HorsesAss.Org

In yesterday’s editorial endorsement of Patty Murray, the Everett Herald does its best to say nice things about Dino Rossi, but just can’t get past the doctrinaire Republican campaign he’s been running:

Rossi’s uncompromising approaches on taxes, immigration and health-care reform strike us as too rigid to be effective.

What the Herald describes as “rigid” others have ascribed to a veer to the right, presumably in response to Clint Didier and the overhyped Tea Party fad, but that’s a meme I just don’t buy. For one, it’s hard to veer to a position you already hold, and Rossi has always been a far-right-wing candidate on many major issues. But more significantly, a veer to the right just doesn’t make sense as an electoral strategy in a state that, let’s face it, is solidly Democratic, even if by somewhat modest margins.

Some GOPers may not have noticed, but Washington state voters haven’t gone for the Republican candidate in a U.S. Senate race since 1994, in a presidential contest since 1984, and in a gubernatorial race since 1980. The margins aren’t always huge, but the outcome is clear: Washington is a solidly Democratic state.

And the logical conclusion from these results? In order to win in Washington, statewide Republican candidates need to win a significant portion of Democratic voters. And therein lies Rossi’s major weakness: Democratic voters just don’t like him.

Of course, Rossi almost won in 2004, running an all-things-to-all-people tabula rossi campaign against an overconfident Chris Gregoire who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) pull the trigger on the barrage of last-minute attack ads that would have propelled her to a (relatively) comfortable victory. But the same swing Democrats who almost carried him into the governors mansion in 2004, knew Rossi better by 2008, and Gov. Gregoire went on to win reelection by a more typical Democratic margin.

And in 2010, Democrats know Rossi even better, a prejudice that would take a substantial GOP turnout advantage, and/or a near sweep of true independents, to overcome. And while Rossi’s certainly right that he stands a better chance of election in a non-presidential year, when Democratic turnout is inevitably lighter, he’d be foolish to think he could win this race without any Democratic support at all.

And it’s hard to see many Democratic voters — self-identified or not — casting their ballots for such a “rigid” Republican.

According to Politico, I’ve been promoted. About time.

Last week’s contest was won by Brian. It was the Tate Modern in London, where former British Prime Minister Tony Blair canceled a book tour event because of the threat of protests.

Here’s this week’s contest – a purely random location. Good luck!

A new KING-5/SurveyUSA poll shows Democratic Suzan DelBene now trailing Republican incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert 52-45%, and while a seven-point gap a month for the election wouldn’t usually be something the challenger would tout, this latest survey shows a dramatic tightening of the race at time when Republicans were expecting their Big Red Wave to be approaching its peak.

In an election for US House of Representatives in Washington State’s 8th Congressional District today, 09/30/10, incumbent Republican Dave Reichert defeats Democratic challenger Suzan DelBene 52% to 45%, according to this latest exclusive KING-TV poll conducted by SurveyUSA.

Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll 4 weeks ago, DelBene is up 4 points; Reichert is down 2. Among moderates, Reichert had led by 4, now trails by 17, a 21-point swing to the Democrat. Among women, DelBene had trailed by 8 points, now leads by 3, an 11-point swing to the Democrat. Men and voters age 35 to 49 account for almost all of Reichert’s advantage.

52-45%, huh? Not much different from some of the polls we’ve seen in the allegedly close Patty Murray/Dino Rossi race.

Assuming SurveyUSA’s numbers can be trusted this cycle (and I’m not necessarily making that assumption), this shows a ton of movement in DelBene’s direction over the past month… the kinda momentum that should it continue, could make this race a tossup by election day. For example, Darcy Burner trailed Reichert by the exact same 54-41% margin at the end of August 2006 as DelBene trailed Reichert at the same point during this cycle, yet surged to within a silver hair of victory.

And a look at the cross-tabs suggests that there’s still plenty of opportunity for DelBene to pick up support simply by educating traditional Democratic voters about where Reichert stands on hot button issues. For example, Reichert’s still drawing 13% of liberals, 17% of Democrats, and an incongruous 30% of pro-choice voters. These are all constituencies in which DelBene stands to improve.

Interestingly WA-08 is not the only race that appears to be tightening in recent weeks, for as the New York Times reports, shifting polls suggest that Republicans are having a tough time locking down a House majority in the manner Democrats did in 2006.

By now, Republicans had hoped to put away a first layer of Democrats and set their sights on a second tier of incumbents. But the fight for control of Congress is more fluid than it seemed at Labor Day, with Democrats mounting strong resistance in some parts of the country as they try to hold off a potential Republican wave in November.

