HorsesAss.Org

It is fair to say that challenger Ned Lamont’s dramatic victory yesterday over incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary pivoted almost entirely on the war in Iraq — an issue that has dogged Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell throughout her reelection campaign. But it may come as a surprise to anti-war Democrats — and perhaps to Sen. Cantwell herself — to learn that she and Lamont essentially share almost identical positions on the war.

Lamont supported the Reed/Levin Amendment which called for the administration to start redeploying troops out of Iraq starting in 2006. Sen. Cantwell voted for it.

In speaking about Iraq, Lamont has firmly argued that “America should make clear that we have no designs upon their oil and no plans for permanent bases.” Sen. Cantwell co-sponsored an amendment on this exact issue, helping to push passage through the U.S. Senate.

Lamont believes that “Our best chance of success requires that the Iraqis take control of their own destiny.” In supporting the Levin-Reed Amendment Sen. Cantwell stated that it would “encourage the Iraqis to take complete control of their own future.”

And throughout his campaign Lamont has argued that it is time for us to “change course” and bring the troops home. In a letter to President Bush sent on August 4, Sen. Cantwell twice told the president that we must “change course” to help the Iraqis find a political solution and take over its own security.

I know many Democrats who cite Sen. Cantwell’s vote to authorize the war along with her refusal to vocally criticize the President in its aftermath, as the primary reason they can offer her only grudging support at best. And yet both she and Lamont — who earned the enthusiastic support of anti-war Democrats in yesterday’s primary — apparently share the same position on what to do about the war now.

Just thought you all might want to know.

UPDATE:
Not much of a surprise, but Sen. Cantwell has endorsed Lamont:

“I congratulate Ned Lamont on his victory last night. I respect the decision of the Connecticut Democrats in choosing their nominee and I will support him.”

It was a battle so big only four of us could fit around the table. Will and Mollie teamed up with me to take on Seattle P-I bruiser Joel Connelly in a no-holds-barred, steel cage match debate over political civility. I thought we held the upper hand until Joel blindsided me with a broken bottle of Maker’s Mark, but my logical analysis and impressive command of the facts eventually won the day when I knocked the old curmudgeon to the ground and beat him senseless with his own cane. In between blows we civily discussed the McGavick shareholder lawsuit, my role in it, the pros and cons of negative campaigning, and how all this relates to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s defeat last night in the CT Democratic primary.

The show is 46:25, and is available here as a 31.9 MB MP3. Please visit PodcastingLiberally.com for complete archives and RSS feeds.

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for producing the show.]

Only one of the Democratic candidates for president represents the American center, which is where the Democratic Party needs to be if it is to be trusted with national power.

That candidate is Sen. Joe Lieberman. He is not doing well with the Democratic faithful, but in the opinion of this page, he would make the best candidate for a return to centrist politics.

He is experienced on foreign affairs, which Sen. John Edwards is not, and on domestic affairs, which Gen. Wesley Clark is not. He is calm, which Howard Dean is not. He waffles, but not as much as Sen. John Kerry.

Lieberman is a mainstream Democrat on favoring abortion rights and benefits for gay partners, affirmative action and civil liberties, and on opposing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This page agrees with him on all those things, as well as his realism in foreign policy. He voted for the war resolutions of 1991 and 2002.

He is also a fairly strong advocate of free trade, which best fits the economic interests of this region and, we believe, the United States. Lieberman supported free trade with Canada and Mexico, WTO membership for China and fast-track negotiating authority for further trade agreements. This year, these have become minority positions in his party.

Lieberman was one of the founders of the New Democrats, a group that calls for “progressive ideas, mainstream values and innovative, market-based policy solutions.”

Bill Clinton, whom this page endorsed twice, was that sort of Democrat, and he carried this state.

Washington voters have elected such New Democrats as Sen. Maria Cantwell, Reps. Rick Larsen, Jay Inslee, Adam Smith and Brian Baird; Gov. Gary Locke and Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon.

The center is not where most of the presidential candidates are this year. Their favorite theme has been the evil rich. Edwards calls it the “Two Americas”

People are going to be talking about the Lamont-Lieberman race in CT, so you might as well do it here. Polls close at 8PM Eastern, 5PM Pacific, and I plan to follow the results on MyDD.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Come on by and watch me and Joel Connelly come to fisticuffs over campaign civility.

And if you happen to be a liberal drinker on the other side of the mountains, the Tri-Cities chapter of DL also meets Tuesday nights, 7 PM, Atomic Ale, 1015 Lee Blvd., in Richland. Go ask Jimmy for more details.

