Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We meet at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E, although some of us will show up a little early for dinner.

Tonight’s activity…perhaps a round of pin the flag on a donkey. Other than that, we will be focused on a most important election, which also gives us our theme song of the night: Black Water by the Doobie Brothers.

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out McCranium for the local Drinking Liberally . Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

Goldy recently wrote about the signs of gloom and doom for the Republicans. The bad new and “expectations management” continues. Just look at a couple of the articles that hit the press this weekend:

Politico has the headline GOP getting crushed in polls, key races:

In case you’ve been too consumed by the Democratic race to notice, Republicans are getting crushed in historic ways both at the polls and in the polls.

At the polls, it has been a massacre. In recent weeks, Republicans have lost a Louisiana House seat they had held for more than two decades and an Illinois House seat they had held for more than three. Internal polls show that next week they could lose a Mississippi House seat that they have held for 13 years.

In the polls, they are setting records (and not the good kind). The most recent Gallup Poll has 67 percent of voters disapproving of President Bush; those numbers are worse than Richard Nixon’s on the eve of his resignation. A CBS News poll taken at the end of April found only 33 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the GOP — the lowest since CBS started asking the question more than two decades ago. By comparison, 52 percent of the public has a favorable view of the Democratic Party.

Things are so bad that many people don’t even want to call themselves Republicans. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has found the lowest percentage of self-described Republicans in 16 years of polling.

It’s hard to dismiss this stuff as “liberal media bias” when elections hand districts (with decades of Republican-control) to the Democrats. The article even has a Republican insider saying:

“The anti-Republican mood is fairly big, and it has been overwhelming,” said Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis.

That’s bad. I mean, at some point even the most heroic self-deception must fail, even in a community that is infamous for rejecting reality and facts.

The Republican gloom and doom is featured in this piece appearing in The Weekly Standard titled Gloomy Republicans: For good reason? by Executive Editor (and noted Wingnut) Fred Barnes:

First, the good news. Conservatives won a sweeping victory in an enormously important election the week before last. Unfortunately, it happened in England….

Alrighty then…. That’s the (totally irrelevant) good news. The bad news is that…

Prospects for Republicans in the 2008 election here at home look grim.
[…]

More than 80 percent of Americans believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction. Democrats have steadily maintained the 10 percentage point lead in voter preference they gained two years ago. And President Bush’s job performance rating is stuck in the low 30s, a level of unpopularity that weakens the Republican case for holding the White House in 2008.

There’s another piece of polling data that is both intriguing and indicative. In a Wall Street Journal/NBC survey last month, John McCain fared better with Republican voters (84 percent to 8 percent) than Barack Obama did with Democrats (78 percent to 12 percent). McCain was also stronger than Obama among independent voters (46 percent to 35 percent).

These are terrific numbers for McCain. But they aren’t enough. In the overall match-up, McCain trailed Obama (43 percent to 46 percent). The explanation for this seeming paradox is quite simple: The Republican base has shrunk. In 2008, there are fewer Republicans. [Emphasis added]

This same pattern holds here in Washington state. In the most recent SurveyUSA Washington head-to-head poll, Sen. John McCain gets 87% of the Republican support compared to 83% of Democrats who support Sen. Barack Obama. (One difference is that among Washington state independents, 55% support Obama and 34% support McCain.)

Overall, however, Obama strongly leads McCain, 53% to 40%. The reason for the double-digit lead is that only 28% of those polled admitted to being a Republican, whereas 41% fess-up to being a Democrat.

SurveyUSA polls provide data on the long-term trend in party affiliation. Here are the percentages since May of 2005:

The numbers show a slight decline of about 1.4% per year in Republican affiliation. At the same time, there is a 2.7% increase per year in Democratic affiliation. The big change is in independents, who have declined by about 4% per year.

The numbers support the notion that, in Washington state, independents are increasingly calling themselves Democrats. An analysis of correlations indicates that the increase in Democratic identity is most strongly associated with a concomitant decline in independents (r = -0.872). In other words, declines in independents “explains” about 76% of the increase in Democrats (found by squaring the correlation coefficient). The decrease in Republican identity “explains” about 20% of the increase in Democratic identity (r = -0.451).

The take-home message is that Republicans have good reason to be gloomy in Washington state. Their brand name is tarnished; the percent of Washingtonians admitting to being a Republican is declining. At the same time Democrats are experiencing growth.

And if Republicans are counting on independents to make up the difference, they are bound to be bitterly disappointed: there are even fewer independents than there were three years ago as former independents start calling themselves Democrats.

More on those McPastor problems:

(There are some sixty more media clips from the past week in politics now posted at Hominid Views)

Sen. Russ Feingold is offering a $5000 check to one of ten progressive House candidates. You get to help decide who gets the dough.

Cast your vote for Darcy in the Progressive Patriots Fund election today. Let’s show them the kind of strong grassroots support that has allowed Darcy to kick Reichert’s ass in dollars raised and number of individual contributors in every quarter since she joined the race this election cycle.

