Search Results for: Reichert

Not surprising really, considering incumbent Republican Dave Reichert’s refusal to actually campaign, but it looks like he suddenly has a real race on his hands:

Democrat Suzan DelBene is within striking distance against Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.), according to an internal poll conducted for her campaign.

The poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday, found Reichert with 48 percent and DelBene with 44 percent, with 8 percent undecided.

Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates surveyed 400 likely voters and the poll carried a 4.9-point margin of error.

The results show DelBene moving in the right direction. The Democratic firm polled the race in August and found Reichert ahead 50 percent to 41 percent.

Last week a SurveyUSA poll showed DelBene closing within 7 points, down from the supposedly comfortable 13-point spread Reichert had enjoyed only one month before.

And before you simply dismiss these latest results as an internal poll, remember, that’s not how all this works. Candidates poll their own races to give themselves an accurate view of the political landscape, not to deceive themselves. The spin comes in choosing which poll results to release and which to keep private. So it does indeed appear that DelBene has some momentum.

Huh. Perhaps Reichert might want to reconsider his stealth campaign strategy, and maybe agree to a debate or two. That is, if he’s not too mentally impaired to handle it.

Let’s say there’s a story that’s creating a  bit of buzz within local political circles, that no local journalist is willing to report. You know, like the somewhat sensitive if well-founded concerns that there might be something wrong with Rep. Dave Reichert’s brain. So how do you move this local political story into the local traditional press?

Step 1.) Local blogger pounds story (in this case, over on the higher profile Slog.)

Step 2.) National blogger picks up story, adding credibility and exposure.

Step 3.) D.C.-based publication picks up on story, giving it that spiffy journalismish look and feel.

Step 4.) Local newspaper, scooped in their own backyard by a Beltway rag, finally follows up, delivering story to their large, local audience.

That’s what I call the “Virtuous News Cycle,” variations of which I’m constantly playing to various degrees of success on issues I find important, but nobody else does. And while you may think it manipulative, or insist that this particular line of inquiry was inappropriate or irresponsible, regardless of the larger media’s ultimate response, think about this:

Reichert’s post-brain-trauma mental capacity, or lack thereof, is either news, or it’s not news. Which means, it was either worthy of a Seattle Times article weeks ago, when I first hit the story, or it is not worthy of reporting even now, after their hand has finally been forced. I didn’t make this news; I just made other journalists pay attention to it.

And that’s what effective blogging is all about.

A new KING-5/SurveyUSA poll shows Democratic Suzan DelBene now trailing Republican incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert 52-45%, and while a seven-point gap a month for the election wouldn’t usually be something the challenger would tout, this latest survey shows a dramatic tightening of the race at time when Republicans were expecting their Big Red Wave to be approaching its peak.

In an election for US House of Representatives in Washington State’s 8th Congressional District today, 09/30/10, incumbent Republican Dave Reichert defeats Democratic challenger Suzan DelBene 52% to 45%, according to this latest exclusive KING-TV poll conducted by SurveyUSA.

Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll 4 weeks ago, DelBene is up 4 points; Reichert is down 2. Among moderates, Reichert had led by 4, now trails by 17, a 21-point swing to the Democrat. Among women, DelBene had trailed by 8 points, now leads by 3, an 11-point swing to the Democrat. Men and voters age 35 to 49 account for almost all of Reichert’s advantage.

52-45%, huh? Not much different from some of the polls we’ve seen in the allegedly close Patty Murray/Dino Rossi race.

Assuming SurveyUSA’s numbers can be trusted this cycle (and I’m not necessarily making that assumption), this shows a ton of movement in DelBene’s direction over the past month… the kinda momentum that should it continue, could make this race a tossup by election day. For example, Darcy Burner trailed Reichert by the exact same 54-41% margin at the end of August 2006 as DelBene trailed Reichert at the same point during this cycle, yet surged to within a silver hair of victory.

And a look at the cross-tabs suggests that there’s still plenty of opportunity for DelBene to pick up support simply by educating traditional Democratic voters about where Reichert stands on hot button issues. For example, Reichert’s still drawing 13% of liberals, 17% of Democrats, and an incongruous 30% of pro-choice voters. These are all constituencies in which DelBene stands to improve.

Interestingly WA-08 is not the only race that appears to be tightening in recent weeks, for as the New York Times reports, shifting polls suggest that Republicans are having a tough time locking down a House majority in the manner Democrats did in 2006.

