Goldy

Over on Slog, I do a little myth-busting, pointing out that despite all the credit Dino Rossi gets for balancing the state budget in 2003, he really didn’t do much budget writing at all. In fact, according to contemporaneous news reports at the time:

The Republican budget has much in common with the all-cuts plan that Democratic Gov. Gary Locke unveiled in December. In fact, Rossi opened a press briefing yesterday with a PowerPoint presentation titled: “Following the Governor’s Lead.”

The truth is, Rossi wrote the 2003-2005 state budget much in the same way that Dave Reichert caught the Green River Killer, in that he didn’t. Though just like with Reichert’s claim to fame, that hasn’t stopped the media from parroting Rossi’s revisionist narrative unchallenged.

Our friend Joan McCarter’s got the scoop at Daily Kos, with new polling data showing the race in WA-08 between Republican Dave Reichert and Democratic challenger Suzan DelBene closing to within the margin of error:

Dave Reichert, for the third election in a row, remains among the most vulnerable Republican House members. This is the swing district where Darcy Burner nipped at Reichert’s heels in both 2006 and 2008. It could be that voters in the 8th have finally decided to stop grading Reichert on a curve, and expect their congressman to start doing more than just showing up….

Most of the public polling in the race has been done by SUSA, which has had some pretty funky numbers in the Seattle Metro area in polls this cycle. Nonetheless, the SUSA numbers have shown an increasingly tight race here, with their latest poll showing a seven-point gap, Reichert leading 52-45. An internal poll released by DelBene last week confirms PPP, with Reichert leading by the skin of his teeth, 48-44.

In other words, we’re off to the races!

And a quick look at the cross-tabs shows that there’s still plenty of upside for DelBene, with 31% of WA-08 voters still having no opinion of her, and plenty of opportunity for her to pick up support with women, who she currently splits 47-47, despite Reichert’s anti-choice record. As far as I know, there’s little or no outside money committed to defending Reichert’s seat, so if DelBene can continue her air assault while perhaps doing a little better job of introducing herself to voters, this one appears winnable.

And, as Joan astutely points out, given the Seattle Times’ primary abandonment of him, “it doesn’t seem likely that Reichert can look forward to another October surprise hatchet job coming from them.” Cross your fingers.

The Tacoma News Tribune now makes the fourth major paper to endorse Democratic Sen. Patty Murray over Republican challenger and foreclosure speculator Dino Rossi:

Murray has made a political career out of defying expectations. She’s grown into a formidable lawmaker who has proven she can both help lead the Democratic Party and work across the aisle when needed. To turn her out now, when she is at the height of her ability to fight for important state, regional and local projects, would be foolish.

Foolish indeed. Which is why none of these endorsements comes as much of a surprise.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvm0cWgHp6A&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Yup, Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie are spending millions of dollars in secret, undisclosed money, some of it from wealthy foreign donors, to run misleading attack ads against Democrats nationwide. And much of that dirty money is being spent right here in Washington state against Sen. Patty Murray.

And Dino Rossi accuses Murray of being a captive of the other Washington?

Of course, all this is made possible by the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision, which overturned a century of established precedent by essentially ruling that money has more free speech rights than speech itself. And the secrecy is aided by the Senate Republicans refusing to let the DISCLOSE Act come to the floor for a vote… a bill that Sen. Murray has strongly supported, and which Rossi would oppose. The result has been to dramatically expand the destructive and undemocratic influence of wealthy special interests:

“We have allowed these 527s to run wild, unfettered, unregulated, not subject to the same rules and regulations as the national parties. And I think that’s been incredibly unhealthy.”
— Republican strategist Ed Gillespie

Yup, that’s the same Ed Gillespie who is working with Rove to fund and run these secretly financed ads on behalf of Dino Rossi. But then, it’s hard to be a Republican these days without also being a shameless hypocrite.

Hmm. If the Seattle City Council can’t manage to pull the trigger on Mike O’Brien’s very sensible proposal to create a city-run registry to allow citizens to opt-out of receiving the yellow pages — thus saving innumerable trees, not to mention $350,000 a year in recycling costs — perhaps it should consider our surfeit of unwanted phonebooks as an opportunity to solve the city’s homeless problem?

The books form a ready made, insulated building module held in place with sheet metal angles normally used as drywall bead material. Once tensioned, the phone books form a stable wall into which additional layers can be easily screwed. The roof joists are also made of laminated phone books. The finished structure becomes a kind of time capsule, recording the names and numbers of community members.