The chances of a Republican takeover in the House remain far greater than in the Senate, according to a race-by-race analysis by The New York Times. But enough contests remain in flux that both parties head into the final four weeks of the campaign with the ability to change the dynamic before Election Day.

Huh. So if Reichert’s near total lack of campaigning really is a manifestation of a cynical electoral strategy rather than, say, his traumatic brain injury, he might want to reconsider how safe his seat really is in a political climate that is at least as anti-incumbent as it is anti-Democratic.

Not so good for Christine O’Donnell:

Exodus 22:18
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

Discuss.

Markos of Daily Kos fame, the guy who allegedly tells all us other liberal bloggers exactly what to write and think, will be at Seattle’s Town Hall Sunday night, 7:30 PM, reading from and signing his new book “American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right.” Tickets are $5.

Join me in slavishly following Markos’ every word.

(No, really… it’s a great book. Keep meaning to write a review.)

(And there are links to some 40 more videos from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)

Some of you might have noticed that my posting has been a bit sparse on HA this past week, and no, it’s not due to the handful of posts I’ve funneled over to Slog. No, my time has mostly been consumed by a short term contract I took because I really believe in the project, and, well, I just plain needed the money. Which is kinda a longish way of getting the  obligatory disclaimer out of the way at the top of the post.

The project I’m working on is Progressive Kick’s $125,000 Win Big by Thinking Small matching contribution program, in which, through Oct. 10, we will match dollar-for-dollar all contributions made through our ActBlue page to select legislative candidates in six states: NC, MI, OH, OR, PA and WI. That’s a $125,000 to raise an additional $125,000… a quarter of a million dollars total to spend in local races.

From the candidates’ perspective, this is a great opportunity to incentivize supporters to give (or give again) by doubling their money. Kind of a no brainer. And some candidates have made good use of this opportunity, like Nick Kahl in Oregon’s HD-49 race, who has already raised $4,684 (plus another $4,684 in matching contributions) in a little over a week. But from the national perspective, there’s a lot more at stake.

The criteria for being included in the Win Big by Thinking Small program were simple: you must be a truly progressive candidate in a close but winnable race, in a state where congressional redistricting is at stake… and it’s that latter prerequisite that, despite my pleading, excluded Washington legislative candidates from consideration. For even if control of the state House and/or Senate were to change hands, our nonpartisan redistricting system makes the process almost entirely immune to partisan gerrymandering. Yet another thing Washington does better than most other states.

But that’s not the case most everyplace else. And that’s why a relatively small investment in electing progressive legislators now, could produce exponential returns over the coming decade:

“The average winner of a competitive House race in 2008 spent $2 million, while a noncompetitive seat can be defended for far less than half that amount. Moving, say, 20 districts from competitive to out-of-reach could save a party $100 million or more over the course of a decade.”
— GOP strategist, Karl Rove

Don’t trust Karl Rove? Read the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee’s dissertation on “The Economic$ of Redi$tricting,” and The New York Times on “How to Tilt an Election Through Redistricting.”

Of course, electing true progressives at the local level is also the key to building a progressive bench — these are the ranks from which future Democratic stars will rise — so this alone makes Progressive Kick’s matching contribution program worthy of your support. But with redistricting upon us, and our nation as divided as ever along partisan lines, nothing less than control of the U.S. House of Representatives is at stake.

So if you’re looking to double your money and double your impact, please give today.

From The Hill:

The GOP committee has pledged $2 million in coordinated spending to Republican candidate Carly Fiorina in California and reserved $3 million in television airtime in Washington for the month of October.

But a Republican political strategist with Senate ties is skeptical of knocking off Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) or Patty Murray (D-Wash.) or winning Connecticut, given the dominance Democrats have shown in those states in recent years.

There’s a difference between reserving television airtime, and actually spending the money. It will be interesting to see how much of that $3 million the NRSC actually spends in Washington, or whether they ultimately spend more, for $3 million isn’t really all that much considering Murray’s fundraising advantage.

You know, I do my best to make things interesting, but compared to, say, Delaware, California and New York, our Republicans are just so fucking boring. I mean, most of them suck, they really do, but they do so in such a totally unentertaining fashion.

Rasmussen released a new poll today in the race between Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and real estate opportunist Dino Rossi. The poll of 750 likely voters, taken on 28 Sept 2010, has Rossi (R) up by 1% (48% to 47%). If we consider this the only poll of relevance, a Monte Carlo analysis can suggest the probability of each candidate winning in a hypothetical election held today. From a million simulated elections of 750 people voting for each candidate probabilistically at the observed frequencies, we find that Murray wins 416,583 times and Rossi wins 573,402 times. That is, the best evidence from this poll suggests that, in an election held today, Murray would win with a 42.1% probability and Rossi would win with a 57.9% probability. Here is the distribution of outcomes from those million simulated elections:

Kind-of scary stuff, huh?

