HorsesAss.Org

New Hampshire election officials are predicting record turnout in today’s presidential primary; as of noon EST some districts were already concerned about running out of ballots.

“Turnout is absolutely huge and towns are starting to get concerned that they may not have enough ballots,” [Deputy Secretary of State Dave] Scanlan said. “We are working on those issues. Everything else seems to be going smoothly.”

[…] According to Scanlan, the ballot strain seems to be on Democratic ballots, which suggests that the undeclared voters are breaking for the Democratic primary.

It also suggests that energized Democrats are turning out in greater numbers than their Republican counterparts, following the same pattern we saw in Iowa. I know my righty trolls have long consoled themselves that the GOP’s fortunes bottomed out in 2006’s big blue wave, but if these trends continue through November, 2008 is gonna be an awfully bad year for Republicans up and down the ticket. Say what you want about Obama, but he clearly has the potential to unify his party while attracting independents nationwide. Which Republican candidate can do that?

FYI:
The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight as usual at the Montlake Ale House, and I expect a healthy contingent to show up early to watch the results come in.

There was actually a fair amount of news yesterday, even if it will all be forgotten by noon in the avalanche blatherthon of New Hampshire’s primary. It’s hard, channel-surfing, not to get sick to your stomach with the ignorant-to-buffoonish analysis that is supposed to pass for punditry. If we’ve learned anything from the ludicrously bipolar coverage — Hillary’s a lock, no wait, she’s dead! … ‘New Populism’ reigns supreme, er, McCain is King! and on and on — it’s that the pop generalizations just don’t work. No wonder The New York Times ran Sunday’s op-ed piece observing that the news media and TV advertising simply aren’t factoring into electoral decisions any more. It’s word on the street, baby…take it to the bank.

OK, this was supposed to be about yesterday’s headlines, and we’ve got some good ones, even if the material beneath them could use some word off the street as well. Housing prices, as you’ve been reading here on HA since the Fall 2007 days of “can’t happen here” local headlines, have been verified statistically to have hit the wall. Both papers have lead stories, The Times being the better reported while still relying on the impeccably unbiased, rock-solid reliable Windermere Services Co. for the upside. The P-I has a hilarious quote about the market having bottomed out and prices actually on the rise. Maybe they should interview these realtors about the benefits of relaxed marijuana laws. Reality-check that quote with The Times piece: “He wants to sell his Granite Falls home of four years. But he’s feeling ‘very unsure, just like most’ about whether the local residential real-estate market has hit bottom.’

I for one would hereby like to say I am not unsure: PUT DOWN THAT DOOBIE! IT HASN’T HIT BOTTOM! OK????

One clue comes from a conversation I had last week with a Seattle realtor about a North End property:

Realtor: “It’s been sold on contingency.”

Me: “Contingency? Now there’s a term I haven’t heard in awhile.”

Realtor: “Oh yes, it’s coming back.”

I checked a couple of days later. The house is back on the market, guess that contingency didn’t work out (wink wink).

You learn a lot walking the street and talking with folks. It does require passing on the budget meetings and getting out of the damn office.

If more reporters did that, we might not have to rely on state audits to uncover Port corruption. In a world of an aggressive press, there would be daily stories about the need for heads to roll at the Port. Instead a passive media sits on its hands and waits for the Justice Department to do something, so they will have some official source to quote.

What else… With Starbucks stock slowly sinking in the West, the coffee giant canned its CEO and is bringing back none other than icon Howard Schultz to run the operation. With the Sonics no longer a pother, Schultz can now focus on doing for Starbucks what he did for Seattle basketball…no wait, that doesn’t read right. Howard we luv ya! But bringing you back isn’t going to make Peet’s and Herkimer and Zoka and the whole new “greening” slash localization of coffee go away, to say nothing of jittery aging boomer nerves. One word: Tea. It’s the new espresso.

There’s other stuff too, including the Zoo’s insemination of Chai in a story that misspells Alyne Fortgang’s name and could use a hard-nosed followup, but tell you what. I’ll leave them for tomorrow’s headlines, make that headline, reporter. Once again I dodged the elections bullet, but for tomorrow there will always be jaw-droppers like this.

