HorsesAss.Org

I just received an email notifying me that HorsesAss.org has been chosen as the credentialed blog to represent Washington in the State Blogger Corps at the Democratic National Convention in August. From the DNC press release:

“Similar to the record-breaking voter turnout our Party has seen during the primary season, the demand for these coveted blogger positions is yet another indicator of the tremendous interest in this historic Convention,” said Governor Dean. “The Internet has played a critical role in connecting Americans to elected officials and candidates seeking office. The DemConvention State Blogger Corps will continue to foster this dialogue – in all 50 of our states and our territories too – as we head towards this year’s historic election and elect a Democrat to the White House.”

[…] As part of the new DemConvention State Blogger Corps, designed for bloggers covering state and local politics, bloggers will receive unparalleled access to state delegations and the floor of the Convention hall. In a truly unprecedented move, the DNCC will seat these bloggers with their respective delegations during the historic four-day event, providing even greater access for local coverage and perspective. Highlights from these blogs will also be featured on www.DemConvention.com in the lead up to and during the Convention.

HA intends to provide ground level coverage of the official proceedings and the parties and gatherings that go on behind the scenes. To this end my HA co-bloggers Geov Parrish and Darryl Holman plan to join me in Denver for what promises to be the most exciting Democratic National Convention since 1968 (though hopefully, for different reasons.)

The DNCC State Blogger Corps:
[Read more…]

Note to Republicans: be afraid. Be very afraid.

When Democrats won a special election in March for former Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat, an R+6 district the GOP had held for three decades, it was cause for a celebratory fuck you to Republicans who only four years ago taunted D’s with talk of a “permanent majority.” Last week, when the Dems picked up yet another blood-red seat, this time an R+8 Louisiana district the GOP had owned since 1974, Beltway Republicans appeared to turn on each other. But after last night’s Democratic pickup in Mississippi, it looks like the House Republican Caucus may be headed into every man for himself mode.

MS-01, where Democrat Travis Childers just beat Republican Greg Davis 52% to 48%, is an R+10 district that President Bush won with 62% of the vote in 2004, and the former incumbent won with 66% just a year and a half ago. And that’s after the cash-strapped NRCC sunk $1.3 million into the race on top of another million from Freedom Watch and the candidate himself.

The tried and true GOP tactics of race-baiting and fear-mongering just don’t seem to be working this cycle. The R’s saturated the media with the ads tying Childers to Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and yet the Democrat only increased his support since the previous round of voting a few weeks back. Running on a “get out of Iraq” message in a traditionally pro-military Deep South district, Childers earned a comfortable win over a credible and well-funded opponent.

This is what happens when a bitter electorate turns out in record numbers to say enough is enough. If Dems can win in an R+10 district they can win anywhere, a sentiment loudly expressed this morning in The Hill:

The sky is falling on House Republicans and there is no sign of it letting up.

The GOP loss in Mississippi’s special election Tuesday is the strongest sign yet that the Republican Party is in shambles. And while some Republicans see a light at the end of the tunnel, that light more likely represents the Democratic train that is primed to mow down more Republicans in November.

Be afraid, my Republican friends. Be very afraid.

UPDATE [LEE]: I thought I’d link to this quote from Paul Begala in 2006 about Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy since it’s appropriate:

“Yes, he’s in trouble, in that campaign managers, candidates, are really angry with him. He has raised $74 million and spent $64 million. He says it’s a long-term strategy. But what he has spent it on, apparently, is just hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose. That’s not how you build a party. You win elections. That’s how you build a party.”

Last month, George Bush showed that he can reach for newer and greater heights when he broke the Gallup poll record for highest disapproval ever recorded for a president over the last 70 years.

The records keep rolling in…but, this month, Bush is an equal opportunity record-breaker. He has reached a new high and sunk to new lows for May:

The month started out with a new high (my emphasis throughout):

A new poll suggests that George W. Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush his handling his job as president.

“No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president’s disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

“Bush’s approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon (22 percent and 24 percent, respectively) but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s,” Holland added. “The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 66 percent disapproval in January 1952.”