Did Obama just wrap up the Democratic nomination? Is Hillary’s gas tax relief a bunch of hot air? Would raising the gas tax be the responsible thing to do? Are Democrats dismissing Dino Rossi at their own peril?

Goldy and friends engage in some friendly sparring but, as the evening wore on, nearly ended up in a death fight over these and other big issues of the moment at the Montlake Ale House. Goldy was joined by blogging pioneer N in Seattle, the lovely, talented, and hard-working Molly, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, and HorsesAss personality Carl Ballard.

The show is 46:04, and is available here as an MP3 file.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_may_6_2008.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We meet at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E, although some of us will show up a little early for dinner.

Tonight’s activity will be a brawl over tonight’s theme song: either Goin’ Back To Indiana by The Jackson Five or Carolina in My Mind by James Taylor. So get past your bitterness, dodge a little sniper fire and get involved…in the political mêlée.

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out McCranium for the local Drinking Liberally . Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

(There are some 60 media clips from the past week in politics posted at Hominid Views.)

Sen. John McCain explained his energy policy yesterday at a town hall meeting in Denver:

“My friends, I will have an energy policy…which will eliminate our dependence on oil from Middle East, that will…then prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.”

Did you catch that? McCain is suggesting that the real reason we are in Iraq is their oil.

War for oil is not a surprise to many of us. The surprise is that the likely Republican nominee for President, in effect, admits it.

McCain apparently tried clarifying his statement but, as Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow point out, there were three different explanations by the end of the day.

Of course this war is about the oil. As was the Gulf War in 1991. Yeah…in that earlier war, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait first. The Coalition liberated Kuwait under the authority of U.N. Resolution 660. But would the U.S. bother to fight a war over Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait if it didn’t involve “our” oil supply? I mean, if Iraq had invaded and occupied, say, Namibia, would the U.S. respond with military force? Not likely.

In fact, South Africa did occupy, oppress, and commit atrocities in Namibia—in violation of numerous U.N. mandates. For some twenty years beginning in 1966, the U.N. passed a series of resolutions that condemed and declared South Africa’s occupation of Namibia illegal:

The General Assembly […]

3. Demands once again that the apartheid regime of South Africa immediately and unconditionally withdraw its illegal administration, occupation army and police force from Namibia;

But Namibia isn’t an oil producing country. No oil…no rush on that illegal occupation. No dead Americans, no dead South Africans.

You may well believe that the coalition’s war against Iraq in 1991 was justified by Iraq’s hostile actions and illegal occupation. But don’t fool yourself…when it comes right down to it, the action was about oil. And every time we fill our gas tanks, we purchase a little bit of human blood on the side.

Likewise, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not about WMD, terrorism, or human rights. It was about the second largest oil reserves in the world. It’s shockingly refreshing to hear McCain, a powerful Republican, actually fess up to the reason behind our military actions.

At the same time, McCain doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by the fraudulent claims made by the Bush administration that misled the Senate and the American people. He doesn’t seem troubled by the heavy toll in human lives (on the order of hundreds of thousands dead) and the untold number of injuries wrought by those lies. Apparently, McCain is just fine with those lies.

For McCain, it would seem, political party is thicker than blood.

Chris Grygiel at Strange Bedfellows reports on a new Elway poll that looks at the Washington state gubernatorial race. I’ll get to Chris’ odd take on the results below, but first I want to examine the poll in some detail.

The poll of 405 people shows Governor Christine Gregoire leading Dino Rossi 43% to 38%. The 5% spread looks to be a small improvement for Gregoire from the 4% spread she had in a mid-April SurveyUSA poll, and definitely better than the 1% spread in the early April SurveyUSA poll and the 1% spread in a late March Rassmussen poll.

The current Elway poll results do fall within its margin of error. Statistically, this means that the probability of Gregoire beating Rossi is something under 95%, based on what we can tell from a relatively small sample.

While it’s easy to dismiss the results as a “statistical tie” (especially when…you know…it’s your candidate who is losing) poll results can be more informative than declaring a “statistical tie.” They allow us to estimate probabilities that Gregoire or Rossi would win in an election held now.

The most intuitive way of extracting that information is to use Monte Carlo simulations of elections and simply count the number of Gregoire wins and Rossi wins. I simulated a million gubernatorial elections of 405 voters each election. Each person had a 43% chance of voting for Gregoire, a 38% chance of voting for Rossi, and a 19% chance of voting for neither.

Gregoire won 889,889 of the elections, and Rossi took 100,318. In other words, the poll results suggest that, in an election held right now, Gregoire would have an 89.9% of winning the election and Rossi would have a 10.1% chance of winning the election.

Here is a plot showing the distribution of votes in the million elections:

The area to the right of the red line shows wins for Gregoire and those to the left are wins for Rossi.

Chris Grygiel had an interesting take on this race (“Rossi gains on Gregoire in new poll,” reads the headline). He portrays Gregoire as losing ground with this poll, because she did even better in a January Elway poll. But the reality is that numerous polls have been taken since January, and the ground that Gregoire lost happened months ago.