I don’t much like making bold political predictions, but I’ve got one in the 26th LD: Republican legislative candidate Ronald Boehme will soon return a $300.00 contribution. Either that, or the Port Orchard Church of the Nazarene may soon see a challenge to its IRS tax exempt status.

Of course, churches are free to contribute whatever they want to political campaigns — they’re just not free to do so while continuing to enjoy tax exempt status as a religious institution. The rationale for this legal restriction should be obvious to folks on both sides of the political aisle: if you can claim a deduction for a donation to your church, and then your church can turn around and give that money to a political candidate or campaign, well then that’s like getting a tax deduction for a political contribution. And that’s just plain wrong.

And it’s such a basic violation of IRS code that you’d think churches would be damn wary about any perception of impropriety. But apparently not, for a quick search of the word “church” in the Public Disclosure Commission’s contribution’s database found a number of similar violations in the 2006 election cycle alone.

The Cornerstone Bible Church of Enumclaw gave $500.00 to LetTheVotersDecide.net — Tim Eyman’s committee to repeal the state’s gay civil right’s bill — while the North Shore Baptist Church of Bothell reported $300.00 of in-kind contributions to the campaign. Meanwhile, the Lynnwood Church of the Nazarene gave $150.00 to the Snohomish County Republican Central Committee. Naughty, naughty.

And it’s not just Republican campaigns and causes that are stealing from the collection basket. Democratic State Senator Paull Shin reports receiving $1350.00 in contributions from the Korean Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth NJ. What’s up with that?

I know it might be tough on Boehme to have $300.00 less to spend on political consultants (his number one expense,) but look on the bright side — the Port Orchard Church of the Nazarene will now have $300.00 more to spend on saving souls and feeding and clothing the poor. And from my limited reading of the New Testament, I vaguely remember that charity, not politics, was supposed to be the church’s primary work.

Um… so I guess, when Initiative 933 supporters wax eloquently in defense of property rights, they’re really only talking about defending their own property. Posted this afternoon to the “proprights” Yahoo group:

No on I-933 Signs

All you wonderful proprights folks:

If you see those lying I-933 signs, take them down. They are full of lies and morally should not be up. If you don’t want to do that, tell me where they are and I will do it. Those people put those signs up in clusters of five or six and they are full of those suggestive, lying questions to put fear into people.

Edwina Johnston

Edwina Johnston is a member of Citizen’s Alliance for Property Rights, and was a signature gathering captain on the I-933 petition drive. She’s apparently so passionate about defending what she sees as her right to use her property in any way she sees fit, that she has absolutely no qualms about destroying other people’s property in the process.

Hypocrisy from the backers of a right-wing initiative? Who’d’ve thunk?

UPDATE:
Just to clarify, a reader forwarded me the relevant statute:

RCW 29A.84.040 Political advertising, removing or defacing.
A person who removes or defaces lawfully placed political advertising including yard signs or billboards without authorization is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable to the same extent as a misdemeanor that is punishable under RCW 9A.20.021. The defacement or removal of each item constitutes a separate violation.

In case you’re counting, Edwina, that means you face up to 90 days in jail and a $1000.00 fine for each sign you remove. So you go girl.

A leak and corrosion in a pipeline has forced BP to shut down it’s Prudhoe Bay oil field, forcing oil prices to surge today.

A leak in an oil pipeline? In Alaska? Why, that could never happen should we drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), because… well… the oil industry and the Bush administration would never do anything that might endanger such a fragile ecosystem. Um… right?

From pollster John Zogby:

Let’s just look at the numbers from my most recent national poll (July 21). Overall, only 36% of likely voters told us that they agree that the war in Iraq has been “worth the loss of American lives”, while 57% disagree. But the partisan splits are more revealing: only 16% of the Democrats polled said the war has been worth while 82% disagree and only 26% of Independents agree the war has been worth it while 72% disagree. On the Republican side, 64% said the war has been worth it, while 23% disagree. The war has been the principal cause of the nation’s polarization in the past three years. The polling evidence shows the degree to which Iraq has become a Republican war. And these latest numbers are also noteworthy in that they show that about one in four Republicans have now pretty much given up on the war.

There are a number of ways to look at this poll, though I wonder what percentage of the 64% of Republicans who still think the war was worth it interpret the poll to mean that 57% of their fellow citizens are cowards and traitors who hate America?