As I wrote last week in declaring my preference for John Edwards, I will enthusiastically support whoever ultimately wins the Democratic nomination for president. This really is a tremendous field of candidates who each bring different strengths to the table, and they each put the Democratic Party in a very good position to win the White House… even Hillary Clinton.

I know that Republicans have long drooled at the prospect of facing off against Clinton, believing she would be by far the easiest Democrat to beat, and I know that there is some polling to back up this conventional wisdom… but I’ve never believed it. In fact, I’ve rolled more than a few eyes in private conversation by suggesting that Americans would actually grow to like Clinton once they got to know her better during the course of a general election campaign. I know it defies what we’ve been told for years, but Hillary Clinton is likable.

This clip of Clinton going off on an emotional tangent, her voice breaking slightly as she explains her personal reasons for putting herself through such a grueling campaign, has elicited howls of derision from her critics. To some it is a show of weakness we cannot afford in a president. To others it is just an act; yet another crass political calculation. But me, I see a rare, unguarded moment in which Clinton reveals herself to be, well, a human being, as complex and nuanced as most any other human being.

No doubt it takes a great deal of narcissism to run for president (as it does to say, blog or do talk radio,) but that doesn’t inherently make one’s motives for running any less genuine. We all have a tendency to vilify the opposition, but as Clinton explains, it is possible to be wrong, but for all the right reasons:

“And we do it, each one of us because we care about our country, but some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some us are ready and some us are not. Some of us know what we will do on day one, and some of us haven’t really thought that through enough.”

It is fair to disagree with Clinton on the issues, on her experience or on her agenda, but the “Hillary haters” in both parties who attack her motives add absolutely nothing to the debate, and those who expect their own knee-jerk dislike of Clinton to be shared by a majority of Americans are setting themselves up for disappointment should she win the nomination. Contrary to myth, Hillary Clinton is a real person with real emotions, and I have always believed that given the opportunity to know her better, voters would grow to appreciate Clinton and her incredibly broad grasp on the issues. And yes, perhaps, even like her.

According to multiple news reports, Clay Bennett has agreed to sell the WNBA franchise Seattle Storm to a local ownership group, keeping the team in Seattle whatever the final destination of the Sonics. The sale price has not yet been disclosed, but I’d previously heard rumors of a $12 million offer.

It’s a pretty smart business decision for Bennett, not simply because the Storm would have been a guaranteed money-loser in Oklahoma City, but because the sale undoubtedly mutes local opposition to the Sonics’ proposed move. What with the Sonics playing like a bunch of girls these days, why not just stick with the real thing, huh?

I re-read Seattle Times columnist Jim Vesely’s recent column, and I still don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

Meanwhile, there are ideas about deep tunnels under downtown Seattle; questions of a five-year boring-and-tunneling task right next to UW’s Husky Stadium and the havoc it would bring; the now-uncertain funding of the most distant Sound Transit rail lines; and the near-collapse of the Washington ferry system.

Bluebloods like Vesely and others are apoplectic about losing their prime tailgating spot to Sound Transit construction. The only people with “question” about tunneling near Montlake is the University of Washington, who fear losing the parking revenues from Montlake-area parking during construction. (The UW would never cop to it, but parking is a big, big deal to them. How many governments have their own cash cows?)

B12 is the answer. Instead of a plan B, the region could accomplish a road here, a replacement bridge there, rethink Sound Transit’s most ambitious plans, consolidate the ferries instead of creating new ferry districts run by the counties, join with pension plans for capital to build toll lanes — in short, a list of priorities instead of a list that prioritizes everything.

Using pension plans to finance road construction is the hallmark of the Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center. Would you entrust your retirement with the folks who brought you Intelligent Design? Who are tearing down science and replacing it with their own theocratic world view?

I’m no legacy media whale, but even I can see that idea as the “tightly-coiled dogshit on the lawn” that it is.

Postman reports this morning that Republican Doug Roulstone has dropped his bid to unseat Washington 2nd Congressional District incumbent Rep. Rick Larsen. As Jacob quips in Postman’s comment thread:

“If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make any sound.”