An interesting thing about the Rasmussen poll is that the actual polling work is done by a company called Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. As it happens, this is the same firm that did a FOX News poll just three days earlier. That poll of 1,000 likely voters taken on 25th of September had Murray leading Rossi 48% to 47%. There may some be differences in the likely voter model preferred by Rasmussen and Fox, but such an explanation isn’t really necessary to explain the differences. There is nothing at all inconsistent between the polls. Given the sample sizes, the polls do not really differ. Rather, they suggest that the race is close. We can pool the two polls to get a better idea of the race according to the methods used by Pulse Opinion Research. A Monte Carlo analysis using a sample size of 1,750 “voters” and pooled candidate preference percentages gives Murray 513,406 wins to Rossi’s 479,748 wins. In other words, the two polls taken by Pulse some three days apart suggests that, in an election held over the past week or so, Murray would win with a 51.7% probability.

But why restrict ourselves to a single pollster? In the past two weeks, there were four polls taken. The earlier two polls were by Survey USA giving Murray a 50% to 48% lead over Rossi in a sample of 609 likely voters taken from 19-21 Sept, and an earlier Rasmussen poll (750 likely voters) taken on 14th Sept, showing Murray leading Rossi 51% to 46%. When we pool these four polls, we get a respectable sample size of 3,109 individuals of which 2,987 went for either Murray or Rossi. Of these, 1,520 ( 48.9%) were for Murray and 1,467 ( 47.2%) were for Rossi. After a million simulated elections, Murray won 743,815 times and Rossi won 251,927 times. In other words, the combined evidence from four polls taken by two polling firms over the past two weeks suggests that Murray has a 74.7% probability of beating Rossi.

Does this reflect a decline in Murray’s support? I think it does a little. As this graph shows, the four most recent polls all fall within each other’s margin of error:

But the next two earlier polls, by CNN/Time/Opinion Research and Elway showed a significantly better lead for Murray than this most recent poll does, suggesting that there has been a real decline for Murray from a month ago. Alternatively, it could be just bad luck of the draw in Rasmussen’s most recent poll, since other than the most recent poll, all of the previous five polls fall within each others margins of error. So which is it? Hey…I report, you decide.

From: David Goldstein

Subject: Rep. Reichert’s medical records

Date: September 30, 2010 9:27:31 PM PDT

To: Darren LIttell, Dave Reichert for Congress

Darren,

While my recent Slog post, “What’s Wrong With Reichert’s Brain?” was generally well received, some readers wondered if it was fair to Rep. Reichert to speculate about his health, based on such limited information. And so in an effort to maintain the highest level of journalistic integrity, I am writing to formally request that Rep. Reichert release the medical records regarding his recent brain trauma.

Please rest assured that I fully understand the confidential nature of these documents, and as an advocate for the disabled, will treat their content with the utmost respect.

Sincerely,

David Goldstein

http://www.horsesass.org/
“Politics as unusual.”

I remember once in elementary school being absolutely mortified to quickly lose a game of chess to an opponent who… well… let’s just say he wasn’t one of the brightest kids in the school. And that’s how I imagine the League of Conservation Voters should feel after endorsing Rep. Dave Reichert:

The League was aware of the comments Reichert made this summer — revealed on political blog Horsesass.org, in which Reichert can be heard referring to environmental votes as “chess pieces” for re-election — but Palamuso said those comments didn’t stop the group from endorsing him.

And neither apparently did Reichert’s own voting record, forcing the LCV to establish a new low for endorsements, at least in regards to its own widely promoted National Environmental Scorecard. For example, in 2009, Reichert earned a 64% score from the the LCV for his environmental votes (two points up from his lifetime average), the lowest of any of the 42 House and Senate candidates they’ve endorsed this cycle thus far.

To put that in perspective, at 64%, there are actually 351 members of Congress with a higher LCV score than Reichert… 310 of whom did not earn an LCV endorsement.

That’s some curve they’re grading on, at least when it comes to Reichert. And that’s some awfully bad chess those duffers at the LCV must be playing, to get outsmarted by a guy with a fist-sized blood clot in his head.

I get a ton of press releases, and I tend to ignore most of ’em, but one subject header that’s been catching my eye lately is “Death of inmate in custody.” In fact, William Hayes at the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention has sent me five such press releases since August 16, including another one today.

That kinda strikes me as a lot.

Checking my email archive, I usually receive only two to four such emails from King County a year. So five dead inmates in a six week span, that’s weird. And more than a little disturbing.