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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?

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.

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

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.

Goldy recently wrote about the signs of gloom and doom for the Republicans. The bad new and “expectations management” continues. Just look at a couple of the articles that hit the press this weekend:

Politico has the headline GOP getting crushed in polls, key races:

In case you’ve been too consumed by the Democratic race to notice, Republicans are getting crushed in historic ways both at the polls and in the polls.

At the polls, it has been a massacre. In recent weeks, Republicans have lost a Louisiana House seat they had held for more than two decades and an Illinois House seat they had held for more than three. Internal polls show that next week they could lose a Mississippi House seat that they have held for 13 years.

In the polls, they are setting records (and not the good kind). The most recent Gallup Poll has 67 percent of voters disapproving of President Bush; those numbers are worse than Richard Nixon’s on the eve of his resignation. A CBS News poll taken at the end of April found only 33 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the GOP — the lowest since CBS started asking the question more than two decades ago. By comparison, 52 percent of the public has a favorable view of the Democratic Party.

Things are so bad that many people don’t even want to call themselves Republicans. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has found the lowest percentage of self-described Republicans in 16 years of polling.

It’s hard to dismiss this stuff as “liberal media bias” when elections hand districts (with decades of Republican-control) to the Democrats. The article even has a Republican insider saying:

“The anti-Republican mood is fairly big, and it has been overwhelming,” said Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis.

That’s bad. I mean, at some point even the most heroic self-deception must fail, even in a community that is infamous for rejecting reality and facts.

The Republican gloom and doom is featured in this piece appearing in The Weekly Standard titled Gloomy Republicans: For good reason? by Executive Editor (and noted Wingnut) Fred Barnes:

First, the good news. Conservatives won a sweeping victory in an enormously important election the week before last. Unfortunately, it happened in England….

Alrighty then…. That’s the (totally irrelevant) good news. The bad news is that…

Prospects for Republicans in the 2008 election here at home look grim.
[…]

More than 80 percent of Americans believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction. Democrats have steadily maintained the 10 percentage point lead in voter preference they gained two years ago. And President Bush’s job performance rating is stuck in the low 30s, a level of unpopularity that weakens the Republican case for holding the White House in 2008.

There’s another piece of polling data that is both intriguing and indicative. In a Wall Street Journal/NBC survey last month, John McCain fared better with Republican voters (84 percent to 8 percent) than Barack Obama did with Democrats (78 percent to 12 percent). McCain was also stronger than Obama among independent voters (46 percent to 35 percent).

These are terrific numbers for McCain. But they aren’t enough. In the overall match-up, McCain trailed Obama (43 percent to 46 percent). The explanation for this seeming paradox is quite simple: The Republican base has shrunk. In 2008, there are fewer Republicans. [Emphasis added]

This same pattern holds here in Washington state. In the most recent SurveyUSA Washington head-to-head poll, Sen. John McCain gets 87% of the Republican support compared to 83% of Democrats who support Sen. Barack Obama. (One difference is that among Washington state independents, 55% support Obama and 34% support McCain.)

Overall, however, Obama strongly leads McCain, 53% to 40%. The reason for the double-digit lead is that only 28% of those polled admitted to being a Republican, whereas 41% fess-up to being a Democrat.

SurveyUSA polls provide data on the long-term trend in party affiliation. Here are the percentages since May of 2005:

The numbers show a slight decline of about 1.4% per year in Republican affiliation. At the same time, there is a 2.7% increase per year in Democratic affiliation. The big change is in independents, who have declined by about 4% per year.

The numbers support the notion that, in Washington state, independents are increasingly calling themselves Democrats. An analysis of correlations indicates that the increase in Democratic identity is most strongly associated with a concomitant decline in independents (r = -0.872). In other words, declines in independents “explains” about 76% of the increase in Democrats (found by squaring the correlation coefficient). The decrease in Republican identity “explains” about 20% of the increase in Democratic identity (r = -0.451).