No idea he was even running for Congress, and I am an above average political junkie.

It is a favorite pastime of local Republican trolls and bloggers to disparage and dismiss WA-08 Democratic challenger Darcy Burner as an “airhead” and a “lightweight,” as if repeating it often enough would make it so. But it is instructive to compare the brief political careers of both Burner and Roulstone.

Roulstone is a Navy Captain, a 27-year veteran, a graduate of the US Naval Academy and the former Commanding Officer of the USS John C. Stennis, a Nimitz-class, nuclear powered aircraft carrier. I’ve never met Roulstone, but on paper at least he appears to be an accomplished man and a commanding figure… the kind of resume that would seem a perfect match to Republicans’ own self image.

Arguably, Burner’s career accomplishments are less overtly spectacular. Burner, who enjoyed a modest upbringing in rural Nebraska, had to work multiple jobs to earn her way through Harvard University. That same sort of hard work, determination and natural smarts eventually carried her to a senior management position at Microsoft — not exactly equivalent to commanding a supercarrier, but a textbook illustration of the American dream come true, nonetheless.

Both Roulstone and Burner entered their respective 2006 House races as political novices facing well known incumbents in what most experts consider to be swing districts: the Cook Partisan Voter Index rates WA-08 as D+3 and WA-02 as D+2. (By comparison, WA-07 is rated D+30.) At the outset, neither were given much of a chance by local or national pundits, and Roulstone didn’t disappoint, losing to Larsen by a 19-point margin. Burner on the other hand shocked the political and media establishment, raising over $3.2 million and coming within 3 points of becoming the first Democrat ever to win WA-08.

Sure, it was a “wave” election in which Democrats retook both houses of Congress, and that certainly gave an advantage to Burner over Roulstone, but at the same time Burner had to swim against an unprecedented flood of GOP money while weathering the storm of being Karl Rove’s number one target. Adjusting for all the external factors — the strength of their opponents, the partisan leaning of their districts, the electorate’s thirst for change, etc. — only an idiot or a liar would deny that Burner proved herself to be the far superior candidate.

Fast forward to 2008, where Burner is preparing to announce over $600,000 cash-on-hand entering the final 9-months of the campaign, while Roulstone is quietly dropping his bid after an anemic year of fundraising, leaving 2nd CD Republicans in the unenviable position of scrambling to save face.

In many ways our electoral system has become utterly fucking ridiculous, a circus of perpetual campaigning in which money often speaks louder than words or deeds. But while this grueling and sometimes demeaning path toward elected office surely deters many qualified candidates who would otherwise make excellent public servants, it also serves to weed out those would-be office holders who are unwilling or unable to put up with the grueling demands of the office itself. It is undoubtedly an imperfect system, and our media’s (bloggers included) relentless focus on horse-race politics tends to trivialize our most crucial issues, yet it is fair to say that a candidate’s performance on the campaign trail is as good a predictor as any of his or her future performance in office.

Capt. Roulstone had an impressive military career by almost any measure, but as a political campaigner he paled in comparison to the supposedly “lightweight” Burner; that is why she is in the thick of a second competitive race, and he is not. Which is the more demanding profession? In America, our military commanders take their orders from our civilian leaders, and not the other way around.

As the oft maligned and dismissed Sen. Patty Murray — on the verge of becoming one of the most powerful figures in the US Senate — has repeatedly proven, it is not always obvious what traits make one a successful politician… though winning races you’re not supposed to win is surely one of them. Whether Burner is able to pull out an underdog victory against an entrenched incumbent in 2008 remains to be seen, but by the ultimate standard we use to judge all our politicians, she has already proven herself qualified to serve.

Like Goldy, I read the Times goofy-ass editorial about the building that formerly housed a Denny’s in Ballard. It’s editorials like these that would make me cancel my subscription. If I had one.

In the editorial, the paper announces that they don’t find the building all that special:

The Denny’s restaurant building in Ballard is not valuable enough to be saved — at least, not with public money or through a process of involuntary landmarking. Its owner should be allowed to sell the property to developers of housing, which the city needs.