Oh no! Mike!™ McGavick has become a victim of negative politics! Heaven forfend!

According to the Seattle P-I’s Joel Connelly:

Vilification of McGavick, the most talented Senate candidate recruited by Republicans in 2006, stands as a model for the bipartisan tactics of debasement infecting American politics.

I like and respect Joel, and often agree with his analysis, but this time… not so much.

First of all, I don’t believe that by contemporary standards Mike!™ has been all that vilified. (Yet.) We’ve called him a “lobbyist” — he was one. We’ve ridiculed him for prevaricating on several controversial issues — and he has. We’ve characterized the $28.3 million golden parachute he negotiated after announcing his resignation from SAFECO as “obscene” — I think many shareholders, policyholders and laid-off employees would agree that it is.

What we haven’t done is accused him of killing one of his best friends, or of being a coward and a traitor who hates America. We haven’t morphed him into a terrorist or accused him of caring more about sex offenders than about innocent children. We haven’t publicly debated the unusual shape of his penis.

What we haven’t done is lied. And we haven’t delved into his divorce or other areas of his personal life… not that it should necessarily be off limits. So I don’t quite understand Joel’s characterization of a handful of snarky press releases and a shareholder lawsuit as a “mean, low-down attack.” These are political attacks… which is exactly what you expect to see against a guy running for political office.

My second point of contention with Joel is the notion that in discussing the “debasement” of American politics he could possible talk about my blog in the same breath as he talks about the tactics of the US Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past half-decade (yes, hundreds of millions) running smear campaigns in local elections. In 2004 they spent $1.5 million torpedoing Deborah Senn’s run for Attorney General, and just this past week they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV ads thanking Dave Reichert for a bill that passed before he was elected to Congress.

Meanwhile, I’m just some local blogger with a couple thousand readers who can barely pay my own bills. Sure, when it comes to influencing politics I get more bang for my buck, but let’s keep this in perspective: I don’t have any bucks. If I manage to have more of an impact than the folks over on the right-wing blog, well that’s an accomplishment of which I’m pretty damn proud. But don’t lump me in with Karl Rove or the US Chamber. Even if I aspired to embrace the dark side I don’t have the resources or the opportunity to even begin to make the impact these Republican sleaze masters achieve with a simple wave of their hands.

My only contribution to the shareholder lawsuit was a brief post that helped hook up the attorney with the plaintiff, and hell… Craig’s List probably would have gotten a larger response. It was no different from a similar query over on (u)SP (other than the fact that I didn’t attempt to sneakily hide my tracks by deleting the original text,) and hardly a poisonous, Rovian tactic of political debasement.

Finally, I have to take issue with Joel for calling me out in his closing paragraphs:

On the horsesass.org Web site, which helped spawn the lawsuit, founder David Goldstein held forth last Thursday: “McGavick’s midlife conversion to ‘civility’ is a joke to anyone who remembers the vicious campaign he ran on behalf of Slade Gorton.”

Not true, Goldie, and you didn’t even live here then.

No Joel, I didn’t live in the state back then, and even if I did I wouldn’t pretend to have the impressive institutional memory you possess. But you know me well enough to know that I am curious and inquisitive about my adopted state’s political history, and I’ve heard enough stories and read enough newspaper accounts to convince me that Mike!™ was no angel.

Civility isn’t a campaign theme. It’s an excuse. A shield. A feeble attempt to ward off all criticism or unfavorable analysis or probing questions as poisonous political debasement, all the while freeing his own surrogates to attack at will. But on this point I’m more than happy to agree to disagree.

See, I can forgive Joel for conflating unflattering facts and snark with character assassination. I can forgive Joel for lumping me in with some of the evil masters of the Republican attack machine. I can even forgive Joel for publicly accusing me of being wrong about Mike!™’s reputation as a political operative.

But there’s one final transgression for which I’m not quite sure I can ever forgive Joel.

It’s spelled “Goldy” with a “y.”

“Goldie” with an “ie” is the feminine spelling, and as a nom de guerre for an evil, political muckraker like me, that would just plain look silly.

Are you feeling a bit dizzy from watching the hydroplanes spin round and round, or from craning your necks to catch a glimpse of the Blue Angels soaring by, or simply from a weekend of too much sun and too much beer? Then turn down the lights, turn up the radio and tune in to “The David Goldstein Show tonight on Newsradio 710-KIRO, from 7PM to 10PM.

