HorsesAss.Org

Scary progressives launch preemptive invasion of Bellingham

The Washington Bus rolls into Tacoma Saturday morning (details here,) to doorbell for Tacoma City Council Candidate Marilyn Strickland, and you can be sure that the local righties will be all aghast at the “out-of-towners” and “special interests” invading Tacoma to influence their precious “non-partisan” election. (Don’t the smiling young folks in the picture above look scary?)

This is a theme that has grown quite popular with Republicans throughout the region this campaign season, as they watch their political prospects steadily shrink. When the Bus made a trip up to Whatcom County a couple weeks back to doorbell on behalf of County Council candidate Ken Mann, local Republicans flew into hysterics, launching a whisper campaign warning of a “National Socialist Organization that is Supported by Hanoi Jane Fonda.” On Mercer Island, where my ex-wife, Maureen Judge is running for City Council, wide-eyed righties stand up at candidate forums, frantically waving Progressive Majority print-outs, a la Joe McCarthy and his “list” of known communists. In Bellevue, incumbent Councilmember Phil Noble unsuccessfully pleaded with the 48th District Democrats to withhold their endorsement of his opponent Keri Andrews, claiming it would be an inappropriate intrusion into their non-partisan race. (Noble is so non-partisan that he gave a second contribution to Republican Jane Hague… after her drunk driving incident was made public.) And of course in the region’s marquee race, Republican Dan Satterberg has made non-partisanship the central theme of his campaign for King County Prosecuting Attorney, even promising to lobby to officially change the office to non-partisan, should he be elected.

Why the fearful reaction to progressive organizers, and the sudden public embrace of non-partisan ideals? Because in a region where Republicanism has been discredited perhaps more thoroughly than anywhere else in the nation, these nominally non-partisan races are the only chance most Republicans have of ever holding public office.

Non-partisanship has become the last refuge of political losers.

After twelve years of corrupt congressional rule, an inept and contemptuous Bush administration, and the collapse of the Eastside GOP, the red “R” has become a scarlet letter few Puget Sound Republicans are eager to wear, and the growing chorus of protestations against the politicization of non-partisan offices should be understood in this context. For decades conservatives have dominated these local races using the cloak of non-partisanship to hide their very partisan agenda, resulting in a virtual Republican lock on councils and school boards in otherwise Democratic districts. Ironically, the grassroots tactics employed by organizations like Progressive Majority and Washington Bus are largely those that were pioneered by conservatives decades earlier.

In fact, non-partisanship has always been a lie… a sham… a fiction, in which even the most casual observer could generally pick out the players without a program. We all know who the liberal and conservative justices are on the state Supreme Court, and we’re usually pretty damn sure about party identification. Likewise non-partisan councils and school boards throughout the region routinely factionalize along ideological if not party lines. Party identification reflects the candidate’s values and judgment, and it is not only dishonest, but fundamentally undemocratic to hide these labels from voters.

It has oft been written that our nation’s founders were uncomfortable with the notion of political parties, but they created this framework nonetheless, and in so doing helped create the greatest political, economic and military power in the history of the world. While America may not have invented the notion of “the loyal opposition,” it was here that it reached full fruition, for by institutionalizing a public debate in which endless argument is embraced as patriotic dissent rather than a treasonable act, our nation has managed to achieve a degree of political stability that is the envy of people everywhere.

Indeed, it is not less partisanship that is needed, but more… a truth self-evident in the familiar groans of self-described independents and third-party fantasists who routinely complain about the lack of difference between the two major parties. Of course, at the policy level, nothing could be further from the truth, but the general failure of Democrats to forcefully distance themselves from the conservative rhetoric that dominates public discourse, only sows such confusion.

Politics, like the law, is an adversarial process, and if one side is less dedicated to winning than the other, then the entire system fails. The Republican brand is tarnished for a reason, and GOP fortunes deserve to be punished accordingly. If we meekly allow them to tear off their scarlet letter and masquerade as non-partisan, we will be doing ourselves and the electorate a great disservice.