Now, even if you disagree with this statement, it is, at it’s core, a reasonable one to make. We do need more housing, and as historic buildings go, I wouldn’t miss it that much. Maybe that makes me a philistine, but so be it. As googies go, we’ll always have the Space Needle. (On the flip side, while I usually goof on Skip Berger once in a while, I respect the fact that he seems to have single-handedly saved this building. Props.)

Then the Times goes on to make total asses of themselves:

The other problem with landmarking the old Denny’s is the process itself. Involuntary landmarking amounts to a partial taking of the owner’s property without compensation, for reasons that are at bottom political.

That is some stupid-ass reasoning. First off, the landmarking process is a long one. While owners of properties designated for landmark status may technically “lose” some rights to make changes to a building’s structure, they also gain access to all sorts of benefits that aren’t available to non-landmark buildings. Besides, if it weren’t for the landmarking process, how many of these buildings would be dust?

Besides, I don’t know what’s so political about saving landmark buildings. While Seattle liberals are proud to have saved the Pike Place Market, Spokane Republicans proudly show off the recently remodeled Davenport Hotel. While the big money interests in both towns wouldn’t have minded tearing down two old relics, good folks stood against it.

The Seattle Times, and the lazy libertarians who seem to be running the joint, should know better. It’s only a matter of time before their headquarters is designated a landmark for stupidity.

The legislative session starts on the 14th. It’s a short session so that the legislators can campaign for re-election. No major budget decisions. Nothing that hasn’t already gained some traction. So you can limit your expectations. But I won’t; here is what I’d like to see from our legislators:

* A cap and trade system for global warming gases. With our state’s biggest city (and several of our smaller ones) meeting Kyoto already, we ought to be able to make a cap and trade system with some real teeth. It’s my understanding that states can get into the European system if we meet their standards. This should be our goal. We can lead the country and get set up with a new commodity. Good for the environment and good for the local economy if we can make it happen.

* Income tax. Yeah, I know, a state supreme court decision in the 30’s says we can’t have one. We can have up to a 1% income tax, so here’s my proposal: A 1/2% flat tax for incomes between $30,000 and $60,000 and 1% for incomes over $60,000. We take whatever income we get from that tax and reduce the regressive state sales tax by that much.

* The article Lee linked to the other day had a suggestion for a law that will be tough to get through even this legislature, but is worth a shot:

When mothers abandon their unwanted newborns—which happens with alarming frequency—they must decide whether to leave an infant in a Dumpster, where the child is likely to die, or in a public place, where the child’s likelihood of survival is higher but so are the chances that the mother will be seen by witnesses, arrested, and prosecuted. The pandemic of abandoned newborns in the 1990s spawned a popular movement to declare emergency rooms and other medical facilities “safe havens” where mothers could abandon newborns without risking arrest. In 2002, the Washington State Legislature passed such a law.

A law that encourages people to call 911 when someone is overdosing would be grounded in the same impulse: It’s better to save lives than to prosecute every crime. But saving the lives of newborn babies is an easy sell and saving the lives of drug users is not.

But a life is a life to Senator Kline, who introduced legislation that would provide amnesty to people who call 911 to report an overdose. The bill, first introduced in 2005 and reintroduced in 2007 (remaining active in the 2008 session), states, “A person shall not be charged, subject to civil forfeiture, or otherwise prosecuted for a [drug offense] if… the person reported the drug overdose to law enforcement or summoned medical assistance at the time it was witnessed….”

Even the far from perfect law by Senator Kline would be a step in the right direction.

* Marriage Equity. Actually passing it does two things: First it gives gay couples the same recognition as the rest of us. As I told my evangelical cousin at Christmas, “what, do you want them living in sin?” But it also does something nice politically. It gets the issue off the table. Gay people aren’t going to drop the issue until they get full marriage equity, and the evangelical community isn’t going to drop the issue until gay people are all stoned to death, but having the end point puts the issue out of the minds of the rest of voters. So yeah, in the short term there may be some political fall out, but in the longer term it lets us not engage the crazies on the state level.

Anyway, there are a few from me, but I’d love to know what you want.

