listened,” which contradicts his insistence that he had absolutely no idea, during the spring of 2007, that the BIAW was raising money for the governor’s race:

LOWNEY: So in 2007 in the April, May and June time frame, did you have any idea that the BIAW was trying to create a pot of money for the 2008 governor’s race?

ROSSI: I know they were trying to come together on supporting all candidates across the state that were pro small business candidates. … It was for supporting all small business candidates, Republicans and Democrats alike, and in a very general sense.

Okay, Rossi didn’t really insist that he had no knowledge the BIAW was raising money for the governor’s race, he just kinda sorta implied it by claiming the effort was for all pro small business candidates… not that legally, that is any excuse if he knew that one of those candidates might be himself.  But we’ll get to the legal stuff later; for the moment, let’s go back to Barnes’ deposition, where he further details his conversation with Rossi.

LOWNEY: And how did you describe this latest wedge issue to Mr. Rossi?

BARNES: I said it was another example of BIAW – kind of “my way or the highway” is how I typically described it – and that I had two or three major objections with what they were trying to do and that it was way too early; there’s no need for us to even be having this discussion at this point in time. And that was the extent of that.

LOWNEY: And what do you mean, “it was too early”?

BARNES: They were trying to raise funds for an election that was going to happen 15, 18 months from now.

When Rossi is asked if he knew the BIAW was raising money for the governor’s race, he prevaricates; when he’s asked if he even discussed the 2008 governor’s race during his conversation with Barnes, he says “no.”  Indeed, since the day this scandal first broke, Rossi has insisted that his numerous phone calls and meetings with MBA officers during the spring and summer of 2007 were merely intended to close the growing rift between them and the BIAW.

But as Barnes makes clear throughout his testimony—testimony that is corroborated by the official minutes of MBA meetings—the “wedge” that was causing this rift was largely focused on the BIAW’s efforts to pile up a “fund for Rossi,” and the MBA’s reluctance to earmark contributions to this fund at such an early date.

BARNES: I didn’t think that we needed to identify a specific funding source for something like this. If we wanted to contribute to a local political race or whatever, we would designate that funding source at that point in time. There’s no need to earmark funds in our budget.

Rossi also denies that he talked about the race for governor at a lunch meeting with MBA officers, yet MBA President-elect John Day, who set up the lunch, testifies in his deposition that this was the whole purpose of the meeting:

DAY:  I wanted to get the chair officers together with Dino so that we could have an opportunity to try to convince him to run for governor.

Whether Rossi’s sworn testimony rises to the level of perjury, well, I’m no attorney, so I don’t know.  But the depositions make clear that Rossi was much more involved in the BIAW’s illegal fundraising scheme than he has heretofore admitted, and that what little active participation he does acknowledge puts him and the BIAW in direct violation of WA’s campaign finance and disclosure statutes.

Rossi’s fallback position has always been that he wasn’t aware of BIAW’s efforts on his behalf and that he never helped them raise any money for the gubernatorial race, but that even if he did, that would have been okay, because he wasn’t officially a candidate at the time.  But that’s not what the law says.

RCW 42.17.020, Definitions

(9) “Candidate” means any individual who seeks nomination for election or election to public office. An individual seeks nomination or election when he or she first:

(a) Receives contributions or makes expenditures or reserves space or facilities with intent to promote his or her candidacy for office;

(b) Announces publicly or files for office;

(c) Purchases commercial advertising space or broadcast time to promote his or her candidacy; or

(d) Gives his or her consent to another person to take on behalf of the individual any of the actions in (a) or (c) of this subsection.

And even Rossi testifies that at the same time he was talking with MBA officers—conversations these same officers testify focused on the 2008 gubernatorial race and the BIAW’s efforts to raise money for it—he was indeed considering a run for governor:

ROSSI:  I was about 75 percent sure I wouldn’t run…

Of course, no astute observer of Washington state politics believes for a minute that in May of 2007, there was only a one in four chance that Rossi would run for governor, but even that admission is enough to establish that he was in fact considering a run at that time, which would have barred any participation in the BIAW’s fundraising efforts.  Indeed, under state law, the very act of coordinating with the BIAW on their “fund for Rossi” made Rossi a legal candidate, and thus made such coordination illegal.

But I’m guessing you won’t read any of this on the front pages of our local newspapers, because you know… they wouldn’t want to play politics so close to an election.