By now, Republicans had hoped to put away a first layer of Democrats and set their sights on a second tier of incumbents. But the fight for control of Congress is more fluid than it seemed at Labor Day, with Democrats mounting strong resistance in some parts of the country as they try to hold off a potential Republican wave in November.

The chances of a Republican takeover in the House remain far greater than in the Senate, according to a race-by-race analysis by The New York Times. But enough contests remain in flux that both parties head into the final four weeks of the campaign with the ability to change the dynamic before Election Day.

Huh. So if Reichert’s near total lack of campaigning really is a manifestation of a cynical electoral strategy rather than, say, his traumatic brain injury, he might want to reconsider how safe his seat really is in a political climate that is at least as anti-incumbent as it is anti-Democratic.

Kinda a crappy, generic ad that could pretty much run in any state, with little modification, but does anybody else find it ironic that Dino Rossi is running as political outsider intent on fixing the other Washington, while being almost totally dependent on “independent” expenditures from consummate insiders like Karl Rove?

When the NRSC first started talking up Rossi last spring, I thought part of his appeal was supposed to be his reputation for raising huge gobs of cash. And yet he’s becoming as much of a welfare case as Dave Reichert. Go figure.

As I briefly mentioned earlier today, we got a new Rasmussen Poll in the race between Sen. Patty Murray (D) and Dino Rossi (R). The poll shows Murray leading Rossi 51% to 46%. The poll surveyed 750 likely voters on the 14th of September.

With this new poll, we have now had seven polls taken (and released to the public) over the past month:

	Start	End			%	%	%
Poll	date	date	Size	MOE	D	R	Diff
Rasmussen	14-Sep	14-Sep	750	4.0	51	46	D+5.0
CNN Time OR	10-Sep	14-Sep	906	3.0	53	44	D+9.0
Elway	09-Sep	12-Sep	500	4.5	50	41	D+9.0
Rasmussen	31-Aug	31-Aug	750	4.0	46	48	R+2.0
DSCC	28-Aug	31-Aug	968	—	50	45	D+5.0
SurveyUSA	18-Aug	19-Aug	618	4.0	45	52	R+7.0
Rasmussen	18-Aug	18-Aug	750	4.0	48	44	D+4.0

In what follows, I’ll ignore the DSCC poll. Not that I have any reason to doubt the poll. Rather, the poll was specifically released because the results favored Murray, thus clearly violating a statistical assumption used for the analysis.

Murray leads in four of the remaining six polls. As usual, I’ll begin with a Monte Carlo simulation analysis of the most recent poll (FAQ). Taking just the new Rasmussen polls there were 728 respondents who went for Murray or Rossi. Following a million simulated elections, Murray tallies 835,577 wins to Rossi’s 158,253 wins.

The evidence offered by this most recent poll suggests that Murray would have an 84.1% chance of beating Rossi if an election had occurred two days ago. Here is the distribution of outcomes from the simulated elections:

With three polls released over three days, we might as well combine all of ’em. Of the total of 2,156 individuals sampled, 2,061 go for Rossi or Murray. Murray gets 51.6% and Rossi gets 44.0% of the “votes.” The simulation analysis gives Murray 994,327 wins to Rossi’s 5,404 wins.

Thus, these three polls offer evidence that Murray would have a 99.5% chance of beating Rossi in an election held over that past week.

Rossi does a little better if we combine the last month of polls (all but the DSCC poll in the table). Now we end up with a sample of 4,274 respondents, of which 4056 are for Murray or Rossi. The raw percentages are 49.0% Murray and 45.9% Rossi. The Monte Carlo analysis gives Murray 933,103 wins to Rossi’s 65,250 wins.

If the past month of polling is representative of Washington state voters, the evidence suggests that Murray would win an election held now with a 93.5% probability.

Going back a month or two things did not look nearly so rosy for Murray. This is clear from a graph of the polling in this race:

See that dip that occurs over the summer? When the early September Rasmussen poll came out showing Rossi leading Murray 48% to 46%, I offered a theory:

There is another reason I am not (yet) too concerned. August 31 is still in the “dog days of summer” around here. In my many years of following polling in Washington state, I’ve learned that Washingtonians become very negative in the summer, only to perk right back up in the fall. I can’t really explain it…I’ve just observed it in approval numbers. Murray probably gets the worst of if from the summer malaise. That is, Murray doesn’t really have to worry about close results like these for another month….