There are none. At least not locally. At least, not according to the Times and the P-I.

Fuck Mondays.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: Radio Kos with Miss Laura
Daily Kos contributing editor Miss Laura is on the ground in New Hampshire, and she calls in to give us the latest news and analysis as we head into Tuesday’s primary. Is Obama unstoppable? Can McCain pull out a victory? Who won Thursday’s debate? Tune in and find out.

8PM: TBA
Liberal propaganda.

9PM: TBA
The Ballard Denny’s has been designated a historic landmark, prompting the Seattle Times to complain that, well… it’s only a Denny’s. But they don’t stop there, charging that involuntary landmarking is a “taking” of the owner’s property, calling into question our long established historic preservation laws. Crosscut contributing editor Knute Berger joins us for the hour to talk about Ballard’s “Googie” architecture landmark, and historic preservation in general.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

Seattle’s Landmarks Preservation Board voted 8-1 to nominate the old Ballard Denny’s for historic preservation, an act the Seattle Times attacks as an involuntary “partial taking of the owner’s property without compensation, for reasons that are at bottom political.” The building opened in 1964 as a Manning’s Cafeteria, and was designed by noted architect Clarence Mayhew. With its swooping roof and sixties-era futuristic look, preservation advocates argue that the building is one of the best remaining examples of “Googie” architecture in the region, a sentiment the Times derides:

It’s an old Denny’s, boarded up.

Huh. I’m agnostic on the issue for the moment, but I wonder if folks at the Times will be so unsentimental the day they board up Fairview Fanny and cease operations as a print publication?

Blogger and soldier Andy Olmsted lost his life in Iraq.

Seahawks coverage is going late, so please tune in to an abbreviated “The David Goldstein Show” tonight, from 8PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

8PM: Update from Iowa with The Stranger’s Eli Sanders
The Stranger’s political reporter Eli Sanders joins us by phone from Iowa to give us a first hand account of what might have turned out to be a historic caucus night. Later in the hour, blogger / TV analyst / Democratic strategist James Boyce joins us from New Hampshire to fill us in on what he sees as a “huge” movement toward Obama.

9PM: Saturday night comedy with Kermet Apio
Tired of my angry rants and liberal propaganda? Local comedian Kermet Apio joins us for the hour to lighten things up and give us his own unique take current events.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

This weekend, HBO’s The Wire kicks off its final season. After living in relative obscurity throughout much of its run, the show is finally getting a lot of attention for telling amazing true-to-life stories from the inner-city that have long gone untold. The show’s material is based on the experiences of its two creators, former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon and former Baltimore PD Detective and public school teacher Ed Burns. As one of those who found out about this show too long after it began, I’m still catching up on the last few seasons. While the show deals with various aspects of inner-city life, the drug war and its downstream effects are everywhere, demonstrating in full detail the damage being done by a policy that far too many Americans have been fully content to ignore. The final season will focus on the role of the media, and how it fails to tell this story.

Last weekend, I posted a response to a column from the Longview Daily News, written by editor Cal Fitzsimmons. The column was describing a case from rural Cowlitz County where a confidential informant, 40-year-old Tina Rivard, tricked federal drug agents into arresting a man, 21-year-old Bo Jeremy Storedahl of Kelso, on felony drug trafficking charges. The original article on the Longview Daily News site is no longer there, but the Seattle Times article on the case is still up (and another article from The Daily News Online is here).

According to Mike Carter’s account in the Times, Rivard was first arrested in May for forging prescriptions. In return for leniency, she agreed to become a confidential informant (or “snitch”) in order to help build cases against others involved in dealing prescription drugs. After successfully helping to convict one person, she helped the police nab Storedahl, a 21-year-old with no criminal record. She did this in part by tricking the drug agents who were listening in to her calls by quickly re-dialing a different person (her husband) and convincing the agents that they were listening to Storedahl when in fact they weren’t. After Rivard managed to carry the charade further and stage a drug buy at Storedahl’s house, the young man was arrested and charged with a five-count felony indictment. Now that Rivard has admitted to what she did and plead guilty, she faces up to 20 years in jail, while Storedahl was only charged with misdemeanor drug possession for the four pills he had in his pocket when he was arrested.