We already voted. And yes, Republican Robocall, I have been on the lookout for last minute lies and distortions, like your presidential campaign has put out.

Geebus, could someone this session get a bill passed banning these infernal things already? The “but they are effective and cheap” argument kind of breaks down when they are calling households in a largely vote by mail state over the last weekend.

Everyone hates Robocall, (except the politicians on both sides who are too chicken to ban them.) It’s not a protected First Amendment right to use equipment and a service I’ve paid for to telephone spam our household. They serve little informational purpose, as non-inflammatory ones have little time for anything but broad brush strokes, and inflammatory ones serve no purpose but to um, inflame.

Die Robocall, die. I’ll get my movie listings from the Toobz.

I was 7 years old the last time I saw one of my hometown teams win a championship, when Dr. J and the Sixers beat the Lakers to win the 1983 NBA Championship.

Since that very faded memory, I’ve watched Wayne Gretzsky and the Oilers thump the Flyers in 1985 to win the Stanley Cup. I watched from the lounge of my freshman dorm as Joe Carter won the 1993 World Series for Toronto. I watched the Red Wings sweep the Flyers on a barstool in Harvey’s Tavern in Edmonds the first week after I moved to Washington. In 2001, I watched with my Microsoft co-workers (the original Reload crew) as the Lakers beat down the miracle Sixers in 5 games in the NBA Finals. And in February 2005, my fiancee sat next to me as the Eagles fell short against the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX.

I know that Seattle hasn’t had a championship over that time either, but there’s a special level of frustration that comes with getting so close so many times and not walking away with the trophy. All of that ended this week, though, and as I was sitting across from my wife at the Northgate Ram watching the Phillies pile onto each other in the middle of Citizen’s Bank Park, I couldn’t believe how easy they made it look. My buddies from back home were telling me that the city was ready to explode, as a Philly sports radio host once described “like a bottle of champagne in a paint shaker.” Well, the cork has finally been popped and it was amazing to finally see that parade down Broad Street in front of the 2 million people who were cramming onto SEPTA trains to make their way down to South Philly, knowing full-well that it could be a long time until that next championship comes around.

I’ve been asked a few times whether I want my future kids to root for Philly teams. No way. There’s something special about rooting for the hometown team and Philly just won’t be their hometown. Despite what happened with the Sonics, in the decade I’ve lived here, I’ve seen Seattle become a great sports city. I’m excited to take my sons or daughters to Mariners and Sounders games and watch the Seahawks every Sunday, just as my Mets and Giants-fan dad took me to Phillies and Eagles games.

But hell, that’s still a few years off. I’ll be at Sluggers this morning by 10am with my McNabb jersey on and a screwdriver in my hand. If any of you guys find me down there, I’ll buy you a drink (even if you’re wearing a Seahawks jersey). Go Eagles!

Obama	McCain
100.0% probability of winning	0.0% probability of winning
Mean of 369 electoral votes	Mean of 169 electoral votes

Yesterday’s analysis showed Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by a mean of 369 to 169 electoral votes. Today we get 18 new polls in 14 states to weigh in on the race. But there were really no surprises in the polls—just some tightening up on both sides.

Today, after 100,000 simulated elections (based on 137 “current” state head-to-head surveying 95,785 respondents, mostly in the past seven days), Obama wins all 100,000 times. Obama still receives (on average) 369 to McCain’s 169 electoral votes. Obama would have a near-100.0% probability of winning if the election had been held today.

Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.

Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.

With just a few days to go until the election, Governor Christine Gregoire (D) holds onto her slight lead over challenger Dino Rossi (“G.O.P. Party”). This election is the rematch of the famous 2004 election that resulted in two ballot recounts and ended up in a six month legal challenge.

A new Washington Poll, a non-partisan, academic survey from the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, finds Gregoire leading Rossi by 50% to 48%. The survey was conducted from 27-Oct to 31-Oct on a sample of 387 registered Washington voters; the margin of error is ±5.0%.

