Goldy

Isn’t it at least a little ironic that while Dave Reichert may have won a third term in Congress, Darcy Burner is actually having a greater impact on the all important health care reform debate?

An organizer for liberal House Democrats says the bloc “isn’t bluffing” as it prepares to take a reputation-defining stand to protect a public insurance option in the health care overhaul.

Darcy Burner, executive director of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation, said the health care debate has rallied traditionally disparate Congressional liberals to hang together, while galvanizing support for their position from an array of left-leaning outside groups. The result, she said, is that Democratic leaders will not be able to clear a package through the House if it does not include the public plan.

“We have never had the Progressive Caucus organized the way it is right now,” Burner said during a Friday roundtable with Roll Call. “This is not the normal scenario. And Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi [D-Calif.] knows it.”

Not that you’re likely to read anything about Darcy’s efforts in a local press that made up its mind about her early on, and is about as likely to reevaluate her as it is to admit the truth that Reichert did not really catch the Green River Killer.

What a bunch of crybabies:

GOOGLE is a wonderful thing. It is also a dangerous thing, as it keeps demonstrating in its quietly rapacious way.

The latest is from Italy. The Italian newspapers are complaining that Google News Italia is using their content without permission, and without payment. Under Google’s rules, they can withhold their work from Google News Italia only at the price of excluding their pages from all Google searches.

You let us use your work for free, or we don’t let our customers find your Web page.

That is Google’s take-it-or-leave-it deal — in Italy and here, too. Google’s paid minions make this arrangement sound like philanthropy, but its fairness is more apparent to Google than to anyone else. The statements that count most are financial, and what they tell is a story of market dominance.

Google has two-thirds of the market in search — a share more than three times bigger than the No. 2 in the market, Yahoo. In the Bush administration, this seemed to bother regulators only on Wednesdays and Fridays. They blocked Google’s deal with Yahoo, which stopped Google from increasing its dominance. The Bush people did little to deprive Google of the dominance it already had.

The book publishers did get together and sue Google over the theft of their content by Google Book — and, last November, Google agreed to pay them for their property. Maybe the newspaper publishers need to do the same.

Hey Seattle Times, I just used your work for free… why don’t you sue me too? Come on… I dare ya!

First of all, perhaps I missed it, but I don’t ever remember the Times editorializing in favor of breaking up any of hometown Microsoft’s monopolies, and few companies in recent American history have acted more intentionally monopolistic than our neighbors in Redmond. To dismiss Microsoft as “so last century” is to miss the point; the Times had no problem with Microsoft’s monopoly as long as our local economy benefited from it.

But the larger issue here is: quit your whining!

Again with the Google is stealing our business crap; indeed far from it. Google doesn’t steal readers, it drives them to your site, as evidenced by the Times own bullshit “1.4 million people read The Seattle Times newspaper” banner they’ve been plastering at the top of every page. You think the bulk of these individual readers has bookmarked the Times, or intentionally typed in its URL? No, the bulk of them have clicked through links on Google and elsewhere, teased by the exactly the kind of “theft” about which the Times so vociferously complains.

The Times and most of the rest of the newspaper industry isn’t suffering because search engines and bloggers are stealing their content, but because of poor business decisions and an inability/refusal to adapt to changing technologies and tastes. And the quicker they come to terms with this, the quicker they’ll halt, and possibly even start to reverse, the appalling collapse of the local press.

One of the best eulogies for Sen. Ted Kennedy was actually one given a year before he died, by Sarah Vowell in the New York Times:

ON Monday night at the Democratic National Convention, Caroline Kennedy introduced a tribute to her uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, by pointing out, “If your child is getting an early boost in life through Head Start or attending a better school or can go to college because a Pell Grant has made it more affordable, Teddy is your senator, too.”

To my surprise, I started to cry. Started to cry like I was watching the last 10 minutes of “Brokeback Mountain” instead of C-SPAN. This was whimpering brought on by simple, spontaneous gratitude.

