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Survey USA released a new poll for the new WA first congressional district today. The poll of 456 voters likely to vote in the August primary, and 661 registered voters (for a general election match-up), was taken on the 29th and 30th of May, surveys the open congressional seat and more.

For the Washington primary, the top two winners are Republican John Koster and Democrat Darcy Burner. Burner leads the crowded Democratic field by +10%:

• John Koster (R) 46%
• Darcy Burner (D) 19%
• Undecided 16%
• Laura Ruderman (D) 6%
• Suzan DelBene (D) 4%
• Steve Hobbs (D) 4%
• Larry Ishmael (I) 4%
• Darshan Rauniyar (D) 1%

The sample size for the primary poll is rather small. Nevertheless, we can make some inference about who will be Koster’s opponent in November. Darcy Burner has a little over 1/2 the “votes” (88 of 173) among those who chose someone other than Koster. A Monte Carlo analyses gives Burner a 56.3% probability of advancing to the general election. There is a 43.7% chance that Ruderman, DelBene, Hobbs, Ishmael or Rauniyar will advance instead of Burner.

The not-so-good news for Democrats comes from the head-to-head results of each Democrat against Koster:

• Koster leads Burner 48% to 37%
• Koster leads DelBene 49% to 32%
• Koster leads Ruderman 49% to 32%
• Koster leads Hobbs 47% to 31%
• Koster leads Rauniyar 50% to 28%

In all cases, the poll results suggest that Koster has something over a 95% probability of winning. And that is not good news for Democrats.

There were a couple of other races that shed light on this poll. Mitt Romney leads President Obama in the district 45% to 44%. And Rob McKenna leads Jay Inslee in the district 52% to 38%. Wow…this is the same 1st district that I live in?!?

In fact, these numbers are so surprising that the election sleuths at Kos Elections (formerly Swing State Project) find the poll results implausible:

If you read a little further down, though, the poll’s credibility takes a major hit, when you see the presidential numbers: Romney leads Obama 45-44. This is a district that, adjusted for the new boundaries, went for Obama 56-42 over McCain. This is also the state’s median district (Obama went 57% in all of Washington in ’08), so Rob McKenna should probably be leading by a couple points in the gubernatorial race, but instead he’s up 52-38 over Jay Inslee. Either this sample is way off, or else Obama and Inslee are finding some way to get, say, 120% of the vote in WA-07 in statewide polls to compensate for such a steep falloff in Dem fortunes in the new 1st.

These are all good points. But I’d sure like to see some more independent polling for the district before I chalk this one up to being an outlier….

Scott Morgan has a post up today asking why Democrats continue to defend the drug war. He quotes Paul Waldman at The American Prospect, who wrote this:

At the moment, there remains a strong incentive to support the status quo, lest you be targeted in your next race as some kind of hippie-lover. The incentives on the other side, on the other hand, are almost nil. When was the last time somebody lost a race for being too tough on drugs? The half of Americans who favor marijuana legalization are not an organized voting bloc that gets together to punish its opponents at the polls.

Waldman posted that on Tuesday the 29th. On that same day, Texas Congressman Silvestre Reyes was defeated in a primary by El Paso City Council member Beto O’Rourke. O’Rourke decided to challenge Reyes after the longtime Congressman fought back against O’Rourke’s attempt to pass a city resolution calling for a broader debate on drug policy, including legalization. Reyes ran attack ads trying to paint O’Rourke as being soft on drugs. And it backfired. O’Rourke captured over 50% of the vote and prevented even a runoff.

While some may argue that there were several factors beyond the drug war that led to Reyes’ defeat, the Attorney General’s race in Oregon a few weeks ago was clearly an example of someone losing a race for being too tough on drugs. Former U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton was the early favorite to win the Democratic nomination for Attorney General, but his previous attempts to undermine Oregon’s medical marijuana laws came back to haunt him, as underdog Ellen Rosenblum attacked him over that and won a landslide victory. In that race, medical marijuana was clearly the main differentiator between the candidates, and the “tough of drugs” candidate got demolished.