Political climate change…?

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s climate change panel won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for spreading awareness of man-made climate change and laying the foundations for counteracting it.

Gore, whose film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Academy Award earlier this year, had been widely tipped to win Friday’s prize, which expanded the Norwegian committee’s interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts that have traditionally been the award’s foundations.

“We face a true planetary emergency,” Gore said. “The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

But of course, it’s unseasonably cold somewhere on the planet today, so folks like Stefan are just laughing at us and the Norwegians for foolishly believing in science. (What a maroon.)

Speaking of maroons, while we’re enjoying the fruits of Bush’s genius, remind yourselves that we could have had this:

What with our local media elite’s fetish for splitting tickets, it was far from a sure thing, so I must admit breathing a sigh of relief to see the Seattle P-I Editorial Board enthusiastically endorse Bill Sherman for King County Prosecuting Attorney:

Every organization occasionally benefits from new ideas, perspectives and energy.

In a contest of two impressive candidates for King County prosecuting attorney, Bill Sherman makes the more compelling case. In Sherman, a Democrat, voters can pick someone who is well qualified, with diverse experience and possessed of a healthy interest in exploring new directions.

Dan Satterberg has argued that Sherman is unqualified to serve as Prosecutor, but he clearly failed to sway the P-I. I sure hope he’s more convincing in front of juries.

That said, Satterberg maintains a two-to-one money advantage, and that could be all he needs to win this election, so Sherman still needs all the help we can give him. With two days left in our five-day netroots fund drive, 69 people have already contributed $4,160. That’s well on the way toward our $5,000 target, but far short of our goal of 200 new donors — and nothing would be more satisfying than to blow through our goal with a wave of five and ten dollar donations.

So please give to Bill Sherman today, and help him bring “new ideas, perspectives and energy” to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. Thanks for all your help.

UPDATE:
As expected, the Seattle Times has endorsed Satterberg. The Times also bought into Satterberg’s bullshit “non-partisan” meme. Also not unexpected.

So there you have it, a hung jury from our two dailies. Both papers acknowledge that both candidates are well qualified — the P-I believes Sherman has made the case for change, the Times does not. All in all, a net-nothing in terms of changing the dynamics of this race.

My only question is, with this being the marquee race of the season… why did they both endorse on a Friday?

The Darcy Burner campaign has announced that it will report raising an impressive $304,901 for the quarter ending September 30. That brings the campaign to a total of $518,630 year to date, with $370,228 cash on hand. The third quarter is traditionally the slowest fundraising quarter of the year.

It is hard to predict how much Dave Reichert will report by the Oct. 15 deadline, but I’m guessing it won’t be substantially higher, even with his much ballyhooed visit by President Bush. And in any case, it seems certain that he’ll be in a substantially weaker financial position than he was at this time during the previous cycle, when he reported $929K YTD, and $455K COH.

In October of 2005, Reichert led Burner by a ten-to-one margin in the money race. This time around it is almost certain that Burner will report more cash on hand. No wonder Stuart Rothenberg ranks Reichert as one of the top three most endangered Republican House incumbents.

Although investigators have ruled the death of Montgomery Alabama minister Gary Aldridge a case of “accidental mechanical asphyxia,” the faithful are convinced it was murder. Why? Well, the Liberty University graduate and former Jerry Falwell aide was found hogtied in his home. And wearing a wet suit… and a face mask, a head mask, diving gloves and slippers, and rubberized underwear. And, an entire second wet suit.

Yup, sounds like murder to me. You know, except the part about the two wet suits and various diving paraphernalia. Not to mention the dildo up his ass.

And if Montgomery’s fundie community wasn’t scandalized enough, just wait until they find out the dildo was wearing a condom. Now that’s a sin.