7PM: Is centrism for suckers? That’s the opinion of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman who wrote this week that, in this age of ruthless partisanship, the most important thing you need to know about a candidate is whether there’s a “D” or an “R” next to their name. And speaking of partisanship, I’m going to talk a little bit about my role in the shareholder lawsuit against Mike!™ McGavick, and why it says absolutely nothing at all about the merits of the case itself.

8PM: Hey… there are a couple congressional races East of the mountains too. Who knew? Spokane blogger Gerald Toompas of EWpolitics.com joins me to talk about some surprising poll numbers in the 5th CD race between incumbent Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris and Democratic challenger Peter Goldmark, while Tri-Cities blogger Jim McCabe of McCranium.org calls in to complain about his local media’s refusal to admit that Rep. “Do Nothin’ Doc” Hastings even has a Democratic challenger. Then in the second half of the hour I’ll be heading back west with long time (and disgruntled) conservative Republican activist Phil Spackman, who’s gonna tell us exactly what’s wrong with the WA state and King County GOP.

9PM: What’s the right-wing, Christian Evangelical extremist perspective on state and national politics? Gen. JC Christian, Patriot, joins me to discuss the most important issues of the day, including Intelligent Design, stem cell research, the Iraq war and of course… The Passion of the Mel Gibson. “The General” blogs at the nationally renowned Jesus’ General, which bills itself as “The Official Online Organ of the Glorious Conservative Christian Cultural Revolution.” And a very manly organ it is.

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

Hey, Dave Reichert made it into The New Republic… though not exactly in a good way:

Dissing Bush can be trickier than it might seem at first. There is, after all, the little matter of fund-raising, where the president, despite his sagging popularity, is still the party heavyweight. The trick for vulnerable GOP candidates is to somehow get Bush money without being in any way associated with Bush or the other radioactive members of his administration–a predicament that is tying Republicans into pretzels from coast to coast.

[…]

For some, the best approach may be simply to ask Bush to stay away. When the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently unearthed the fact that Bush would be raising dough for David Reichert, who represents an increasingly Democratic district in Washington state, the news generated a wave of negative coverage about his coziness with the White House. When Reichert joined the pariah-in-chief at the event anyway, it seemed to do him more harm than good: The visit pumped anti-Bush money into the coffers of his opponent, who ended up out-raising him for the quarter. Indeed, the event provided so much fodder to tie Reichert to Bush that it’s widely seen as the reason Reichert reversed his position on stem-cell research last month.

Word on the street is that Reichert continues to struggle to raise money, particularly from individuals, a category of donors with whom challenger Darcy Burner has been going gangbusters.

The DCCC has made this race one of its top targets with a $1.5 million TV ad buy during the final three weeks of the campaign. Who wants to wager that some of those ads show Reichert standing arm in arm with the President at Boeing Field?

It’s a beautiful summer day, so go outside and play.

Or you could sit at your computer and argue about stuff like… let’s see now… the fact that Mike!™ McGavick supports teaching all theories in publics schools, even really bogus, nonscientific ones like Intelligent Design. Or maybe that the Eastern Washington news media just absolutely refuses to cover Democratic congressional challengers. Or maybe that the oil industry is so desperate to create some grass roots buzz to counter Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” that Exxon actually invented an amateur filmmaker.

It is times like this when I really curse the New York Times for putting it’s columnists behind a paid subscription firewall.

Paul Krugman’s latest column — “Centrism Is for Suckers” — is an absolute must read for those “moderates” in both parties who take issue with the aggressive, take no prisoners partisanship of HA and much of the liberal blogosphere. It is also an important lesson for those independent minded voters who believe they can still afford to pick and choose candidates regardless of party affiliation, at a time when our Republican controlled Congress steadfastly refuses to exercise its constitutional obligation to act as a check and balance on one of the most authoritarian and ruthless administrations in American history.

If you want to understand the state of America today, a good place to start is with the contrast between the political strategies of conservative business advocacy groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and those of more or less liberal advocacy groups like the Sierra Club.

The chamber recently got into trouble because of ads it ran praising Republican members of Congress who, it said, voted for the Medicare prescription drug program. It turned out that one of the congressmen praised in the ads actually voted against the program, while two others weren’t even in Congress when the vote took place.

Oops. But the bigger question is, aren’t business groups supposed to favor fiscal responsibility and reducing the size of government? So why is the chamber praising a program that substantially increases the size of government and has no visible means of financial support?