Bush shows that he has also mastered the lows on Sunday when Rassmussen Reports gave their weekly and monthly approval/disapproval summaries:

For the week ending May 9, just 32% of Americans approved of the way the George W. Bush performed his role as President. That’s down two percentage points from last week and the lowest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports. The decline in the President’s ratings come as the Rasmussen Consumer Index also hovers around record lows—72% of Americans believe that economic conditions are getting worse.

Sixty-five percent (65%) disapprove of the President’s Performance, up two points from a week ago.
[…]

The weekly figures also represents a two-point decline from the numbers recorded during the full month of April. During that month, 34% of Americans gave the President their approval. That too was an all-time low, the lowest full-month approval rating ever for the President measured by Rasmussen Reports.
[…]

Prior to this month, the President’s lowest approval rating was 35%, recorded in June, 2007. In two other months, his approval has been as low as 36% (May 2007 and March 2008).

And just yesterday, a new low from a new ABC/Washington Post poll:

Public disgruntlement neared a record high and George W. Bush slipped to his career low in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. Eighty-two percent of Americans now say the country’s seriously off on the wrong track, up 10 points in the past year to a point from its record high in polls since 1973. And just 31 percent approve of Bush’s job performance overall, while 66 percent disapprove.

The country’s mood – and the president’s ratings – are suffering from the double whammy of an unpopular war and a faltering economy. Consistently for the past year, nearly two-thirds of Americans have said the war in Iraq was not worth fighting. And consumer confidence is near its lowest in weekly ABC News polls since late 1985.

Bush’s approval rating has been extraordinarily stable – before today’s 31 percent it had
been 32 or 33 percent in nine ABC/Post polls from last July through last month.

Whew…and that is just the last couple of weeks!

As this election season geared up, we heard a lot of wishful thinking on the part of Righties suggesting that 2006 was the one and only opportunity for Democrats to make significant gains. In part the rationale seemed to be that candidates wouldn’t have a Bush administration to drag ’em down. Maybe…but there has been an avalanche of bad omens for Republicans lately: Bush’s new records, congressional special elections going Democratic in previously strong Republican districts, record high Democratic identity, and unprecedented fundraising asymmetries in favor of the Democrats.

Isn’t it time to reevaluate these Republican loyalists? I mean, when does the pattern of self-deception and delusions qualify as psychopathology?

Sen. Russ Feingold’s Progressive Patriot Fund is holding an online poll to pick their next Progressive Patriot, with $5,000 going to the winner. Darcy Burner is currently running in third place, but there’s still time to push her into the lead. So vote for Darcy today!

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.

I heard a report on KUOW that said that John McCain was in town today to talk about the environment, when in fact, he’s really only here for a $33,100 per plate dinner. You really think he’d come to WA — a state he can’t possibly win — for any reason other than money?

Of course, one of the many reasons McCain can’t win WA is the tanker contract he cost us, and the 9,000 plus local jobs that would have come with it. In a post on Daily Kos today, Gov. Chris Gregoire points out:

To help our national economy, the Bush Administration sends us $600 “economic stimulus” checks. I have no doubt that many need this money. It will buy a month’s worth of groceries and pay for the rising cost of gasoline.

But the Bush Administration sent $40 billion of economic stimulus to Europe. And I have no doubt that $40 billion and 44,000 new good-paying jobs would feed entire communities and repair lives broken by debt and the loss of homes.

Unfortunately, that $40 billion stimulus package is creating jobs and feeding communities in France. Hey, thanks Sen. McCain.

Um… but I thought markets always make the most efficient allocation of resources? Damn commie agitators.

(By the way, I hope you are all taking advantage of the Real News Network feed I’ve provided in the front page sidebar. It’s a great service worthy of your attention and support.)

From today’s Seattle Times:

After years of talk, Port of Seattle and King County executives signed a final agreement Monday to put a 42-mile Eastside rail corridor into public ownership.