Yeah sure, it looks kinda silly, but I mean, who the fuck actually still uses a phonebook these days to, you know, actually look up phone numbers and stuff? So this makes as much sense as simply tossing ’em straight from your porch, into the recycling bin.

Or, the Council could just give us the opportunity to tell the phonebook publishers to shove off.

Don’t drink from the red cups. That’s what I’ve been telling folks here for years.

John 15:6
If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

Discuss.

The Oregonian also endorsed Sen. Patty Murray yesterday, highlighting her power and influence, and lavishing praise on her for the careful attention she pays to local issues and veterans’ affairs.

Once upon a time, the Pacific Northwest was a powerhouse in the U.S. Senate, wielding the long-term muscle of powerful chairmen like Mark Hatfield, Warren Magnuson and Bob Packwood. After generational and other changes, the region has spent years in a weakened position, and has been only slowly working itself back.

By itself, that could be a reason to re-elect Washington Sen. Patty Murray, after three terms the senior senator from the region and an increasingly influential force in both the Appropriations Committee and the Democratic leadership. But Murray, with a long history of being underestimated, has a range of other arguments, including her tenacious advocacy on behalf of veterans and in support of a Hanford cleanup.

And just like the Seattle Times, they didn’t have many kind words to say about Republican challenger Dino Rossi, arguing that his perfunctory parroting of NRSC talking points “provided little reason to replace Murray”:

Rossi in particular seems to get further and further away from the productive, working-across-the-aisle state legislator he was 10 years ago and more into a generic Republican Senate candidate who might be running in any state. This year it’s become common to use images of the U.S. Capitol as an accusation, but that is in fact where senators work.

I final sentiment that Rossi is unlikely to learn from personal experience.

As I’ve previously predicted on numerous occasions (for example, here and here), the normally Republican-shilling Seattle Times broke character today, and endorsed Sen. Patty Murray. Why?

The truth about Murray is she delivers for Washington and the Northwest. She secured funds to begin to replace the I-5 bridge connecting Washington and Oregon, which helps business and ports. She rounded up federal dollars to repair the Howard Hanson Dam and protect the Green River Valley. She saved the veterans hospital in Walla Walla and secured funds to add a clinic there. She worked for years to win approval of the Wild Sky Wilderness Area in Snohomish County.

Or at least, that’s the reason why I’ve been convinced since Dino Rossi entered the race that Murray had the Times endorsement wrapped up. The Blethens may be a lot of things, but they’re not the kind to toss out one of the most powerful appropriators in the nation.

That said, it’s actually a pretty damn glowing endorsement of Murray from start to finish, and takes more than few shots at Rossi and his lackluster, GOP-talking-point-mimicking campaign. For example:

On almost every topic, Murray is studied and has an answer. On the issue of net neutrality, which involves unfettered access to the Internet, Rossi did not have a clue, even though this issue is pressing within the tech industry.

Not to mention a pressing issue with the Blethens. I mean, it’s not like they haven’t editorialized in favor of net neutrality like, dozens of times or something, so you’d think Rossi might have bothered to at least know what it is. But then, that’s what happens when your campaign is run by out-of-state gunslingers with little feel for the local lay of the land, and when the candidate himself is remarkably disengaged and, well, lazy.

And the last thing Washington needs right now is a lazy, disengaged U.S. Senator. Or so says the Seattle Times.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DRkUU-qhjk[/youtube]

If I were a far-right-wing Christianist Bible-thumper, and he were an outspoken liberal talk show host, I’d say that God is striking down Glenn Beck as punishment for his sins. But I’m not and he isn’t, so I won’t.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS7iGh02oMs[/youtube]

Wow. That’s quite an endorsement for Republican Mark Hargrove:

In the primary, we favored Hargrove’s more moderate Republican challenger Nancy Wyatt. Hargrove is hard-line and inflexible. He agreed never to raise taxes. Ever. That’s a little rigid.

So why would the Seattle Times still endorse such a “hard-line,” “inflexible,” “rigid” and, let’s face it, far-right, theocratic, intolerant extremist like Hargrove?

Still, voters should select Hargrove instead of Geoff Simpson, the incumbent Democrat, who has been accused of domestic violence and who has not distinguished himself in Olympia.

Which is kinda funny, because in fact, the real reason the Times refuses to endorse Simpson is exactly because he has distinguished himself in Olympia… as a strong, progressive champion of working families.