I paid my way through Montana State University with student loans, a minimum-wage job making sandwiches at a joint called the Pickle Barrel, and — here come the waterworks — Pell Grants. Thanks to Pell Grants, I had to work only 30 hours a week up to my elbows in ham instead of 40.

Ten extra hours a week might sound negligible, but do you know what a determined, junior-Hillary type of hick with a full course load and onion-scented hands can do with the gift of 10 whole hours per week? Not flunk geology, that’s what. Take German every day at 8 a.m. — for fun! Wander into the office of the school paper on a whim and find a calling. I’m convinced that those 10 extra hours a week are the reason I graduated magna cum laude, which I think is Latin for “worst girlfriend in town.”

Twenty years after my first financial aid package came through, I have paid off my college and graduate school loans and I have paid back the federal government in income taxes what it doled out to me in Pell Grants so many, many, many, many times over it’s a wonder I’m not a Republican.

[…] I am a registered Democrat. That first night’s convention speech by Senator Kennedy about his life’s work reminded me what being a Democrat means. I have spent the last eight years so disgusted with the incompetent yahoos of the executive branch that I had forgotten that I believe in one of the core principles of the Democratic Party — that government can be a useful, meaningful and worthwhile force for good in this republic instead of just an embarrassing, torturing, Book of Revelation starter kit.

The emphasis is mine, and it pretty much sums up what I believe to be the major ideological difference between the two parties today: Democrats fundamentally believe in government, while Republicans don’t. And based on the historical evidence, that’s why I’m a Democrat.

It’s a great piece.  Read the whole thing.

My daughter and I saw Julie & Julia tonight, and amongst other things, it turns out to be a movie about blogging. Who knew? Good movie, awesome performance by Meryl Streep as Julia Child.

When my friend Carla at Blue Oregon dared to accuse lobbyist Hasina Squires of feeding negative stories to the press (a skill, by the way, that’s pretty much part of the job description of “lobbyist”), angry trolls swarmed the comment threads, raising the threatening (if silly) specter of defamation. And how did Squires and/or her surrogates ultimately respond to Carla’s charge? Apparently by doing a little op-research on Carla, and attempting to feed a negative story to the press.

Doncha just love the irony?

It’s bullshit of course, but at least one reporter is asking questions; whether  anyone runs the smear—which appears to be a feeble attempt to cost Carla her day job—remains to be seen, and largely depends on how lazy the reporter is, or how in bed with the Salem establishment. We’ll see.

I suppose I could hurl invective at Carl while revoking his posting privileges for daring to contradict me on the front page of my own blog, but… conflict makes for better reading, and I have always given my co-bloggers explicit instructions to write whatever they want. And, apart from the headline, he didn’t really contradict me all that much.

So I thought I’d just take this opportunity to explore the possibility of a Murray for Mayor write-in campaign a little further, while laying out my own take on the candidates and the current state of the campaign.

First of all, my main problem with Mallahan is not really Mallahan himself, but the fact that I’m kinda offended by the very premise of his campaign. No, I don’t think being a corporate executive should disqualify one from office, even here in granola-crunching Seattle, and in fact I do think that his years as a T-Mobile exec make for an impressive bullet point on his resume… but not in and of itself.

This is a man with no recent record of public service, who from his public comments appears not very knowledgeable about the majority of issues facing Seattle, and who has clearly not put much thought into the challenges of running city government, at least not prior to throwing his hat into the ring. Hell, he hasn’t even voted consistently in recent years. Running government more like a business may make for good campaign rhetoric in the post-Reagan era, but government is not a business. Folks can tease Tim Burgess all they want after the fact about passing up what might have been an easy path into the mayor’s office, but at least he seemed to realize that he needed a little more seasoning on the council before taking on the task. Mallahan apparently lacks this sort of self-awareness, in that “hey, I’m a successful wealthy guy, I can do anything” mode that seems to afflict so many of our region’s nouveaux riche.