This poll yields results identical to the previous two poll, the first by SurveyUSA taken from 26-Oct to 27-Oct, that was 50% to 48% in Gregoire’s favor. And before that a Strategic Vision poll taken from 25-Oct to 26-Oct, had Gregoire up 49% to 47%—again a +2% edge over Rossi. One must go back ten polls to find Rossi in the lead—that’s all the way back to mid-September:

A combined analysis of the last three consecutive polls—which spans the range 25-Oct to 31-Oct—gives Gregoire 50.8% of the “votes” and Rossi, 49.2% of the “votes.” If the election had been held today, Gregoire would have had a 68.4% probability of winning.

Here is the distribution of votes generated by the analysis (i.e. this is the distribution of possible election outcomes in terms of the percentage of votes for each candidate):

The poll also finds Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain in Washington state 51% to 39%. The +12% margin is narrower than the +17% (56% to 39%) Obama lead found in the SurveyUSA poll, but it matches the +12% (54% to 42%) lead over McCain found in the Strategic Vision poll.

(Cross posted at Hominid Views)

Last week’s winners were ibogaine, who first guessed the correct location of Chilliwack, BC, Cody, who posted the link, and Dan Robinson for making horrible puns.

And to answer a question from last week, I’m not getting paid by Microsoft to do this (although I used to work there), I just think it’s cool technology.

Here’s this week’s contest. No credit for just naming the city or town, gotta name the street or post the link to win. Good luck!

Worst. Campaign. Ever.

From National Post:

A Quebec comedy duo notorious for pulling prank calls on celebrities have struck again. This time, comedian Marc Antoine Audette and Sebastian Trudel Audette, known as the Masked Avengers, tricked Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin into believing that she was speaking to French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

—snip—

Throughout the interview Audette drops hints that he’s not who he claims to be. He names popular French singer Johnny Hallyday as his advisor on U.S. affairs and Quebec singer Stef Carse was named as Canada’s Prime Minister.

“We have such great respect for you [Sarkozy], John and I,” she gushed.

Later in the interview, Audette, jokes that he and Palin shared an interest in common, hunting.

“We should try hunting by helicopter like you did, I never did that,” Audette said.

“We could have a lot of fun together while we’re getting work done. Kill two birds with one stone,” Palin replied.

I couldn’t stand to listen to more than about the first thirty seconds.

If you must, it’s up at Eschaton. And probably all other corners of the Toobz.

There is now nothing left to be said about this woman.

This has been quite an election season, one that we’ll be talking about for generations. As we head into the final stretch, here’s a roundup of what’s been on my radar:

– Andrew at the NPI Advocate is helping out Roger Goodman in his 45th Legislative District race. Andrew and I are hardly identical in our political outlooks, but we both recognize the potential that he holds. Roger’s a unique kind of politician with tremendous leadership skills who deserves to hold on to that seat. I’ve hit the phones for him and hope that others are inspired to help out in any way they can.

– Medical marijuana patients in Washington have been split down the middle on the Governor’s race. There are some who think that Christine Gregoire’s interference in the process to identify limits is reason enough to vote for Dino Rossi. And there are others who think that Dino Rossi will likely be worse for patients. About two weeks ago, two individuals tried to issue a press release with the title “Medical Marijuana Leaders Support Rossi.” When pressed who those leaders were, the two gentlemen then gave a list of four names – two of whom did not support Rossi. Steve at Reality Catcher has more about the silliness here.

– I’m still planning to vote for Republican Marcia McCraw in the Lieutenant Governor’s race, but she’s every bit as nutty as Brad Owen. But she gets my vote because her nuttiness doesn’t potentially threaten the freedom and well-being of Washington residents the way Owen’s radical prohibitionist views do – especially considering that either one of these guys is next in line for the Governor’s mansion.

– The increasing level of hostility that’s been seen at Republican Presidential rallies this fall reminded me of something that my old roommate at the University of Michigan experienced back in the election of 1996. She’s African-American and was taking a political science course. As part of her work for the class, she had to do exit polling at a poll location about 20 minutes from Ann Arbor in rural Washtenaw County. She came back to the house in tears at around 6 o’clock, well before the polls closed, after several hours of being called just about anything you could imagine by rednecks and other assorted racists.

I have a bad feeling about what’s about to transpire this Tuesday at polling places across the country. I hope my fears are unwarranted, but if bad things do happen, the burden is on John McCain to be a goddamn maverick again and tell the morons in his party that this kind of nonsense is the real enemy within.