The deal paves the way for a possible combination of freight rail, commuter trains, and biking and hiking trails, but many details remain to be worked out.

And that’s the way it should be. The important thing here was having this rare remaining corridor acquired for public use, rather than being sold off a parcel at a time and lost forever. Deciding what we’re going to do with the corridor—rail or trail or both—was always less urgent than closing a deal with BNSF.

And by the way, while Ron Sims caught a lot of shit from Eastside rail enthusiasts for his intention to tear up the tracks and replace them with a hiking and biking trail, and from nearly everyone for his complicated proposal to swap Boeing Field with the Port in exchange for the rail corridor, it should be remembered that it was his initiative and vision that set this whole thing into motion in the first place. Without Sims’ leadership on this issue there may have never been a serious public effort to acquire this land.

We have this strange political pathology in Washington state in which we constantly complain about the lack of leadership coming from our elected officials, and yet instantly attack them as arrogant the minute they attempt to display any.  Sims’ initial proposal may have been shot down, and with good reasons, but he still deserves much of the credit for preserving this corridor for public use.

As for the rail vs trail debate, I’d love to see an Eastside commuter line, but from what I know about the geography and demographics of this corridor, as well as the condition of the existing tracks, I wouldn’t expect it to happen anytime soon. But I’d love to be proven wrong.

No, the real solution to our transportation problems is to build more roads.

John McCain is coming to Bellevue tomorrow for a $33,100 per plate dinner. No, that’s not one of my frequent typos… it’s $33,100 per plate. For that kind of money, I expect to eat my dinner off of John McCain’s naked body (or preferably, his daughter Meghan’s.)

$33,100. Yet the federal contribution limit for 2008 remains $2,300 per person in each of the primary and general elections. So how does McCain get around this? According to the invitation:

• For Individuals—The first $2,300 to JM 2008, the next $2,300 to the Compliance Fund, the
next $28,500 to the RNC, and the balance of up to $37,000 will be divided evenly between the
Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Wisconsin state parties’ federal accounts.
• For Couples—The first $4,600 to JM 2008, the next $4,600 to the Compliance Fund, the
next $57,000 to the RNC, and the balance of up to $74,000 will be divided evenly between the
Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Wisconsin state parties’ federal accounts.

Of course the RNC as well as the state parties’ federal committees can raise and spend unlimited funds in support of McCain, and at $76,200 per couple, that is exactly what McCain is coming to town to do. So in the end, there really aren’t any federal limits all.

It’s not like the Democrats don’t play by the same the rules, but when you have the guy with his name on the campaign finance laws so blatantly violating the spirit of them, you’d think it would earn him a little cynicism from the press. But no, McCain drives the Straight Talk Express, so if he says he’s for campaign finance reform, I suppose we just have to trust him.

Meanwhile, if folks in Bellevue want to put their money to good work in district, I suggest they drop a little cash in Darcy Burner’s pockets

While so much attention has been focused on the race between Obama and Clinton, few people have noticed that things aren’t as rosy as they appear with the Republican race. Andrew Malcolm writes in the LA Times Politics blog:

In the last three months, [Ron] Paul’s forces, who donated $34.5 million to his White House effort and upward of a million total votes, have, as The Ticket has noted, been fighting a series of guerrilla battles with party establishment officials at county and state conventions from Washington and Missouri to Maine and Mississippi. Their goal: to take control of local committees, boost their delegate totals and influence platform debates.

John McCain (who my father-in-law referred to as a “Democrat” yesterday) clearly doesn’t have enthusiastic support among the Republican base. This is causing problems with Republican GOP conventions across the country where Paul supporters are trying their best to ensure that he gets enough pledged delegates to be able to speak in St. Paul. They created mayhem at the Nevada State Convention, are being targeted by the Missouri GOP for their alleged disloyalty to John McCain, and are finding both success and special GOP counter-measures against them in several other states. Meanwhile, to demonstrate the depth of his support among younger people, his book was at the top of the Amazon bestseller list for a week after it was released on 4/30 and is still in the top ten (#7) today.