I don’t doubt Mallahan is a smart, capable guy, and I don’t question his motives. But I don’t know that he has the skills or the management philosophy necessary to be an effective mayor, and he’s said and done nothing to assure me that he does. And that’s where pumping his own money into his campaign really works against him in my book.  Had he come out of nowhere to raise the money and profile necessary to knock an incumbent mayor out in the primary, I would have been impressed by his political prowess. But he didn’t. He bought himself into frontrunner status, which is not a knock in itself, but which shows me absolutely nothing about his political skill and determination.

McGinn on the other hand has proven himself everything that Mallahan has not. He’s a lifelong activist with a couple of big victories to his credit, who ran a surprisingly successful, grassroots sleeper of a primary campaign that certainly shows his political chops. It also doesn’t hurt in my book that I agree with him on most major issues (his proposal to take over the school district is painfully stupid on so many levels, but, well, you can’t have everything), and unlike Mallahan, I have absolutely no question about where McGinn stacks up in terms of values.

But… and this is a huge but… I have very real concerns about McGinn’s ability to work and play well with others.

Back in June when I wrote about the surprising lack of support for McGinn and his fellow Sierra Clubee Mike O’Brien from their colleagues in the region’s broader environmental coalition, I got a lot of public and private push-back from the community assuring me that no, they really do like and support Mike… O’Brien. But McGinn, not so much. And on primary election night when news flashed about McGinn’s unexpected standing at the top of the polls, the sentiment I heard from many of his fellow environmental leaders was more along the line of “oh well, I guess we kinda have to endorse him,” rather than the outright enthusiasm one might have expected.

It’s not that his colleagues dislike him (well, some of them do); from all accounts McGinn is a great guy. It’s just that they don’t particularly like working with him.

It is ironic then, that after kicking out a mayor largely because voters couldn’t stand his allegedly abrasive, unilateral style, we might replace him with man with a reputation for having an equally abrasive and unilateral style. Combine that with McGinn’s total absence of any significant executive experience managing large enterprises… not even running a department at a wireless phone company, for whatever that is worth… and, well, I’m understandably wary. And, like Mallahan, McGinn’s lack of legislative experience doesn’t bode well for his ability to wade through the process oriented pool of molasses that is our city council.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the notion of citizen legislators. But a citizen executive with little real government experience under his belt is a much more troublesome concept.

That brings us to Ed Murray.

I personally like Ed, and think he’s been one of our most effective state legislators, but I’m certainly no fan boy. If this were a race to succeed US Rep. Jim McDermott, a seat Murray clearly covets, I doubt I’d be in his camp, as I’d prefer being represented by someone with a less cautious and run-of-the-mill political style. (For example, I’m a huge Barney Frank fan.)

But exactly the same qualities that turn me off in terms of Murray’s congressional aspirations help make him perhaps the most qualified politician on the local scene today to serve as mayor. Mayor Nickels, as much as I like and respect him, hasn’t exactly had a rapport with either the council or Olympia, and unlike McGinn and Mallahan, Murray has the skills, experience and personal relationships to help turn this around, and fast. And while there are certainly issues on which I disagree with Murray, and others on which I desperately wish he’d take a leadership role, there’s no question that his values fit squarely with those of a majority of Seattle voters.

So in my mind, in a three-way race between Murray, Mallahan and McGinn (hey… what a great name for an Irish law firm), it’s a no brainer. And if Murray’s name was actually on the ballot, I’m pretty damn confident that money, endorsements and votes would flow his way.

But of course, Murray’s name won’t be on the ballot, so… should he run a write-in campaign?

If Murray truly believes that neither Mallahan nor McGinn is qualified to be mayor, and can make a compelling case in that regard, and he believes he can raise enough money to be competitive, and he’s willing to put in the time and effort necessary to make this a serious challenge, and in doing so he’s willing to put his reputation and credibility on the line… why the hell not? Even if he’ll likely lose, which, considering the daunting challenge of mounting a write-in campaign, he probably will.