But, you know, the Times will pretty much swallow anything to get an anti-tax/anti-labor politician into the Legislature, even if it also means the candidate is anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-stem-cell-research, anti-birth-control, anti-immigrant and anti-environment. And the Times knows all this. It’s all there on Hargrove’s website and in his various candidate questionnaires.

I mean, the guy has pledged never to raises taxes ever, no matter what, not for education or public health or public safety or even in the event of an emergency. Honestly… how can the Times responsibly endorse somebody running for a deliberative body, who expressly promises to refuse to deliberate?

You know, Hargrove is probably not a bad person. He’s probably not even crazy. He’s just wrong. Completely and utterly mind-numbingly wrong.

But the Times’ editors… they know better. And they should be ashamed of themselves.

Apparently, I’ve offended the delicate sensibilities of the TNT’s Patrick O’Callahan, who thinks my posts on Dave Reichert’s brain are “vile.”

A rather vile post on the thestranger.com two weeks ago, “What’s wrong with Reichert’s brain?,” speculated that the head injury U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert suffered last February had more or less left the 8th District Republican a confused punch-drunk unfit for Congress.

The author, David Goldstein, cut-and-pasted excerpts from a UCLA medical website into lurid accounts of Reichert’s injury and theorized that the congressman had an atrophied brain – “Which leaves me wondering if the 8th CD is on the verge of re-electing a congressman with an… um… intellectual disability.”

Uh-huh. You know what some people might also find kinda “vile” Patrick, especially coming from the editorial page editor of an almost-major daily newspaper? Completely mischaracterizing somebody else’s words. For example, far from describing Reichert as “a confused punch-drunk unfit for Congress,” I merely quoted Reichert’s own “lurid account” of his injury, cited the medical literature, and then posited this rather measured conclusion:

Thus it is not unreasonable to expect that a brain trauma as severe as that described by Reichert, in a man of his age, and untreated for so long, could very well have resulted in some degree of permanent neurological impairment.

To be honest, Reichert has always struck me as “a confused punch-drunk unfit for Congress,” even before his injury, but those are O’Callahan’s pithy words, not mine.

Of course, it’s not really my words that O’Callahan and others find vile, but rather, the subject matter. What offends O’Callahan is that I would dare speak publicly what his colleagues have been whispering quietly for some time. So in my own defense, I’d like to suggest the following analogy:

Let’s say the Mariners were about to sign a particularly sought after free agent pitcher who, one of the TNT’s sportswriters discovers, had failed to disclose the severity of an injury to the elbow on his throwing arm, suffered during a freak, off-season gardening accident. Would it be vile to report on the details of this injury, and to speculate whether he may have suffered any long term or permanent damage?

No, of course not. We pay pitchers to hurl balls, so an elbow injury would be rather relevant.

Congressmen, on the other hand, we pay to make decisions. To deliberate. To negotiate. To, dare I say, debate.

In other words, we hire our congressmen to use their brains, in the same way we hire pitchers to use their arms.

Dave Reichert, by his own admission, suffered a severe brain trauma — much, much, much more severe than he or his staff at first let on — and while it may be an uncomfortable and sensitive subject to broach, it is completely and utterly relevant to the job he is seeking. And that, I assume, is why both Politico and the Seattle Times eventually picked up the story.

No, if there’s anything “vile” about this incident, it’s the way some local journalists, out of politeness or civility or whatnot, have been complicit in Reichert’s effort to hide his condition from voters.

Not surprising really, considering incumbent Republican Dave Reichert’s refusal to actually campaign, but it looks like he suddenly has a real race on his hands:

Democrat Suzan DelBene is within striking distance against Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.), according to an internal poll conducted for her campaign.

The poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday, found Reichert with 48 percent and DelBene with 44 percent, with 8 percent undecided.

Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates surveyed 400 likely voters and the poll carried a 4.9-point margin of error.

The results show DelBene moving in the right direction. The Democratic firm polled the race in August and found Reichert ahead 50 percent to 41 percent.

Last week a SurveyUSA poll showed DelBene closing within 7 points, down from the supposedly comfortable 13-point spread Reichert had enjoyed only one month before.

And before you simply dismiss these latest results as an internal poll, remember, that’s not how all this works. Candidates poll their own races to give themselves an accurate view of the political landscape, not to deceive themselves. The spin comes in choosing which poll results to release and which to keep private. So it does indeed appear that DelBene has some momentum.

Huh. Perhaps Reichert might want to reconsider his stealth campaign strategy, and maybe agree to a debate or two. That is, if he’s not too mentally impaired to handle it.