*** NETROOTS FUND DRIVE IN PROGRESS; PLEASE GIVE TO BILL SHERMAN! ***

With over one million registered voters, a third of the state’s electorate, and two congressional seats, King County comprises an election jurisdiction larger than 16 states plus the District of Columbia. And yet this two-to-one Democratic county at the heart of WA’s progressive majority risks ceding control of its elections operations to a Republican Party with a proven national agenda of voter intimidation and suppression.

Should I-25 pass this November as expected, the county elections director could switch from an appointed professional to an elected officer, chosen in a “non-partisan,” low-profile, February special election — the perfect opportunity for a Republican to sneak into office. Meanwhile, Democrats are fighting to break the GOP’s sixty-year lock on the office of Prosecuting Attorney — the equivalent of the Attorney General of a small state. With these two offices come two of the three seats on the King County Canvassing Board, and the ability to disenfranchise any voter or disallow any ballot, on a simple two-to-one vote.

Republican voter suppression campaigns cannot be taken lightly in a county where Republicans, following the lead of their Summit County, Ohio counterparts the year before, challenged thousands of voter registrations just days before the 2005 election, sowing confusion, suppressing turnout, and forcing many voters to cast provisional ballots. Despite the fact that many of these challenges were in error, and against the legal advice of the attorney his own office assigned to provide expert counsel to the board, PAO Chief of Staff Dan Satterberg repeatedly voted to uphold challenges that did not include the voter’s current address as required by law. And despite the fact that KCGOP officer Lori Sotello signed thousands of affidavits declaring “under penalty of perjury … personal knowledge” that she did not have, Satterberg and his office refused to even investigate allegations of perjury.

Now Satterberg is running as a Republican for Prosecuting Attorney, and should he win, local, state and federal elections could hang in the balance. Not because Satterberg is corrupt, but because he subscribes to a political philosophy that views the franchise as a privilege, not a right, and because he belongs to a party with an established record of fighting to invalidate otherwise qualified ballots based on the tiniest discrepancy or voter error, while choosing to ignore the technical violations of those bringing the challenges. His is the party that pioneered turn-out friendly vote-by-mail in Republican dominated jurisdictions, yet fights it tooth and nail in our state’s most populous and Democratic county. His is the party that attempted to exploit the 2004 election controversy by proffering election “reforms” whose singular purpose seemed to be to make it harder to vote.

Despite Satterberg’s protestations to the contrary, the PAO is a partisan office, and always has been, and as the Seattle P-I noted in the wake of the bogus voter registration challenges, Satterberg’s longtime mentor Norm Maleng was “a partisan politician.” Party affiliation matters because it denotes a set of values, and in this election, Democrat Bill Sherman’s values are much more closely aligned with those of the vast majority of county voters.

Satterberg and his surrogates have gone on the attack because they know that negative campaigning works, and given their two-to-one money advantage this gives them a good shot at winning in November. Please, don’t let Republican money decide this election, when so many future elections could hang in the balance.

On Tuesday we launched a netroots fundraiser for Sherman, seeking to raise $5000 from 200 contributors over five days. As of this morning, 52 supporters have given $3240 — that’s a tremendous start, but still far short of our donor target. A surge in dollars and donors makes it easier for Bill to raise money from other donors, so if $10 is all you can afford, that’s more than enough.

Please give to Bill Sherman today, in whatever amount you can afford.

Really…he isn’t.

I first met Bill Sherman during his unsuccessful legislative run last year, and I came away quite impressed. So much so, that when I saw the somewhat disappointing field shaping up for this year’s Seattle City Council races, I urged Bill to throw his hat into the ring. Okay, I kinda begged him.

This was a race, I assured him, he could win… a suggestion that Bill literally laughed off, telling me had absolutely no plans to run for office again. He loved being a prosecutor, Bill explained, and only entered the 43rd LD race after Norm Maleng assured him he could keep his job while serving in the part-time legislature, a not uncommon arrangement. (For example, Luke Esser worked in the state AG’s office while serving in the state senate.) City Council, on the other hand, is a full time position, and Bill had no interest in swapping his “dream job” for a life on the council.