Some have suggested that running as write-in would make Murray some kind of spoiler or poor sport, but that’s a load of crap. Our system envisions and allows for write-in campaigns, while making them exceedingly difficult, as they should be. So there’s nothing unfair or anti-democratic about it. And if either McGinn or Mallahan (or both) can’t draw more votes than a goddamn write-in, then they certainly don’t deserve to be mayor.

And as for whether such a potential folly might hurt Murray’s future aspirations, if he runs a good, compelling, honest campaign, I don’t see how it could. If anything, it would only enhance his visibility and name ID across WA-07 in advance of a future congressional campaign, perhaps even setting him up as the frontrunner I’ve always assumed he imagines himself to be. And if the same labor and business sources who funded that recent poll are willing to put up the money to help Murray do that, more power to him. (Perhaps quite literally.)

Politics is a tough, tough business, and if Mallahan and McGinn choose to whine about Murray launching a nearly-Quixotic write-in challenge, well that would only prove to me my suspicions that they’re not up to the task.

As both a veterinarian and former elk rancher, Idaho Republican gubernatorial candidate Rex Rammell must be pretty familiar with manure. So why can’t he seem to avoid stepping in it even deeper?

After criticizing Gov. Butch Otter for not buying the first grey wolf hunting tag that went on sale, he responded to an audience question about “Obama tags” by saying “Obama tags? We’d buy some of those.”

Of course, when criticized for, you know, threatening the life of the president, Rammell excused himself in typical wingnut fashion, by claiming it was just a “joke.” And now, I suppose to reinforce the point, he sends out the following Tweet this morning:

Obama hunting tags was just a joke! Everyone knows Idaho has no jurisdiction to issue tags in Washington D.C.

Ha, ha.

I remember a news story from my youth, when after President Reagan was shot, a university student wrote in a school paper that he wished Hinckley had succeeded, only to find himself dragged out of his dorm room by armed federal agents in the middle of night. Hell, I remember during the Bush administration when just wearing an anti-war t-shirt to a Bush rally was enough provocation to get you arrested.

But Obama? No tags necessary, for in the land of the free and home of the wingnuts, it’s apparently always open season on Democratic presidents.

As a blogger, I’m thrilled by the possibility that Sen. Ed Murray might launch a write-in campaign for Seattle Mayor, and welcome the news that a new poll shows him right in the mix.  I mean, what a great story.

As a voter, not particularly enthralled with either Mike McGinn nor Joe Mallahan, I’m definitely intrigued.

But as a political observer, I’m still a bit dubious, especially now that Seattle Times editorial columnist Joni Balter is urging Murray to jump in. I’m already concerned about whether there might be a massive disconnect between the political establishment and the electorate in regards to the acceptability of the two mayoral finalists, and uber-establishment Balter’s endorsement, well, that can only be viewed as a giant red flag.

Still, as much as I hate to agree with Joni Balter… I agree with Joni Balter: Run, Ed, run! I’m not exactly sure if you’ll get my vote, but it would certainly make covering the race a helluva lot more fun.

A great American statesman has passed away. (Please be respectful; we will delete all inappropriate comments.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtOi8eDkTTE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Over on Publicola there’s been some speculation about State Sen. Ed Murray launching a write-in campaign for Seattle Mayor, an idea which at first glance sounds a little stupid. Write-in campaigns are exceedingly difficult things to run, and in a citywide, top-of-the-ticket race, nigh impossible. And Murray is nothing if not a savvy politician who wouldn’t dare risk his reputation on a farce or a folly.