Throughout the fall of 2006 the polls showed Darcy Burner steadily closing in on Dave Reichert.  While her internal polling never showed her with a lead, several other polls showed the race within the margin of error during the final weeks, and momentum seemed to be on her side.  Even on election night, trailing by a few thousand votes, there were some experienced vote counters who projected a narrow Burner victory, with late absentee ballots shifting the race her way.

Well, it didn’t happen.  Throughout most of the district late absentees trended toward Dave Reichert, who gradually expanded his lead as votes were tallied.

In retrospect it seems clear that Burner’s momentum stalled around mid October, with the race breaking slightly toward Reichert during the final two weeks of the campaign.  No doubt there were a number of factors responsible for Reichert’s victory, but many observers credit his sexist and demeaning “job interview” ad… and the Burner campaign’s failure to adequately respond.

Will 2008 be a replay?

Once again Burner closed sharply on Reichert, with several polls showing her with a small but significant lead by mid October.  And once again the Reichert campaign has attempted to swing the race his way with a demeaning and dishonest ad.

No doubt the “Harvard Hoax” ad is effective; there is plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting that many viewers come away believing that Burner never earned a degree from Harvard at all.  But this time the Burner campaign has directly responded with an ad of its own, calling Reichert’s lies “pathetic”, and assuring voters that she did indeed graduate from Harvard.

But perhaps the real game changer this election season is the diminishing opportunity for a game changing ad at all, when viewed in the context of the unprecedented torrent of negative advertising that has flooded our airwaves in recent weeks… much of it courtesy of the $7 million the BIAW and RGA dumped into the governor’s race at the last minute.

In the context of this tidal wave of negativity, the “Havard Hoax” ad comes across as just another ripple… just another attack ad lost in the deafening roar of a sea of attack ads.  Add to that the general distraction of the presidential race, and it becomes harder and harder for any one political ad to make a difference.  Even the NRCC’s predictably effective “she’s gonna raise your taxes” ads get lost in the noise of “she’s gonna raise your taxes” ads launched against Gov. Gregoire.

“Yeah, we know already…” the vast majority of voters must be screaming to themselves, “She’s a Democrat.  She’s going to raise our taxes.  We get it.”  Who exactly “she” is, and in what race, well, what’s the difference?

Compare that to the 2006 cycle, when the biggest race on the ticket, Cantwell vs. McGavick, had already effectively been over for weeks, and McGavick shifted toward softer ads to preserve his reputation.  In that context the job interview ad could stand out.  In 2008… well… not so much.

I’m not claiming victory or anything, or making any predictions, but I do think it reasonable to suppose that Reichert has faced a much greater challenge this year in his efforts to close out the campaign trashing Burner’s character and reputation.  And for that, the BIAW and RGA’s seemingly bottomless warchest deserves at least some of the credit.

Maybe I’m being too sanguine, but I kind of wonder if stuff like this is really going to matter as much as it did in the past. Columbian reporter Michael Andersen has this article this morning:

For the second time in four years, would-be casino developer David Barnett is dropping tens of thousands of last-minute dollars to stop Tom Mielke from becoming a Clark County commissioner.

On Wednesday, a Seattle-based company owned by Barnett bought $59,000 in mailers opposing Mielke, state records show.

—snip—

Last week, the county Republican Party, boosted by a big donation from the local Building Industry Association, dropped $41,800 in a sharp anti-Brokaw mailing and TV campaign.

Mielke’s direct donations include $7,500 from La Center’s four existing casinos, which have long opposed a larger tribal operation nearby.

Things will change somewhat next cycle, as a sidebar to Andersen’s piece points out, if Clark County continues to have over 200,000 registered voters. That would result in the triggering of contribution limits. It won’t do anything about independent expenditures, though, so I guess this sort of thing will likely continue in the future.

Another thing in Andersen’s article: something like half the ballots have already been returned, so the folks who can afford to drop wads of cash at the last minute are seeing a diminished return.

I don’t know of a Constitutional way to deal with independent expenditures, but it sure gets old. Neither the BIAW nor Dave Barnett have the interests of the entire citizenry at heart. It’s just a game to them, if admittedly a game involving the mountains of money they hope to make by influencing public policy. Meanwhile, the regular old Joe (is everyone named Joe?) watches as his community struggles to pay for basic services like parks, roads and public safety. Maybe voting in large numbers will help.

(You can find more media clips from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)