I mention this conversation as an answer to Dan Satterberg’s habit of smearing his opponent with the foul taint of political ambition. Satterberg points to Bill’s back-to-back campaigns as evidence of an opportunistic politician intent on using the PAO as a stepping stone to higher office, but in fact Bill had no plans to run for office, because there was no elected office he could serve while continuing his career as a prosecutor.

That is, until longtime King County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng suddenly passed away.

I cannot assure you that should he win, Bill won’t someday run for higher office, but then, it would be wrong to demand such assurances from our candidates. Maleng himself ran for state attorney general once, and for governor twice, and I never heard anybody criticizing him for his political ambition. I have even heard Republicans imply that Bill’s 43rd LD campaign was a calculated effort to position him for a run at the PAO, a conspiratorial suggestion of Shakespearian proportions. What next… Bill poured poison in Maleng’s ear? Nobody expected Maleng to retire anytime soon, let alone die at such a relatively young age, and so I think it fair to take at face value Bill’s prior assurance to me that he had no plans to run again for public office.

We take the opportunities that come our way, and right now we have an opportunity to elect a Prosecuting Attorney who will prosecute voter suppression and intimidation as vigorously as he will prosecute voter fraud. Nearly two full days into our netroots fund drive we have already raised $2340 toward our five-day $5000 goal, but have only registered 34 new donors toward our target of 200. Please give whatever you can, even if it’s only five or ten bucks.

Via Atrios, the New York Post reports:

October 10, 2007 — ODDEST couple of the decade: lifelong Democrat Andrew Stein and arch-conservative cutie Ann Coulter. The former city council president (when there was such a title) first took Coulter – author of “If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans” – to the black-tie Lincoln Center Film Society gala two weeks ago, where they turned heads. More recently, they were at Soho House “in passionate liplock,” according to a witness. Stein told Page Six: “She’s attacked a lot of my friends, but what can I say, opposites attract!”

For some reason, it reminded me of this:

“I’ve found you can do pretty much anything you want if you do it with a smile on your face. It’s amazing what you can get away with if you do it with a smile on your face.”
— Dino Rossi, September 11, 2007

Looks like Dino Rossi has set up yet another sleazy front group to shill his non-campaign. Check this one out…

It’s amazing how the narrative that Rudy Giuliani is a 9/11 hero stays alive even as New York’s former mayor gets loudly booed at Yankees Stadium. Dave from Queens has more.

This is an open thread.

Yesterday we kicked off a netroots fund drive for Bill Sherman, Democrat running for King County Prosecuting Attorney, and so far we’re kinda-sorta off to a pretty good start. We want to hit $5000 and 200 new donors by the end of the day Saturday, and while the $1770 we’ve raised thus far ain’t bad, it came from only 23 contributors.

We want to prove to the big donors that Sherman has the broad grassroots support necessary to win, so if you only have ten bucks to give, please give it now. And, as an extra incentive to put your money behind Sherman, the next $600 raised today will be matched dollar for dollar by Progressive Majority. Turn your $10 donation into $20. Turn your $25 donation into $50. (Etc, etc… you do the math.)

Republicans are counting on their huge, two-to-one money advantage to lead them to victory. It may sound like an odd argument, but the only way to prevent money from trumping values, is to give Sherman the money he needs to get his message out. So please give to Bill Sherman today.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Come join us for some hoppy ale and hopped up conversation.