But on second thought…

I’ve got no polling data to back this up, but there’s a strong argument to be made that, considering their lack of name ID and zero experience in public office, a goodly sum of the votes for both Mike McGinn and Joe Malahan were really votes against Mayor Greg Nickels. I’m less impressed with Mallahan buying his way into public consciousness than I am with McGinn’s grassroots success, but I’m still not all that impressed with either campaign; Mallahan has proven himself uninformed on many city issues, while McGinn has yet to make a strong case that he is qualified in both experience and temperament to serve as chief executive. The well-known and well-respected Murray, on the other hand, would have instant credibility.

But the real wildcard that makes the goofy notion of a mayoral write-in campaign just a little less goofy is our new, all vote-by-mail format. Voting at our leisure at the kitchen or dining room table, it really doesn’t take that much more effort to write in “MURRAY” than it does to completely fill in that little circle. And, as Josh points out, with R-71 likely to be on the ballot, Seattle’s strong and politically activated gay community will have extra incentive to send a message by electing our city’s first openly gay mayor. And, the sheer novelty and drama of such a challenge would draw oodles of valuable earned media, and if properly played, national coverage as well.

Could a Murray write-in campaign be perceived to be credible enough to, say, earn an endorsement from the self-proclaimed arbiters of credibility at the Seattle Times? My spider-sense says yes.

So… should Murray run? Only if he’s willing and able to raise the money and commit the time and energy to make it a real campaign, and only if he’s got some reliable polling data telling him that he’s got better than a snowball’s chance in Hell. What he shouldn’t do is kinda-sorta run, just to make a statement, or to drive turnout for R-71. I know from running joke campaigns, and somebody with Murray’s ambition and potential shouldn’t make the mistake of lowering himself to my level.

That said, if Murray does declare as a write-in candidate, and does make a serious effort to win the race, there’s no shame in losing, and probably no long term political cost either, as long as he’s perceived to take the challenge seriously. After all, as any self-respecting pundit will tell you, a mayoral write-in campaign is nigh impossible.

It’s a beautiful day, and only a week before school starts, so my daughter and dog and I have gone hiking. Talk amongst yourselves.

While Josh muses on the more obvious narrative of Republican Susan Hutchison’s visit to the 43rd LD Dems’ annual picnic, you know, the strategery of her showing up, I think there’s a more interesting story to be drawn from Saturday’s event, and one that comments more broadly on the cultural divide that currently separates our nation’s two major parties:  the relatively cordial manner in which Hutchison was received.

As far as I’ve heard, nobody shouted Hutchison down, accusing her of being a Nazi or a communist (or oddly, both). Nobody vandalized her car, or attempted to intimidate her by showing off their firearms. And nobody angrily yelled at her to stay away from their children.

Hutchison was accompanied by a couple of burly, t-shirted aides, but she certainly didn’t need any bodyguards, if that’s what she was thinking.  No, this gathering of very partisan Dems greeted her politely, quietly milled about as she gave her stump speech, and then chatted her up for about an hour.

And that’s not the exception that proves the rule. Ask any of the number of Republicans and even the few righty trolls who have accepted our open invitation to show up at Drinking Liberally, and they’ll attest to their friendly reception. (I mean, it’s so easy beating your guys’ rhetorical ass, why would we ever feel the need to threaten to beat your physical one?)

What we see in comparing Hutchison’s uneventful visit to a Democratic picnic versus the hostile and intentionally intimidating Republican crowds who have recently taken to storming town hall meetings, is not just a contrast in style, but a contrast in political culture. Democrats in general, and as a whole, really are more democratic, while the anti-government reactionaries who now seem to comprise the base of the Republican Party have long since forgotten the true meaning of the word they use as a party label.

It may have been savvy of Hutchison to show up at a Democratic picnic, though I doubt she earned herself any votes, but it certainly wasn’t gutsy. I can’t help but feel the opposite would be true if Dow Constantine were to make a similar surprise foray onto partisan Republican turf.

One of the big differences between bloggers like me and so-called real journalists like those at the Seattle Times, is that I tend to mix in generous amounts of editorializing with my reporting, whereas the dailies maintain a strict wall between editorial and news. Or so I’ve been told…

Dear Seattle voters: That must have felt good.