A late February Rasmussen poll showed Rossi with a 61% chance of beating Gregoire. That turned around in late March and Early April when polls released by Rasmussen and SurveyUSA each gave Gregoire a 61% chance of beating Rossi. By mid-April, Gregoire was up to an 87% chance of winning an election. Now, in early May, the Elway poll gives Gregoire a 90% probability of winning.

Gregoire seems to have momentum on her side…at least, that’s what the recent polls say.

Is it acute media silliness or has the Rev. Wright issue now cost Obama the election? Should a prescription for medical marijuana come with a death sentence? Do Americans have something to learn about war from Europeans? (Are we traitors for even contemplating such a thing?). Will Sound Transit take the road less traveled? Is Dino’s fantasy transportation plan going to put him on the fast track to Olympia or board him on a bus back to Bellevue?

Goldy and friends dig into these savory questions over a pitcher of beer at the Montlake Ale House.

Goldy is joined by Geov Parrish, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly. Carl, and Lee.

The show is 55:10, and is available here as a 51.7 MB MP3.

[Audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_april_29_2008.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We meet at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E, although some of us will show up a little early for dinner.

While you’ve got Drinking Liberally in mind, check out the Tri-City Herald‘s write-up of the blogosphere’s newest media darling, Jimmy of McCranium, and the Richland chapter of Drinking Liberally. Better yet, stop by and have Jimmy buy you a beer (or ten) at O’Callahan’s, in the Shilo Inn, 50 Comstock Rd, in Richland.

If the Seattle and Richland chapters are out of your commuting range, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

Did Sen. Hillary Clinton win the Pennsylvania primary in any meaningful way? Does cutting a fighter jet into little pieces make for good art? And who is the single most conservative member of the house on foreign policy? These questions and more are raised, pondered, re-examined, synthesized, refined, interrogated, beat to death, waterboarded, and stacked on the floor in neat little pyramids by Goldy and friends.

Yes…it was another evening of Podcasting Liberally.

Joining Goldy was a panel of the blogosphere’s finest: Will, Ray, mcjoan, and Daniel .

The show is 50:07, and is available here as a 47 MB MP3.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_april_22_2008.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We meet at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E, although some of us will show up a little early for dinner.

Tonight we’ll raise a stein to the earth, celebrate Bush’s great achievment, toast (and maybe roast) Will, and…um, maybe watch election returns from that one state back east…oh, what’s its name….

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out McCranium for the local Drinking Liberally . Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

It’s official. President George W. Bush has united the American people, who have collectively declared him: Worst. President. Ever.

President Bush has set a record he’d presumably prefer to avoid: the highest disapproval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. The approval rating matches the low point of his presidency, and the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt.

The previous record of 67% was reached by Harry Truman in January 1952, when the United States was enmeshed in the Korean War.

The title comes at the end of a long downhill slide from having the record highest approval rating in September, 2001. Bush earned that record by ignoring a daily presidential briefing dated 6 August 2001 titled, “Bin Laden determined to strike in US.” (Among other things, the memo pointed out, “…FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”)

Besides the USA Today/Gallup poll, there was an ARG poll released today and a Rasmussen poll released Sunday that included presidential approval.

The ARG poll gave Bush 22% approval and 72% disapproval. This isn’t the worst Bush has done in the ARG poll…in February, his approval was a mere 19% and his disapproval was an astounding 77%. But, then, ARG presidential approvals polls seem to be biased against Bush, and ARG, in general, has something of a reputation for quirky (i.e. highly variable) results.

The Rasmussen approval poll (which is now taken weekly instead of daily) has Bush’s approval at 34% and disapproval at 64%. The Rasmussen presidential approval polls have always been biased in favor of Bush relative to other major pollsters (but consistently and reliably so). We can compare Sunday’s results with past performance in the Rasmussen poll. When the April polls are averaged at the end of the month, this is likely to be Bush’s worst performance to date–easily beating the 36% approval and 61% disapproval from last May. Rasmussen points out:

Sometimes it is difficult to keep the ratings in perspective. In February 2005, at the beginning of the President’s second term, the number who Strongly Approved was roughly equal to the number who Strongly Disapproved. Now, three years later, just 13% Strongly Approve while more than three times as many—45%–Strongly Disapprove.

Aggregates of multiple polls (e.g. Prof. PollKatz or Pollster.com) also show Bush at the lowest point of his presidency.

So…we have a lame duck Worst. President. Ever. But consider this: at this point in the second term, Ronald Reagan was hovering around 50% approval and Bill Clinton’s approval was in the low 60%. It isn’t just a “lame duck” effect.

Does Bush’s pathetic approval/disapproval matter? From Rasmussen:

In March, as the President’s Approval Rating slipped, the number of Americans who consider themselves to be Democrats remained near the highest levels ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports.

Yeah…I guess it does a little. Besides needlessly sending our soldiers to their death and running up enormous debt for an illegal war that was fraudulently foisted upon the American people, besides the erosion of our civil liberties, the invasion of our privacy, and the approval of torture contrary to our treaties, in addition to causing massive (and, quite possibly, permanent) damage to our reputation abroad, it looks like the Bush administration has also made it downright distasteful (or, perhaps, embarrassing) to be a Republican.