Last week Gen. Wesley Clark dropped in unannounced… this week, who knows? The folks from Simple Majority will be there telling us why we should all vote Yes on 4204, and writer, pundit, activist Ari Melber (formerly of Seattle, now of The Nation) plans to drop by to slum with us bloggers in the political backwater he left behind.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

*** NETROOTS FUND DRIVE IN PROGRESS; PLEASE GIVE TO BILL SHERMAN! ***

Both Republican Dan Satterberg and Democrat Bill Sherman have reputations for being nice guys, and so I was taken aback when I hosted the two King County Prosecuting Attorney candidates on the Dave Ross Show last week, when Satterberg went on the attack right out of the gate. Satterberg is clearly the status quo candidate… the acting Prosecuting Attorney… the entrenched bureaucrat with 17 years as chief of staff in an office controlled by Republicans for over a half century… the guy supported by those with the most at stake in making sure things don’t much change at the PAO. He’s also the candidate with by far the most money. And so while the office is technically open, I’ve always thought of Satterberg as the pseudo-incumbent, and Sherman as the challenger.

But that’s not the way things played out on the air. Satterberg attacked Sherman personally, risking his nice guy image in what appeared to be an attempt to shake up the dynamics of the race. Incumbents aren’t supposed to do that, and so it had me wondering if Satterberg knew something about the state of the race that I didn’t?

Well if his internal polling numbers are anything close to those of Sherman, the answer is a resounding “yes,” and it sure would explain Satterberg’s aggressive (dare I say, partisan) line of attack. In a Sept. 18-20 survey of 1000 likely voters conducted on behalf of the Sherman campaign, Sherman led Satterberg by a significant 47% to 35% margin, with 18% still undecided. Sherman’s margin came from Seattle/North King County, where he led 55% to 24%; the two were virtually tied in East and South King County. The poll had a margin of error of 3%.

Of course, it’s just a poll, and six weeks out at that, and thus the only thing it really tells us for sure is that contrary to some of the early conventional wisdom, Sherman has a damn good chance of winning… if he can get his message out and successfully fend off Satterberg’s increasingly negative attacks. And that’s an awfully big “if” considering Satterberg’s inherent money advantage. Satterberg has already raised over $230,000 — over $100,000 more than Sherman — and unlike Sherman, he didn’t have to spend his war chest in a contested primary. That’s gonna buy an awful lot of direct mail pieces slamming Sherman and his qualifications, and the money keeps pouring in. There are a lot of very wealth folks with a vested interested in maintaining the status quo in the PAO, and they’re willing to do what it takes to help their guy win.

Are we willing to do the same? I’m betting yes.

And so I am proud to kick off WA’s first ever netroots fund drive for a local candidate, setting a target of $5,000 and 200 new contributors over the next five days. That’s somewhat less than the $100,000 target we set for Darcy Burner’s successful national fund drive, but actually quite a bit more ambitious considering the much smaller size of our local audience.

The goal is not simply to give the Sherman campaign a quick influx of cash, it is to prove to the traditional donor community that Sherman has the kind of broad, grassroots support necessary to win in November, thus spurring additional contributions across the board. It is also another opportunity to send a message to the political and media establishment that the netroots represent a growing progressive movement that is increasingly becoming a direct player in state and local politics that cannot be dismissed or ignored.

Back in August, we made history, focusing national resources on a congressional race in a way that had never been done before. We didn’t just raise $125,000 for Darcy Burner, we knocked Rodney Tom out of the primary, changing the dynamics of the 8th CD race.

Now we have the opportunity to achieve the same sort of impact in the King County Prosecutor’s race, that we did in the 8th CD, by giving Sherman the financial edge he needs to put him over the top in November.

So please go to Bill Sherman’s netroots fundraising page and give whatever you can — if it’s only ten bucks that’s ten bucks more than he had before — if you can afford to give more, please give more. (Or even if you can’t afford it… hell, I just chipped in $100 I don’t have.) A thermometer has been posted to Sherman’s home page tracking our progress, and the campaign will provide me with frequent reports.

The only way Republicans can win this race is by dramatically outspending us. Don’t let that happen. Please give to Bill Sherman, and help elect our first Democratic Prosecuting Attorney in over sixty years.