You finally took out your long-simmering resentment of Mayor Greg Nickels by shoving him aside in last week’s primary.

Yup, as far as news ledes go, you can’t get much more objective than that.

What Danny said, and more…

A rap on Mayor Greg Nickels was that he was a strongman. He supposedly made decisions without taking the full advice of the public or City Council. Many citizens felt, therefore, that he was arrogant.

We say we want leadership… we like to whine about not getting it from our elected officials… but the truth is, we hate leadership, for as soon as a politician attempts to actually use political power and exert it, we attack him or her for being arrogant.

Take the Viaduct for example, perhaps the classic textbook illustration of the political cluster fuck we quaintly refer to as “the Seattle Way.” It’s been eight years since the Viaduct was nearly dismantled by the relatively mild Nisqually quake… eight years of watching it topple over, slow motion, onto the waterfront as its western supports gradually sink into the muck at a steady rate of a fraction of an inch a year. Eight years of knowing that we are one inevitable shake away from, depending on the time of day, perhaps the greatest man-made disaster in our region’s history.

And we could be on the verge of electing a mayor with workable plan to stop the plan to replace the Viaduct, but with no real plan to build political consensus for an acceptable alternative. I oppose the Big Bore too, and hell, I might even vote for Mike McGinn myself. But you gotta admit, on this issue at least, our city/region/state is more than a little fucked up. The Viaduct is a triple-digit fatality waiting to happen (or worse), and no elected official with an ounce of common sense or humanity could choose to allow it to stand any longer than absolutely necessary.

And the truth is, given our current financial, environmental, geographic and political constraints, there is no good alternative to the current structure—at least not one that could likely satisfy a majority of voters. The proposed tunnel is hugely expensive and technically uncertain, the current deal placing untenable risks on Seattle taxpayers, all in the service of an outmoded transportation philosophy that ignores the energy and environmental reality of the twenty-first century. Despite the claims of its proponents, the surface/transit option would likely exacerbate congestion, at least in the short term, and by dumping tens of thousands of vehicles a day onto surface streets, could prove the least pedestrian and bike friendly of the three major alternatives. And while a rebuild might seem like the perfect compromise in both price and function, no city planner in his or her right mind would propose building a double-decker freeway today across such a vital and beautiful waterfront, if one already didn’t exist, and it would be crime to burden future generations with such a stunning lack of civic pride and vision.

In their favor, by diverting traffic underground, the tunnel would do the most to open up, revitalize and beautify our waterfront into a civic treasure future generations would come to cherish. The surface/transit option is by far the least expensive and most forward thinking of any of the plans. And the rebuild… well… current generations of Seattleites grew up with the Viaduct, and if it was good enough for us, it’s good enough for future generations as well. (You know, stop trying to change Seattle into New York or San Francisco and all that.) But even if you believe there is a best alternative, good luck convincing a majority of elected officials, let alone a majority of the voting public.

Though, of course, that’s half of what Mayor Nickels somehow managed to do. He always favored a tunnel, and voters be damned, he ultimately got the governor and the legislature, who originally pushed for the less expensive rebuild, to agree to a tunnel deal, albeit an awfully bad deal for Seattle taxpayers. Call that arrogance if you want. But it’s also leadership.

And as we saw in Tuesday’s election results, we hate leadership.

In helping to end Mayor Nickels career, Mike McGinn has made blocking the tunnel one of the centerpieces of his campaign, and like him, I favor the surface/transit option, if not always for the same reasons. And if elected, I’ve little doubt that McGinn will succeed in fulfilling this campaign promise. For in Seattle, saying “no” is what we do best.

But whether a Mayor McGinn could succeed in building political consensus for his own favored alternative to the Viaduct before nature succeeds in knocking the current one down, well, that’s another question. And if he does show the leadership necessary to force his own plan into implementation, how could he possibly survive the dire political consequences of his success?