The answer is obvious: the Bush administration hopes to win some votes in the midterm elections from older Americans now receiving drug benefits, and the chamber, like many conservative organizations these days, believes that its interests are best served by helping Republicans win elections.

[…]

Now compare this with the behavior of advocacy groups like the Sierra Club, the environmental organization, and Naral, the abortion-rights group, both of which have endorsed Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, for re-election. The Sierra Club’s executive director defended the Chafee endorsement by saying, “We choose people, not parties.” And it’s true that Mr. Chafee has usually voted with environmental groups.

But while this principle might once have made sense, it’s just naive today. Given both the radicalism of the majority party’s leadership and the ruthlessness with which it exercises its control of the Senate, Mr. Chafee’s personal environmentalism is nearly irrelevant when it comes to actual policy outcomes; the only thing that really matters for the issues the Sierra Club cares about is the “R” after his name.

Put it this way: If the Democrats gain only five rather than six Senate seats this November, Senator James Inhofe, who says that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” will remain in his current position as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. And if that happens, the Sierra Club may well bear some of the responsibility.

Perhaps I’ve already blockquoted more than the Fair Use Doctrine allows, but it would be a worse transgression not to include Krugman’s final paragraph:

The fact is that in 1994, the year when radical Republicans took control both of Congress and of their own party, things fell apart, and the center did not hold. Now we’re living in an age of one-letter politics, in which a politician’s partisan affiliation is almost always far more important than his or her personal beliefs. And those who refuse to recognize this reality end up being useful idiots for those, like President Bush, who have been consistently ruthless in their partisanship.

I for one do not wish to be a “useful idiot” and that explains why I work so hard to elect Democrats — not because I have any particular allegiance to the Democratic Party, but because I understand it is the only way to enact progressive policies while fending off political attacks from the right. This is the political world we live in, and those who ignore the letter next to a candidate’s name on the ballot are ignoring political reality.

I’m not saying this is a good thing — it’s just the way things are.

How scared are Dave Reichert’s folks about facing Democratic challenger Darcy Burner? Scared enough that they conducted extensive polling in June, yet didn’t leak a single drop of data to the media. Scared enough that even the NRCC publicly admits he’s vulnerable. And apparently, scared enough that they’re already running Karl Rove-style push-polls… a full three months before the election.

I’ve heard from three constituents who are just absolutely pissed off about being subjected to a telephone ad campaign masquerading as a political survey… a push-poll clearly designed to pump up Reichert while spreading misinformation about Burner. Push-polling is dirty politics at its worst, but the only thing surprising about Reichert’s efforts is that it comes so early — normally we don’t see these sort of dirty tricks until the final weeks of the campaign.

The caller starts by asking to speak to the “male, voting, head of household,” though the three respondents I’ve heard from are all women. It starts innocently enough with “right direction/wrong direction” questions and stuff like that, but after the respondents say they intend to support Burner, the “ifs” start coming out.

“If you knew that Darcy Burner had voted in only 11 of 22 elections, would you be more or less likely to vote for her?”

“If you knew that Darcy Burner held stock options, including stocks in oil companies and Enron, would you be more or less likely to vote for her?”

“If you knew that Darcy Burner supported using aborted fetuses for medical research, would you be more or less likely to vote for her?”

“If you knew that Darcy Burner wanted to penalize the middle class by raising taxes, would you be more or less likely to vote for her?”

I probably have the specific phrasing off, as the respondents weren’t taking notes, but all three came away with the clear impression that this was an intentional “smear job” designed to mislead voters about Burners stance on the issues. In fact, one so-called “pollster” was openly apologetic about the biased nature of the questions, whispering into the phone: “I’m just trying to earn a living.”

The firm conducting the push-poll is obviously from out of state — one caller couldn’t pronounce “Issaquah” or even “Reichert”, while another admitted she was calling Texas the day before and another southern state the day before that. No doubt other Democratic challengers are being equally smeared in other districts nationwide by a Republican Party increasingly fearful of the coming purge, and willing to stoop to any level to cling to power.

Unfortunately, one of the things that makes push-polls so popular is that journalists tend to be reluctant to write about them, because there’s rarely a recording to verify the details.

So here’s want I want all of you to do: be prepared. If you think you’re in the process of being push-polled, take detailed notes, or better yet, record the conversation. And if you’ve already been push-polled, drop me an email and let me know so we can corroborate the details as much as possible.

We all expect the Republicans to stoop to dirty tricks in defense of Reichert. But let’s not allow them to get away with it without consequences.