The take-home message is that Republicans have good reason to be gloomy in Washington state. Their brand name is tarnished; the percent of Washingtonians admitting to being a Republican is declining. At the same time Democrats are experiencing growth.

And if Republicans are counting on independents to make up the difference, they are bound to be bitterly disappointed: there are even fewer independents than there were three years ago as former independents start calling themselves Democrats.

Over at Slog, ECB sticks it to Knute Berger for his latest column on Crosscut (you know, that online “newspaper” that has no news and no paper), and while I genuinely like Skip personally… Erica’s kinda got a point. There’s a “Blast From the Past” like quality to the Brewster/Berger/Van Dyk crowd that fails to connect with mere 16-year transplants like myself. Their’s is a Seattle more commonly found in history books than in, um… Seattle.

But I was particularly struck by Erica’s snide comment on Skip’s snide comment about Mayor Greg Nickels’ supposed call for secession:

Nickels’s “call for secession,” as Berger surely realizes, was a joke.

Or does he? This is the second column in a row in which Skip has raised this canard, to which I previously (and sarcastically) responded:

Berger dismisses Nickels’ assertion that his call for secession was “tongue-in-cheek” because apparently, journalists are much more capable of climbing inside the heads of their subjects than their subjects themselves, and no politician could ever be subtle enough to deliberately suggest an absurdity purely for dramatic effect.

In writing that sentence I was very conscious of my own recent run-in with the joke police, when the Times’ David Postman rejected my explanation that my intent was satirical when I responded in kind to BIAW charges of eco-Nazism. In his headline, Postman put the word “satire” in quotes, clearly refusing to accept my explanation as anything but an ex post facto excuse.

So I feel Nickels’ pain. Nickels denies that he really supports secession, in the same way that I denied that I really think the BIAW are Nazis. (Compare that to the BIAW, who passionately defend their assertion that our state’s stormwater regulations are the environmental equivalent of the Nuremberg Laws.) In both cases, journalists have concretely taken our original comments at face value, while stubbornly refusing to do the same when we explain that we were speaking tongue-in-cheek. Apparently, they did not find it funny, so it couldn’t possibly have been joke… a standard by which the bulk of sitcoms would be properly classified as reality television.

Years back, before I started blogging, I responded to yet another Eyman tax-cutting initiative by writing an update to Jonathan Swift’s classic satire “A Modest Proposal,” in which I proposed slaughtering students who failed the WASL, and using their flesh to supplement our school lunch programs. My column was instantly rejected by the Times and P-I, but the editors of the TNT mulled it over for weeks, eventually declining due to the consensus opinion that their readers “lacked the satire gene.”

I’m beginning to wonder if our journalists suffer from the same genetic defect?

Did Obama just wrap up the Democratic nomination? Is Hillary’s gas tax relief a bunch of hot air? Would raising the gas tax be the responsible thing to do? Are Democrats dismissing Dino Rossi at their own peril?

Goldy and friends engage in some friendly sparring but, as the evening wore on, nearly ended up in a death fight over these and other big issues of the moment at the Montlake Ale House. Goldy was joined by blogging pioneer N in Seattle, the lovely, talented, and hard-working Molly, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, and HorsesAss personality Carl Ballard.

The show is 46:04, and is available here as an MP3 file.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_may_6_2008.mp3]

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

The Columbian is reporting that officials now don’t know what caused the deaths of six sea lions near Bonneville dam earlier this week.

The mystery is thickening in the deaths of six sea lions over the weekend near Bonneville Dam, with federal authorities reporting this morning that a preliminary examination of the bodies “found no evidence of recent gunshot wounds.”

Although authorities initially suspected the animals died due to gunshot wounds, the National Marine Fisheries Service reported today that the cause of death remains unknown.

“We are assuming nothing at this point,” said Brian Gorman, a NMFS spokesman in Seattle. “We don’t have a working hypothesis, but we’ll come up with one and we’ll pursue it and try to find a cause of these deaths. It’s a mystery right now.”