Paul has already said he won’t endorse McCain, and with the Libertarians potentially having a candidate with very good name recognition among Republicans (former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr), the GOP may have much bigger unity problems than the Democrats this year.

Historian and author Rick Perlstein will be reading from his new book “Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America,“ tonight at 7:30 PM at Seattle’s Town Hall. Tickets are only $5.00.

Even conservative columnist George Will, reviewing the book for the NY Times, calls Nixonland “compulsively readable.” Should be a fascinating evening.

I’m not so good at remembering or celebrating birthdays and holidays; I pretty much dread special occasions as opportunities to let a loved one down. And just to be consistent, it looks like I missed a special occasion of my own the other day: HA’s fourth blogiversary.

On May 10, 2004 I relaunched HorsesAss.org as a blog by posting a bit of a manifesto: “Comedy is easy, politics is hard.” Looking back, I’m a bit amazed both at how wrong and how right I got it. On the one hand I clearly had no idea how blogging would come to dominate my life to the exclusion of all other pursuits. On the other, it’s encouraging to see the that original spirit of the blog has never been lost, even as its readership and influence have grown beyond my wildest expectations:

I want to have fun with politics, yet I also want to get stuff done. I want to be sarcastic, satirical, irreverent — even silly — and yet I want to be taken seriously. I want to be edgy, out spoken, and occasionally foul mouthed, and yet I want to maintain my credibility with stuffy politicos and even stuffier editorial boards.

[…] So to those upstanding members of the political and media establishment who insist I cannot possibly expect to maintain my credibility as an activist while producing an irreverent and outrageous blog, the Goldy half of me respectfully says: “fuck you.”

I thought maybe I might some day build an audience of a couple hundred loyal readers, but 2.5 million visits and 4.7 million page views later, HA remains a big “fuck you” to those who confuse “solemnity” with “seriousness.”

Thank you all for giving me a reason to write.

Over on Slog, Josh is worried about the DNC’s lack of fundraising, citing a disturbing paragraph in a front page article in today’s New York Times:

But the Republican National Committee, which is permitted to spend money on Mr. McCain’s behalf, has raised $31 million, compared with just $6 million by the Democratic National Committee.

But Josh makes the classic journalistic error, by failing to heed the creed of journalism consumers everywhere: “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.” Even our nation’s paper of record, the NY Times.

The NY Times was flat out wrong; those are cash-on-hand figures, not dollars raised as stated. According to Open Secrets, the RNC has outraised the DNC $123 million to $73 million for the cycle, but even those figures are meaningless when taken out of context. Overall, between the two parties’ major fundraising committees, we have a virtual tie at about $330 million each, with the Democrats holding a substantial $27 million edge in cash-on-hand.

At all levels, that’s a huge reversal from previous elections, when the Republicans typically out-raised and out-spent the Democrats by wide margins.

But even that only tells part of the story. Bucking complaints from the Beltway establishment, DNC chair Howard Dean has doggedly pursued a “50 State Strategy,” pumping money and infrastructure into states the party has all but ignored for decades, rather than hoarding cash for the general election. This strategy has left the DNC perpetually broke, but paid huge dividends in 2006 when Democrats picked up key seats in traditional afterthoughts like Montana. It has also put Democrats in a position to exploit Republican meltdowns like that happening in Alaska. If you ask me, that’s money well spent.

As for the RNC’s $50 million fundraising lead, $20 million of that has come over the past three months, a time during which McCain had the Republican nomination all wrapped up, while Obama and Clinton continued to fight it out. To put this in perspective, Obama and Clinton have raised a combined $420 million for the cycle compared to McCain’s $77 million — a $61 million to $12 million advantage in March alone. And with the Democratic ticket finally settled, expect the DNC to keep pace with the RNC, if not narrow the gap between the two committees.

So while Josh may be worried, I’m not. Folks can’t let up, but comforted by some actual numbers, rather than a scary paragraph in a newspaper, I remain confident that the Democrats are in a helluva position heading into the fall elections.