Just out from Congressional Quarterly:
Democrats in the state of Washington are increasingly better positioned to keep the Governor’s mansion and to take over a key House district in the state’s most competitive contests this election cycle.
Gov. Christine Gregoire and 8th District candidate Darcy Burner came within a razor‑thin edge of their opponents in their last contests. But analysts now say that the Democrats have upped their chancing of winning as the state GOP party faces structural problems and GOP efforts to appeal to the state’s large number of moderate voters has been hampered by their strong conservative base.
CQ Politics is now changing its rating of the Washington state Governor’s race from No Clear Favorite to Leans Democrat and Washington’s 8th District rating from Leans Republican to No Clear Favorite.
And how has Darcy Burner done it?
In the 8th District, which encompasses the Eastern suburbs of Seattle, analysts say former Microsoft executive Burner’s organization, fundraising, and her views on the Iraq war have boosted her campaign. […] Burner has made the Iraq war, which is highly unpopular in the district, a centerpiece of her 2008 campaign. She initiated an effort to create a plan to end the war. After six months of consultation with retired generals and national security experts, she was joined by nine Democratic challengers in the release of a formal plan March 17. It reiterates many of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and calls for removing all U.S. troops from Iraq (without proposing a specific timeline), enlisting allies to help stabilize Iraq, and improving America’s international reputation.
Dave Reichert is now one of only three Republican incumbents whose race is rated a toss-up, and a lot of the credit goes to Darcy’s leadership in creating a consensus behind the Responsible Plan.
And how’s that plan progressing these days? The Politico devotes a ton of space to it today, reporting:
As congressional Democrats plot strategy for next week’s Petraeus-Crocker appearances, a growing number of Democratic congressional challengers are coming together around something called the “Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq.”
The plan’s author, Washington House candidate Darcy Burner, said that her original goal had been to have 50 candidates sign on to the plan by September. Just 2½ weeks into its life, the plan has nearly that many, picking up six more in the past few days to bring to the total to 48.
Um… as of 1PM today, 52 Democratic challengers had now signed on to the Plan. And counting.
MEDIA ALERT:
Darcy taped an interview with Rachel Maddow today, which will be aired on her show at either 3:30 or 4:30 PM Pacific. Tune in to AM-1090 or stream the audio live from their website.
What? No ATM button for Darcy on this one? I nearly fainted.
Slightly off-topic here, but for a bit of historical perspective, here’s what Ronald Reagan wrote in his diary in 1986:
“A moment I’ve been dreading. George brought his ne’er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida ; the one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I’ll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they’ll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work.”
@2
That was satire.
When Darcy gets elected this fall she is going to be a shooting star in the Democrat Party.
Clearly, she is demonstrating she has something Representative Reichert lacks: leadership skills.
Can anyone demonstrate where Representative Reichert has shown ANY imitative to tackle such a complex problem as the Iraq War? I’ll give Representative Reichert some slack and not ask for a responsible plan to extract America from Iraq, I just want to know if he’s done ANYTHING on his own to put forth a comprehensive plan on Iraq?
I mean, other than saying “Ja Vol, Mein Fuhrer! sieg heil! sieg heil!“
2/3 My apoligies. I should remember to vet the stuff other people send me. I guess Puddy can beat me soundly about the head for that one.
Apparently, though, Reagan actually did once tell Bob Hope that being President was “a lot like acting, except I get to write the script”.
GBS,
The right wing trolls that like to post here like to run Darcy Burner down, but you notice that not a single one of them has been able to name a single accomplishment of Rep. Reichert while in office, except to misrepresent his accomplishments while in the office of Sheriff (guess what, dumbshits? Even IF he were the hero in the GR case, it don’t count!).
If we had any doubt before, we now know how empty their rhetoric is, even when it isn’t based on outright lies (like all the science retards who post climate-change denialism screeds…iBurn, I’m looking at YOU; and pro-pollution screeds…zip, I’m looking at YOU).
6 The right-wing “true believers” no doubt consider Reichert to have performed admirably as a loyal soldier, voting in support of the Bush Gang’s campaign to dismantle our once great country.
After all, can you think of any outstanding accomplishment by Dennis Hastert, other than kissing Tom DeLay’s butt?
@6 I have not posted a word for, or against Darcy, or Reichart. Nor have I ever knowingly written lies here, Tlazolteotl. I’m very careful to seperate my opinion from fact, which is certainly not something that you can claim. That you’re still nattering on about it says a lot more about your mindset, than it does about mine. Think about it…
Now here it comes – the GOP lackeys will start telling us polls don’t matter, etc.
They can’t stand it – but they secretly know it’s already over. Dems win! Dems win! Dems win!
Dewey Defeats Truman.
The Piper
Just out of curiosity, what’s the split behind all the seats that are up for election in the Senate in 2008? How many are have Republicans up for re-election, and how many are open seats? Any chance we can pick up ten more seats?