Okay then. We’ll just call it a mystery and leave it at that. Odd how this story was presented as some kind of mass carnage, and now it’s like “oops.”

Jesus, if that’s how they treat the second place finisher, I’d hate to be the horse that came in third.

What?! You mean Rep. Dave Reichert really isn’t a moderate? The Politico reports:

It is a pattern. Many of his moderate moves turn out to be pretty empty upon closer inspection.

In fact, Reichert has reversed his vote on “moderate” bills a whopping 25 times this Congress. Why would a politician expose himself to charges that he was for a bill before he was against it?

According to an analysis of House procedure by local blogger Dan Kirkdorffer, Reichert often votes with Republicans on every procedural step for a bill, but if it is headed for passage anyway, he reverses himself on the final vote. The crass objective is to get credit from gullible reporters for backing some Democratic legislation.

Take the Democrats’ renewable energy bill. Reichert voted with Republicans to thwart the legislation five times. On Feb. 27, he voted to kill it one last time; when that failed, he turned around on the same day and voted for the final bill, with only 16 other Republicans.

These are facts, not opinions, and if our local reporters and columnists want to continue aping Reichert’s campaign propaganda, the least they could do is examine the facts and offer an alternative interpretation before once again touting his supposedly “moderate” voting record. To do otherwise simply serves to deceive the voters of the Eighth Congressional District.

Dan Kirkdorffer has been relentlessly pushing his analysis since the 2006 campaign, and while it is heartening to see a professional journalist finally examine the data, it is disappointing that the scrutiny had to come from the D.C. press corps rather than our own backyard. No doubt Dan is at least as partisan as I am, but facts are facts and they stand for themselves.

Is it acute media silliness or has the Rev. Wright issue now cost Obama the election? Should a prescription for medical marijuana come with a death sentence? Do Americans have something to learn about war from Europeans? (Are we traitors for even contemplating such a thing?). Will Sound Transit take the road less traveled? Is Dino’s fantasy transportation plan going to put him on the fast track to Olympia or board him on a bus back to Bellevue?

Goldy and friends dig into these savory questions over a pitcher of beer at the Montlake Ale House.

Goldy is joined by Geov Parrish, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly. Carl, and Lee.

The show is 55:10, and is available here as a 51.7 MB MP3.

[Audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_april_29_2008.mp3]

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

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.

While you’ve got Drinking Liberally in mind, check out the Tri-City Herald‘s write-up of the blogosphere’s newest media darling, Jimmy of McCranium, and the Richland chapter of Drinking Liberally. Better yet, stop by and have Jimmy buy you a beer (or ten) at O’Callahan’s, in the Shilo Inn, 50 Comstock Rd, in Richland.

If the Seattle and Richland chapters are out of your commuting range, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

I generally like the job that Chris Mulick does, and I love the fact that smaller papers like the Tri-City Herald still maintain an Olympia bureau, but I just gotta call him out for a recent blog post in which he succumbs to the classic journalistic sin of equivalency. Mulick writes:

One of the more amusing aspects to covering campaigns in an election year is digesting all the yelling and screaming political parties intend for public consumption.

A favorite tactic is the missive from one party telling the other party’s candidate what they should do, as if they were playing a high stakes game of Simon Says.

For instance, the state Republican Party issued a press release last week titled “Gregoire Should Denounce Her Presidential Favorite’s Elitist Rhetoric.”

A week earlier the Democratic Party issued a press release titled “Rossi Should Reject and Denounce the BIAW.”

Yeah, no doubt, the two parties routinely do this sort of thing, and it can sometimes get quite silly, but Mulick chose a dubious example to illustrate his point. On the one hand, the state GOP demanded that Gov. Gregoire denounce Sen. Barack Obama for saying that small town voters are “bitter.” On the other, the state Dems demanded that Dino Rossi denounce the BIAW for repeatedly insisting that environmentalists are “Nazis.”

Sure, both parties sent out press releases, but there’s no equivalency between Obama’s statements and the violent, extremist hate-talk of the BIAW… and to imply such is simply irresponsible.