I initially took issue with Fitzsimmons’ column because despite the tremendous example he had right in front of him that the use of confidential informants can be fraught with problems, he brushed all of that off in order to reassure his readers that snitches are good. There was no desire to explore the world of confidential informants, to look into the role they’ve played in our prison overcrowding problems, or to look at the larger issue of why these drug war tactics are failing – both in large cities and small towns – to actually prevent people from using drugs, while also undermining the level of trust in law enforcement. A few days after my post went up, an interesting comment appeared:

Hey, sometimes it pays to Google your name. I suppose I could complain about your reprinting my column here, though in chunks, but I won’t.

I won’t even engage in an argument about snitches. (Love ’em). But I would suggest you lighten up. Cheers.

Cal | 01.02.08 – 4:45 pm

I wasn’t sure what was more amusing, the fact that the editor of a newspaper had such a poor understanding of Fair Use in the internet age, or that I was being told to lighten up by someone who still fervently believes that we’re achieving something by sending as many people to jail as we can for drug offenses. A second comment, however, was even more interesting:

FYI – Your assumptions about this case are largely wrong. Bo plead because he confessed to the crime and there were other witnesses willing to testify they bought dope from him (without any compensation by LE). Tina wasn’t simply forging prescritions, she was entrenched in the sale/distribution network. You can spin this however you want but you can’t change the facts – Bo was dealing – Tina was dealing – both faced a judge for their behavior. That’s the way its supposed to work.

KT | 01.02.08 – 6:40 pm

KT’s comment was directed at me, but his/her opinion was that I was getting some facts wrong both by accepting what Fitzsimmons had written about this case and through a couple of assumptions I made myself. At this point, I have no way of knowing who’s telling the truth (KT declined to leave any contact info), but some of what he/she says actually makes a bit of sense: if Rivard was just some lone addict forging prescriptions to get her pills, it wouldn’t make much sense to make her an informant. She was likely involved in some larger network of people forging prescriptions and selling oxycodone tablets.

As for Fitzsimmons, his belief that this case represents some grand departure from the normal use of confidential informants has no basis in reality. This outcome is often what happens when people snitch in order to get more lenient treatment. In theory, it’s supposed to yield some kingpin, but that’s rarely what actually happens. What often happens is that the informant rolls over on some easy target like Storedahl. The story here is not that this case is an aberration, it’s that messes like these have become commonplace.

As for Storedahl, commenter KT is not the only person who believes that he wasn’t just some random innocent target, but was just as involved in dealing prescription drugs as Rivard (see the comments at the end of the Daily News Online article). None of this is proof of anything, but it is interesting that Storedahl is a son of a local businessman. There are still a lot of questions in this case that have still gone unanswered. How did the Rivards know Storedahl and had access to his house? Was he a customer? A friend? Who was the first person sent to jail by Rivard and what were the circumstances of his arrest? Why was law enforcement using Rivard as a snitch even though with prescription drug fraud there’s not likely a “kingpin” to take down anyway? Is Rivard getting the book thrown at her because she really tricked the police or because she targeted the wrong person? It seems like the only thing I really know about this case is that the editor of the Longview Daily News wants to me to “lighten up” when it comes to my concerns over what can go wrong when confidential informants are used by law enforcement.

I can only guess at the plotlines in the upcoming season of The Wire, but I’ve gained a very clear picture of how the media has failed to tell us the bigger story behind the drug war. Whether we’re talking about inner-cities or small towns, heroin or OxyContin, young black men dealing on a street corner or wealthy white kids dealing out of their parents’ suburban house, newspapers across the country seem uninterested in doing anything more than parroting the view from law enforcement that the war is necessary, the victims deserve what they get, and the tactics should not be questioned. It’s time for someone to tell this story with the kind of honesty and insight that will finally break down the illusions that have been mistaken for reality for so many years.

And now, for a bit of HA heresy. For a solid year now, people have been asking me who I’d like to see become President in 2009. For most of that time, I’ve offered the same unsatisfying response: it’s far too early, a lot can happen between now and then. But as the fascination with the race among local political types I know has heightened leading up to this week’s Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries next Tuesday, I have slowly begun to embrace a different response: why do you care?