I’m such a pessimist…it only took a couple of weeks.

(Cross posted at Hominid Views.)

It’s an okay ad that makes a point that I can’t help but believe will resonate with voters, the majority of whom already start out at least a little suspicious of Dino Rossi, but what really strikes me about this ad is the new ground it breaks in citing PubliCola as a source to back up one of its claims… and in a U.S. Senate race, no less.

See, the power of a daily newspaper monopoly like the Seattle Times to influence elections comes not as much from the initial coverage of any one story, but from their role as an allegedly credible, unbiased and independent source that the political campaigns can cite to back up their campaign ads. For example, the bullshit Darcy Burner diploma story would not have had nearly the impact it did if the Reichert campaign had not spent a million dollars citing it.

That’s an advantage the Seattle Times will always have over me, for while I am at least as good a writer as any of their editors, and all of their editors are at least as biased and partisan as me, nobody’s going to put hundreds of thousands of dollars behind an ad attempting to cite HorsesAss.org as a credible source. I just don’t have the brand.

But apparently, PubliCola now does, and after only a year and a half of publication. Congrats Josh and Erica.

And to be fair, a little bit of self-congratulations to me, for while Josh et al downplayed my involvement in PubliCola’s startup for arguably good reasons, I put a lot of effort into getting it off the ground, and used HA to promote the hell out of it for its first year. To be absolutely clear, I’ve never had any editorial role in PubliCola, and I’m not always happy about the editorial direction they’ve taken — Josh is simply wrong a lot of the time — but I still believe PubliCola plays an important role in our local political media landscape that would remain unfilled without them.

And with this citation they’ve clearly proven that even relatively small scale new media ventures can quickly break the credibility monopoly formerly held by newspapers like the Times.

What with our lack of both party ID and a statistically useful track record with the top-two format, the only thing we really learned from yesterday’s primary election was who made it through to the November general. But since I’m one of those bullshit pundits of sorts, who folks come to the morning after for bullshit punditry, I’ll do my best to oblige.

U.S. Senate race surprises analysts by producing no surprises
Had either Democratic incumbent Sen. Patty Murray or her Republican real estate speculator challenger Dino Rossi scored five or more points higher or lower than either one did, it might really tell us something about what to expect in November. But at roughly 46-34 in a 15 person race… not so much.

Would Murray have liked to have topped 50 percent? Sure. Would Rossi have liked to have garnered at least half the number of raw votes he tallied in his 2008 gubernatorial primary? You betcha. Both numbers will rise as the ballots are tallied and the big counties catch up with the rest of the state, but neither really tells us anything we didn’t already know heading into Tuesday.

Coffee-swilling Washingtonians brew weak tea
For all the huff and puff of our state’s teabaggers, they sure as hell didn’t blow my house down with their candidates’ performance in Tuesday’s primary. Clint Didier looks like he’ll break double digits in the final tally, but with all the Palin winks and free press he got, that’s not saying much. And while he did well in Benton and Franklin counties, there just aren’t that many people there, while he couldn’t even carry his home county of Kittitas.

Meanwhile down in WA-03, teabagger favorite David Castillo, who many had predicted to shock establishment GOPers by sneaking into the top-two, looks to finish a disappointing fourth behind two other Republicans. I mean, what’s up with that?

Let’s just say, except for the comparable size of our respectively immense, illicit pot-growing industries, Washington is no Kentucky.

Our regions voters are out of touch with the Seattle Times editorial board
In a bold and surprising move, the Seattle Times endorsed Democrats Suzan DelBene and Tim Dillon in the WA-08 primary, abandoning former ed board heart throb, Republican Rep. Dave Reichert. And while absolutely nobody is surprised to see Reichert and DelBene face off in November — they were the only serious candidates in the race from an organizational and fundraising perspective — it was kinda amusing to see Dillon come in fifth, behind some guy named Tom Cramer and the very, very, crazy teabagger, Ernest Huber.

What were voters thinking to diss a candidate the Times lauded as… um… not as unstudied or unacceptable as Reichert?

Or, I guess the real question is, if they believe Reichert is so undeserving of reelection, why didn’t the Times just give their sole endorsement to DelBene, who they surely knew would be his November opponent? Huh.

Roaches check in but they don’t check out?
A collective groan arose from the state’s political press corps last night, as early results suggested that gun-toting, flower-speechifying, blog-foddering Republican State Sen. Pam Roach may actually find herself in serious trouble this November. It’s not just that she only scored 40% of the vote, but that it looks like her top-two opponent is going to be a fellow Republican. Ouch.