About this time in 2006 I asked here if it were possible for the Democrats to take control of the Senate, and it was pretty much agreed that although the Democrats would gain ground, actually taking control of the Senate would be beyond reach. The math was just too hard to beat. But then the Republicans continued to shoot themselves in the foot week after week, and the miracle happened.
Now they say that we need 60 seats in order to overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate. How likely is it for the Democrats to pick up another ten seats?
” … GOP efforts to appeal to the state’s large number of moderate voters has been hampered by their strong conservative base …”
It’s hard to appeal to moderates when your party runs to the right of Hitler.
@12 What’s wrong with a House candidate asking for campaign donations? What you rather some rich bastard who represents no one except his own insular little country club groud buy a seat with his own money and then vote against the common good?
group
@9 You can always count on Republicans to provide an orchestra after they drive the ship into an iceberg. See, e.g., #10.
@11 Republicans have 22 seats up for election, Democrats 11. The GOP already has 6 or 7 announced retirements from the Senate, Democrats none. Picking up 5 – 6 Senate seats should be a cakewalk; getting a 60-seat filibuster-proof supermajority is a stretch but not impossible.
I don’t know about all that. A Rasmussen poll released today shows the Governor’s race a dead heat. I’d like to think Gregoire is in a better position than that.
Heh I am watching Democrat Congressman Elijah Cummings talking to Ben Bernanke, and saying that the price of gas is causing people to drive less, and thus all of the businesses are suffering as a result of these added costs to the household, and those households not going out shopping or eating out because of these added costs.
Gregoire complained when she was campaigning, about Rossi signing on to a 5 cent gas tax hike, but after she became Governor, clamped on to a 9.5 sent gas tax as the best thing since apple pie.
Now Washington, under her leadership or lack of, has the 3rd highest gas tax in the nation. 38ish cents per gallon for every gallon of gas you buy.
I do respect what democratic congressman Elijah Cummings and all the truckers in the nation are saying that these added costs are going to cause less purchasing, and therefore less taxes into governments.
So how is it that Gregoire and her gang of big spenders are offering 46,000 free tuition giveaways, low income tax giveaways, and continued massive spending plans above and beyond the 33% increase in the last few years.
Just asking!
Oh and I forgot to add the the above, no other than Michigan DEMOCRATIC Congressman John Dingell Dingbat, Wants non other than another 50-Cent Tax Hike on Every Gallon of Gas.
Oh really, that should help the above mentioned scenerio one hell of alot.
And of course then there is Chairman Rangel describing his massive new tax bill as saying it would raise $484 million over 10 years. Under the approach taken in this bill, however, taxes would rise by nearly a trillion dollars over 10 years.
Oh really, that should help the above mentioned scenerio’s one hell of alot.
These people that think adding tax to the middle and lower classes need to be voted out so they can’t do any more damage to our struggling people. Maybe the politicians in office could all take a pay cut instead of hiking the tax on us lil people!
Seems most of our politians are in the “upper rich” income….
20 GB
And under the Republican plans, we would have over a trillion FEWER dollars to spend on vital services over the hext ten years.
Hmmm, more, or fewer? I think I know which sounds better.
GS @ 18, 19: Gee, if we had added a 50-cent tax hike to a gallon of gas three years ago, guess what the price of gas would be now?
Answer: Exactly what it is now.
Oil companies, like most businesses, never charge less than the highest price they calculate they can get for a product. If I’ve got a product in high demand and with a limited supply, and I can get $1,000 for it, I’ll charge $1,000 – regardless of whether my cost is $1, $5, or $100. The only time this doesn’t apply is when the cost, including tax, closely approaches or exceeds the actual price of the product.
Adam Smith’s notions that higher profits will naturally increase the number of suppliers, and hence the supply, and therefore result in lower profits don’t apply so much where there is a finite limit to the available product, the cost of exploration/production is high, the technology is held by a few very large companies, and the time between marketplace entry and profits is measured in decades, not months.
But instead of the oil companies raking in all that profit as they have for the past year, it would instead have gone towards transportation alternatives, making the U.S. less dependant upon the politics and turmoil within the Middle East. Instead of treating every flare-up there being treated as being “vital to our national interest”, we could treat it as we do politics in central Africa: interesting, perhaps shamefull, but not necessarily something in which we need to become involved.
Oil is a unique industry. Trying to apply general principles to it usually sends you down the wrong logical path.
Horsey’s at it again. He must be on a roll this week:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....sp?ID=1740
That being said, I’m not a big fan of pinning the next election on the economy. There is still lots that Bush & Co., and his buds in the Fed and the oil industry, can do to temporarily boost economic indicators in August or September of 2008. Of course, the effect of those measures will wear off by December or January, and the crash will be worse than it would have been otherwise. Besides, the sub-prime crisis may at least level out over the next few months, as some of the current foreclosures work their way through the system.
After watching oil prices drop in the weeks before the 2006 elections, only to jump back up within two days therafter, I’m now a reluctant believer in some consipiracy theories.