Not that the question of who will try to clean up (or exacerbate) George W. Bush’s, er, messes isn’t important: on multiple fronts, it will influence nothing less than the future of humanity. At present, our likely choice will almost certainly be between two of eight less than inspiring people, who break down roughly as follows (based on their past governing records, not their campaign rhetoric): two liberal members of the bipartisan D.C. establishment (Obama, Edwards); one “liberal” who would have been considered a moderate Republican not too long ago (Clinton); four guys who would for all practical purposes be a third term of Bush (Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Thompson); and one charismatic loon (Huckabee). There’s a lot of room between those positions, most of it not good, and it matters a lot which of them will, in slightly over a year, become the most powerful person in the world.

And, of course, there’s a good argument to be made that even the most powerful person in the world can only do so much, and given the country’s political realities, isn’t likely to accomplish much of what s/he is now promising.

Still, it does make a difference who the next president is. It’s a pity Washington state residents will have virtually nothing to do with that choice. Today’s front page P-I headline — “State could turn into big player” (with the subhead “New front-runners might give our caucuses more sway”) — is a truly embarrassing bit of nativist wishful thinking. Sure, our caucuses might have a big impact. Mount Rainier might erupt next week, too.

In the Evergreen State, the presidential campaigns are and will be close to meaningless. Candidates have used our area primarily as an ATM, and that won’t change. Actual visits by candidates will continue to be rare, and any public appearances will be filled in around big stakes fundraising as almost an afterthought, useful almost solely for the resulting free local media coverage.

Of course, we will have a chance to register our opinions in the race next month. Our state’s Democratic and Republican caucuses are on Feb. 9, and the primary vote is on Feb. 19.

Unfortunately, 23 different states and territories, including heavyweights like California, New York, and Illinois (encompassing the country’s four largest media markets) will be having their primaries on “Super Tuesday,” Feb. 5, four days before our caucuses. And six other states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, and Florida) will have decided before that. Voters representing 326 of the country’s 538 electoral college votes will weigh in before we do. (Another state, Louisiana, is on the same day, and three more states follow in the next three days.) The upshot: the party’s nominees will likely be decided before we have our say. It’s certain that most of those eight frontrunners will be gone.

Even then, the Washington state process is something of a fraud. The Feb. 19 Democratic primary vote is completely meaningless; all the party’s nominating delegates will have already been chosen at the caucuses, so unless you’re willing to sign up for a political party, invest half a day at some church social hall, and get fund appeals for the next two years, your opinion won’t matter. The state Republicans, to their credit, at least factor the primary results in with the caucuses in determining their delegates — not that the race is likely to still be much of a race by then.

And, of course, come November, Washington state’s 11 electoral votes will all go to the Democratic candidate, just as they have for every presidential election since the days of Reagan. Regardless of how or whether you vote.

So why does it matter what you, I, or any other local person thinks about the 2008 presidential race? Sure, you could join a campaign and fly to a state where the votes matter. (Most of us won’t.) And we can all send in our $25, $50, or $1000 (or whatever) to the candidate of our choice. That’ll make a big dent in the over $100 million that Clinton and Obama have already raised, or the likely combined total of over $1 billion that the two major party nominees will raise for 2008. And since when did “one dollar, one vote” become the standard for our democracy?

The end result is that much of the fascination with the 2008 race hereabouts reeks of rooting for one’s favorite sports team (albeit with more meaningful stakes). It’s fun, it’s entertaining, but it’s not to be confused with the functions of a healthy democracy. That would require, among other things, a national primary day, abolishing the electoral college, public campaign financing, and allowing more than two competitive parties. Since we don’t have any of those things, locally or nationally, and aren’t about to get them, sure, I’ll get some popcorn and watch the race. But we’re spectators in this race — not participants. And that’s a problem.

Meantime, we also have a governor to elect, a local congressional race likely to be hotly contested, and a lot of other offices and measures on the ballot where we can have far more direct impact. So why all the focus on the White House?