Olympia without Pam Roach would be like the Asylum of Charenton without the Marquis de Sade. (Or some other, less literary analogy.) Say it ain’t so!

Meanwhile, a bit of irony elsewhere in the 31st LD, where Roach’s son, State Rep. Dan Roach, and Pierce County Councilman Shawn Bunney had a gentleman’s agreement to swap offices. (Word is that, underpaid at his wife’s gym, Roach needed the money that comes with the more lucrative council seat, while Bunney, apparently having never visited the place, longed for the glamor and excitement of the State House.) Well, the best laid plans and all that, because Bunney currently finds himself in third place, behind fellow Republican Cathy Dahlquist and fellow Democrat Peggy Levesque.

However, should Bunney manage to hop Levesque in the final tally, 31st LD voters won’t see any Democrats in any of their three legislative races in November. (And no, I haven’t forgotten about Rep. Chris Hurst.)

A new WSJ/NBC poll (via Daily Kos) reinforces my sense that our nation’s profound regional divide is just one of the reasons why 2010 won’t be like 1994:

The GOP has a HUGE generic-ballot edge in the South (52%-31%), but it doesn’t lead anywhere else. In the Northeast, Dems have a 55%-30% edge; in the Midwest, they lead 49%-38%; and in the West, it’s 44%-43%.

Heading into the 1994 election the Dems held roughly 59% of House seats in every region of the nation, and while they ended up losing big everywhere, they got walloped in the South. Heading into the 2010 election the Dems control the exact same number of seats they did heading into 1994, but the regional disparity is startling, ranging from 82% in the Northeast to 43% in the South.

Here in the “Far West” the Dems hold a pre-1994-like 63% majority, but it’s hard to imagine 1994-like results. Back then Washington alone flipped from 8-1 D to 7-2 R, but this time around WA-03 is the only truly promising GOP pickup opportunity in the state, and even that’s gotta be ranked a toss-up. I suppose Rep. Rick Larsen needs to look over his shoulders in WA-02, but by that measure so does Republican Rep. Dave Reichert in WA-08. So a safe prediction might be a net one-seat Republican pickup here in Washington compared to a six-seat pickup in 1994. Maybe two at the most. Maybe none.

As for the rest of the West, Republicans can maybe count on picking up a seat in Idaho, one or two in California, and two or three more throughout the rest of the region, while almost certainly losing their recent special election pickup in Hawaii. Maybe. That wouldn’t make for a good year for Democrats, but it’s far from an electoral repudiation.

Of course the poll analysis does include this regional caveat:

Many of the congressional districts Republicans are targeting outside of the South resemble some of those Southern districts they’re hoping to win back in November — where you have whiter and older voters.

True, but this just serves to further point out the difference between 1994 and 2010, at least here in this Washington, for back in 1994, two of the six WA seats the GOP picked up were WA-04 (Jay Inslee) and WA-05 (Speaker Tom Foley)… exactly the kinda older, whiter, more conservative districts the R’s are now targeting. But, you know, you can’t win back a seat you’ve never given up.

The point is, the 45-seat pickup necessary for a Republican takeover this time around is made all the more difficult by our current regional divide. The Republican’s generic advantage is staggering in the South, but there is so much less low-hanging Democratic fruit down in Dixie than there was 16 years ago, the R’s simply can’t take back Congress without a somewhat comparable national wave. And at the moment, I just don’t see that sort of wave reaching the Pacific.

Seattle Times editorial page editor and crown prince Ryan Blethen elaborates on his page’s surprising decision to endorse Rep. Dave Reichert’s opponents:

In the 8th Congressional District, Reichert has had six years to grow. He hasn’t. His being caught on tape glibly talking about taking votes for the environment so he could stay in office was not a great way to start off an election year. That gaffe was compounded by his voting against fiscal reform and showing up for his endorsement interview woefully unprepared and more defensive than I’ve ever seen a candidate.

The two candidates in the 8th we did endorse, Suzan DelBene and Tim Dillon, showed up prepared and were thoughtful in follow-up discussions.

I’m not sure I’ll ever grow tired of reading the Times hurl the same sort of criticisms at Reichert that I’ve been hurling for years, and of course I take great pride in knowing that it was leaked audio exclusively posted on HA that helped flip the Times’ assessment of the three-term Republican incumbent. But this is more than just a delicious “I told you so” moment, for my post, and the broader media coverage it generated, is a beautiful illustration of the sometimes under-appreciated role bloggers now play in the modern, news media food chain.