Morgan sums it up really well:

Really, the whole notion that candidates who support reform will be labeled as “hippie-lovers,” is nothing more than a fictitious cliché without a single good example to justify its utterance. Instead, we’re witnessing the emergence of the exact opposite, a new dynamic in democratic races wherein a history of defending the drug war is a political liability that can be exploited to powerful effect by candidates who side with the majority of voters in favoring reform.

That’s why it’s so frustrating to see observers like Waldman, who supports reforming drug policy, nevertheless endeavor to uphold the notion that political realities require our leaders to do the wrong thing. If Obama were to read that analysis and find it convincing, Waldman would have succeeded in helping the President rationalize his refusal to support reform. We’re hurting our cause when we say stuff like this, and worse yet, the idea itself isn’t even true.

I’ve often argued that Democratic support for the drug war isn’t as much a result of special interest pandering as it seems (although that certainly happens). Much of it is just inertia from a time not long ago when this political calculus was actually true. But times have changed quite drastically in the past 10-20 years, and those who’ve noticed the change are being rewarded by the voters. And those who aren’t are finding themselves like Silvestre Reyes and Dwight Holton, wondering how they managed to lose to “some kind of hippie-lover”.

I still think a closed primary is better than an open one. But I’m coming around to the system we have. So reading my friend Ray’s piece on the California top 2 system, here are some rambling thoughts on the process here.

The goofiness of having Democrats run against Democrats in a general election is both the main hurdle to acceptance and what I’ve come to like about it. So, yeah, it makes it tougher for Democrats to elect the most liberal person in liberal districts. And it makes it tougher for the Democrats to control who is their nominee.

On the other hand, we’ll have campaigns in 2 of Seattle’s Legislative Districts doing independent GOTV. It can help statewide elections to have local elections that matter. And, I like having some choice in November.

I’d prefer if we went back to the old system, or better yet had a primary where Democrats couldn’t help pick the Republican nominee or Republicans pick the Democratic nominee. But I’m not as opposed to the system as I was when we got it.

– These people aren’t advocating for “life.” They are advocating a political strategy that stigmatizes a legal medical procedure in order to punish those they see as sexually transgressive with either death or the financial instability that follows from a lack of reproductive choice. [h/t]

– The gun violence problem is in Seattle. The solution is in Olympia. Maybe, but let’s not ignore what Seattle can do and let’s also not ignore the gun violence in the rest of the state.

– Chart of the day.

– Lord knows I’m a terrible speller. But Amercia?

– I found this piece on dead pigeons quite fascinating, but note there were some graphic videos/pictures.

– Sometimes I listen to Mariners games on the other team’s feed (you get a different assessment than from the Seattle announcers). Early this season, when they were playing the A’s, the radio guy said that there was another event at the same time as the game the following day, so everybody take public transportation. It wasn’t a wishy-washy you might want to consider type of thing. I don’t know if we need a system as comprehensive as BART before we can not be worried about getting stuck in traffic when we build sports stadiums.

– Honk if you love Jesus

As I was leaving work today, I was told to be careful. The implication, I suppose, that because of the awful things that had happened earlier today that with the suspect then still on the loose, that I should be afraid walking home. That perhaps I shouldn’t go out for dinner if I was planning it. That maybe I shouldn’t go out for a bike ride after work even if it’s nice out, because who knows?

And I appreciate the concern. I get the fear. But you can’t wall yourself off from life because of some slim possibility that something will happen. You can’t hide from fear. For those of us who live or work or play in Seattle, well, it’s our city.

It’s not the city of the gunmen. It’s not the city of the drug dealers or the gangsters. It’s not the city of criminals. It’s our city.

Obviously, none of this is to say that we should ignore crime or murder on a policy level, or that there aren’t policies that we should implement to prevent future tragedies of this nature. I hope this prompts us to look at our gun culture and our culture of violence. What it should mean is that we can still live our lives in our city.

Via Slog:

Tim Eyman’s 2/3 majority requirement for raising new state revenue is unconstitutional, according to King County Superior Court Judge Bruce E. Heller.

The law enacted through Initiative 1053 is ruled unconstitutional; it directly contradicts the Washington State Constitution, Article II, Section 22:

No bill shall become a law unless on its final passage the vote be taken by yeas and nays, the names of the members voting for and against the same be entered on the journal of each house, and a majority of the members elected to each house be recorded thereon as voting in its favor.