It is true that much of what I write is derivative, consisting of commentary, analysis and criticism of original reporting and commentary produced elsewhere, mostly from the legacy press; indeed, the first thing I do every morning is scan the Seattle Times for stuff to make fun of. But bloggers like me have also become an important source for “professional” journalists, sometimes in quantifiable ways like the Reichert audio story, but more often in the subtle, less obvious way we tend to steer coverage, create buzz and frame headlines.

Like most of my best scoops, the leaked Reichert audio simply fell into my lap, because my source trusted me to see it for what it truly was, and to frame it in the most damaging way possible, whereas they were concerned that the Times might dismiss it entirely as mere politics as usual. In this sense, my blatant partisanship proved to be a tremendous journalistic asset.

But because my partisanship is so blatant, once the story was out there, other journalists, including the Times’ editorialists, where free to consider it in its proper context, and make their own evaluation. In the end the audio, presented unedited and unexpurgated, speaks for itself, while Reichert’s history of making similar statements establishes that his self-professed cynicism was no slip of the tongue.

The Times recognized that this is information that voters deserve to know, and I have to give them credit for that. But it’s not clear that the Times ever would have recognized this had I not framed the audio in the manner I did at the time I broke the story.

And that gets to another under-appreciated aspect of what bloggers like me do, for the best of us display a talent for seeing in commodity facts a larger truth that sometimes escapes the first round of media coverage. The U.S. Attorney story is a shining example, a major scandal that might have eluded the legacy press had not Talking Points Memo connected the dots that everybody else missed, and then obsessively followed up. Likewise my Mike Brown Arabian Horse Association story, a post that ultimately helped frame FEMA’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina as a debacle of cronyism, leading to Brownie’s resignation, merely highlighted information that was already widely available on his official resume.

It’s not that newspaper and other legacy media reporters don’t engage in the same kind of conceptual journalism, it’s just that our freedom to be passionate, opinionated and yes, partisan, frees bloggers like me to pursue angles that would make other journalists uncomfortable. Plus the sheer number of us energetically plying our trade simply makes it that much harder for important news to escape scrutiny.

While there are some traditional journalists who still dismiss bloggers like me as parasites, the truth is that we’ve been gradually establishing a pretty symbiotic relationship… a relationship from which readers ultimately benefit.

… but I told you so:

DIFFICULT times call for more than a capable caretaker of a political seat. The 8th Congressional District needs a representative with vision, a sharp grasp of the issues and the ability to lead. The task is considerable.

With that in mind, The Seattle Times editorial board takes the unusual step of endorsing two challengers to U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert, who is seeking a fourth term in the district spanning eastern King and Pierce counties.

We do not do so lightly. Former Microsoft executive and Democrat Suzan DelBene and Tim Dillon, a Republican and member of the Yarrow Point Town Council, demonstrate a depth of knowledge and have compelling ideas.

On issues ranging from the wars to the economy, three-term Republican incumbent Reichert is unstudied and comes up short. After six years in office, this is unacceptable.

Reichert opposed financial reform, but was unable to explain what he did or did not like about the legislation. The 8th District deserves someone who is faster on their feet.

It is with some satisfaction, and perhaps an even greater degree of bitterness, that I read the Seattle Times’ endorsement in the 8th Congressional District primary, in which they dis Republican incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert as cynical, simplistic, unstudied, unknowledgeable and unacceptable. Well… duh-uh. Yet this is a paper, both news and editorial, that has propped up Reichert against his opponents for years.

As our state’s largest daily, the Times played a crucial role in creating the myth of Sheriff Dave as the man who caught the Green River Killer (he most emphatically did not), and who refused to reexamine this oft-exploited, career-defining claim even after he’d creepily taken to framing nearly every utterance with heroic tales of his encounters with Gary Ridgway. It was the Times who virtually refused to cover Darcy Burner’s inspiring, come-from-nowhere, 2006 campaign until spectacular fundraising and tight polls forced their hand, only to cynically and viciously brand her as a “spinmeister” who would make “Karl Rove proud,” while laughably lauding Reichert for his “conscience-driven independence streak,” even in the face of his own public admission that he voted how the Republican leadership told him to vote.

And it was the Times who, when polls showed Burner with both momentum and the lead heading into the final weeks of the 2008 election, intentionally torpedoed her campaign with a bullshit, front page, above-the-fold expose accusing her of lying about earning a degree in economics from Harvard (she earned a degree in computer science with a concentration in economics, a course load that is equivalent to a double major at some colleges, Harvard’s nonstandard terminology notwithstanding), while willfully ignoring the many years Reichert’s own resume claimed a bachelors degree, when he in fact only earned a two-year associates degree from a Lutheran high-school-cum-barely-junior-college.

And now they bemoan that Reichert is “unstudied” …? Um, no shit, Sherlock!

Indeed it’s the Times, who after years of defending and praising the obviously unqualified Reichert, who now appears unstudied.

Dillon says a turning point for him was Reichert’s “willingness to trade core principles on the environment.” He was referring to Reichert’s appearance before a gathering of Republican precinct committee officers when he explained that while he toes the party line most of the time, a few select environmental votes were “certain moves, chess pieces, strategies” he used to keep environmental groups from trying to defeat him. The moment was revealing. This page’s response then and now is “how cynical.”

Damning audio that was leaked to me, by the way, and first posted here in an HA exclusive, because my source assumed from their record of toadery, that the Times simply wouldn’t be interested in exposing Reichert as the conscienceless dependent he really is. So would it be ungrateful or ungenerous of me, now that the Times cites my reporting (without attribution, of course) as the turning point in their own reassessment of Reichert, to respond with a big, fat “FUCK YOU” …?

I mean, it’s not like Reichert hasn’t been caught on tape before, saying nearly the exact same thing! Only back in 2006, rather than calling Reichert on his cynicism, the Times chose to attack Burner for allowing the DCCC to excerpt TVW’s video without permission.

So yeah, I suppose I should congratulate the Times’ editors for finally coming to their senses, or thank them for putting aside their own pathologies for a moment in the interest of the greater good. But their paper’s reporting and commentary on past 8th CD races has been so galling — so utterly and inexcusably insulting — that it’s just hard to let go. For how do we reconcile the Times’ revisionist take on Reichert with this:

The Auburn Republican deserves re-election. The former King County sheriff has an impressive record of public service and has shown a conscience-driven independent streak that reflects his moderate district.

Or this:

[Reichert] has matured in the job and his voting on complicated issues reflects that. His experience as a first-responder has been a strength. … Opponent Darcy Burner criticizes him for changing some positions, but Reichert shows a capacity for appreciating nuance and an appetite for seeking answers himself and making up his own mind.

Or this:

He surprised many recently by saying he’s not convinced about how much global warming is caused by human action. We are convinced it’s a substantial contributing factor.

But Reichert says he’s skeptical, so he’s investigating. That’s a better approach than adopting a ready-made ideology.

I mean, Jesus Fucking Christ… talk about attempting to turn a turd into a tiara. And they accused Darcy of being a Rovian spinmeister? Look in the goddamn mirror, Frank!

Yeah sure, I know the Suzan DelBene campaign would prefer I focus on her qualifications over Reichert’s lack thereof, and she’s certainly smart, thoughtful, well-informed, accomplished and progressive enough to serve the 8th CD well. A helluva an upgrade over Reichert. A Democrat I can proudly support, without reservations. And I damn well know that it doesn’t serve my agenda to reward this editorial gesture by sticking the ed board’s own words in its collective face .

But… well… I have every right to be bitter, so fuck ’em.

The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee this morning challenged Republican senatorial wannabe Dino Rossi to name two policy differences between him and former President George W. Bush, but I think the more interesting challenge might be to ask Rossi to simply explain the details of two pieces of policy. For judging from his recent statements, our state’s best known real estate speculator/perennial candidate just doesn’t come across as all that well informed.

For example, at Sunday’s conservative meet-up Rossi was asked how he could possibly overcome the combined forces of ACORN and SEIU, a stupid question to say the least. But even stupider was Rossi’s reply:  “SEIU and ACORN, they, they’re mean. They’re really evil in some respects.”

The SEIU slur aside (does Rossi realize he just equated 1.2 million nurses, lab technicians and home health care workers with the likes of Hitler and, well, Satan?), both Rossi and his questioner are apparently clueless that ACORN no longer exists, and regardless, was never really a player here in Washington state. So what’s there for you to overcome Dino, no matter how evil you think ACORN is/was?