Of course, the ruling will be appealed and, ultimately, settled by the Supreme Court. With any luck, the Supreme Court won’t be able to weasel its way out of a substantive ruling this time….

The next question: If I-1053 is unconstitutional, what should be the fate of its latest incarnation, I-1185, should it get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot? Will AG Rob McKenna sue Eyman to keep an unconstitutional initiative off the ballot?

You know, like AG Christine Gregoire did with Goldy’s Horses’ Ass initiative.

These anti-choice acts of violence that have nothing to do with any other act of violence have come fast these last few days.

A New Orleans women’s health organization was destroyed last week by an unknown arsonist, becoming the latest target of attacks on women’s health clinics in the south.

The organization, Women With A Vision, was likely singled out because it offers AIDS prevention help, HIV testing, and substance abuse assistance to sex workers, transgender women, poor women, and women of color. The clinic also does community outreach and education on those issues. Like two incidents in Georgia last week, no one was injured in the fire, but the clinic lost a good share of its resources.

This incident and the countless — unrelated — ones like it that have nothing whatever to do with the political rhetoric that opposing women’s rights to control their own bodies. It certainly has nothing to do with a climate of violence.

[h/t]

Rob McKenna is being sued by some 90 women. The reason is his participation in the Attorneys General lawsuit against the 2009 Patient Protection and Affordable Care act (i.e. “Obamacare”). The group argues that:

[…] McKenna violated his ethical duties as an attorney by pushing for the entire health-care law to be overturned; that McKenna should be forced to file a corrective pleading with the US Supreme Court saying that he only opposes the individual mandate aspect of the health care law, which requires every US citizen to get insurance; and that the court should find McKenna guilty of issuing “false and misleading statements” about the health care law because he claimed that his lawsuit was aimed not at overturning the entire act, but only at eliminating the individual mandate.

McKenna has been lying to Washingtonians. He has repeatedly claimed that he supports some aspects of the law, all the while participating in the effort to overturn the entire law.

Today we learn that King County Superior Court judge Sharon Armstrong will not issue preliminary injunction directing McKenna to fix the inconsistencies between his public and legal positions by amending his Supreme Court briefings.

The meme in the mainstream media seems to chalk the ruling up as a perliminary victory for McKenna. But Publicola political uberwonks Erica C. Barnett and Josh Feit (now at Crosscut) catch the more nuanced meaning of the ruling—the courts won’t judge McKenna for his political lies:

Although King County Superior Court Judge Sharon Armstrong’s rejection of a request to enjoin McKenna from arguing against the federal health care law certainly looks like a win for McKenna, the ruling effectively finds that, contrary to his public statements, he has in his legal motions consistently opposed the entire Affordable Care Act, not just the requirement that every American buy health insurance. The judge specifically said that McKenna’s public statements were “political statements” that had to be judged in the political realm rather than the courtroom. As to McKenna’s going along with other states’ attorneys general in seeking to have the law overturned in its entirety, Armstrong said the court lacked authority to second-guess whether it was a wise legal strategy.

In other words, Judge Armstrong leaves it to the voters of Washington to judge McKenna for his political lies.

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics, conversation and birth certificate scrutiny over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally. We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm, but some folks show up earlier for dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? The Tri-Cities chapter of Drinking liberally meets every Tuesday night as well. Also next Monday, the Olympia, Yakima, and South Bellevue chapters of Drinking Liberally meet.

With 232 chapters of Living Liberally, including twelve in Washington state and three more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s a chapter near you.

– If you drove hundreds of miles out of your way for booze this weekend because of the transition between state and private stores, it may be because you’re a lush.

– Washington state politics are this fucked up.

– I think this sort of writing about race–and really about American politics–as though history doesn’t exist is a problem. Specifically, journalists are fond of saying “racism is only one factor” without realizing that any racism is unacceptable.

– I’m not saying the fact that Nickleback is Rob McKenna’s favorite band should disqualify him from being governor (that’s what his policies are for) but it’s certainly a mark against him.

– How the GOP is fighting for you.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Tacoma.

This one is related to something in the news from May, good luck!

Leviticus 18:17
Do not have sexual relations with both a woman and her daughter. Do not have sexual relations with either her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter; they are her close relatives. That is wickedness.

Discuss.