At the same meet-up, Rossi was also asked whether he supported full repeal of healthcare reform, or only parts of it. Rossi insisted that he supported full repeal. But as the purity police at The Reagan Wing point out, that’s not what Rossi says on his own website, forcing the self-appointed guardians of true conservatism to wonder aloud if Rossi even knows his own position on healthcare?

To what can we attribute Rossi’s alleged change of position? Might it be that he was speaking to a conservative audience instead of to the  Evans-Gorton wing of the Washington State Republican party?

How Reichertesque. Or perhaps that’s why Rossi was so reluctant to post an issues section on his website: it would require him to actually read it.

Indeed, a better question might be to ask if Rossi actually knows what’s in the healthcare reform bill he wants to either repeal in full or in part, depending on the day and the audience. For example, in his recent, hyperbolic fundraising letter (the one in which he says that Barack Obama and Patty Murray are bigger threats than the terrorists), Rossi describes the new law as “a partisan, ill-conceived health care bill that requires 16,500 new IRS agents to administer and pay for it…”

16,500 new IRS agents? Really? That might strike some as a frightening number if it weren’t, you know, total bullshit.

This was a GOP talking point totally refuted way back in March by the nonpartisan FactCheck.org:

Q: Will the IRS hire 16,500 new agents to enforce the health care law?

A: No. The law requires the IRS mostly to hand out tax credits, not collect penalties. The claim of 16,500 new agents stems from a partisan analysis based on guesswork and false assumptions, and compounded by outright misrepresentation.

In it’s full answer, FactCheck.org dismisses the claim as “wildly inaccurate,” and yet there it is as a central argument in a Rossi fundraising letter… four months later. Either Rossi gets all his facts on healthcare reform from FOX News and GOP press releases, or he’s just plain lying to supporters.

Forget about pressuring Rossi to take a clear stance on major issues; reporters need to ask him if he’s actually capable of explaining the issues. Does he know the major provisions of the health care bill, let alone what his bogus “16,500 new IRS agents” claim is based on? Or how about the Wallstreet reform legislation Rossi opposes on grounds that it leaves taxpayers on the hook for another bailout, even though Sen. Murray included a provision to specifically make sure that it doesn’t…? Can Rossi explain in context what a “derivative” is, or “exchanges” or “clearinghouses” or  “aggregate position limits”…? (If not, he might want to ask Sen. Maria Cantwell.)

Is that too much to ask for? A candidate who actual has the intellectual curiosity, capacity and inclination to the study the issues on which he’ll be asked to pass judgement? Or are our media really just going to let Rossi’s ideological laziness slide by once again as mere tit for tat politics as usual?

Posts of mine occasionally get mentioned in the Seattle Times, with and without attribution, but it’s been quite a while since they’ve printed the full name of my blog in their print edition, and actually threw me a link from anywhere but their blogs:

DelBene will try to capitalize on a gaffe Reichert made this month, when he told a gathering of Republican precinct-committee leaders that some of his pro-environment votes were an effort to prevent environmentalists from trying to unseat him. Reichert thought he was speaking in confidence, but a recording of the meeting was leaked to the political website HorsesAss.org.

Huh. Must’ve slipped past the editors.

And in case any visitors from the Times are wondering, this is the leaked audio the reporter is talking about.

While I certainly plan to return to the subject of Rep. Dave Reichert’s reversal on Net Neutrality as symptomatic of his lack of guiding principles, I would be remiss to touch on the subject without thanking Rep. Jay Inslee for his leadership on this issue.

It is Rep. Inslee who is proving to be Net Neutrality’s most vocal champion in the House, and it is he who is a circulating a letter urging the FCC to follow through on its plans to enforce this principle on broadband providers: the basic principle that all content must be treated neutrally.

Under Net Neutrality, Qwest cannot legally block or or slow down access to HA when I berate them for their terrible service, or in perhaps a more likely example, Comcast could not limit access to competing video content, or perhaps strike a deal to provide superior enduser throughput to Google over Bing, or vice versa.

Net Neutrality is a principle that ensures a free and open Internet, and as such is absolutely crucial to health of our economy and our democracy. So thank you, Rep. Inslee, for holding firm to your principles, and fighting the wealthy and powerful telcos and cable companies on our behalf.

In covering Dino Rossi’s speech at Friday’s Mainstream Republican conference, the Seattle P-I’s Joel Connelly mentioned the DSCC’s recent efforts to educate the public about Rossi’s many financial dealings:

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which Murray once headed, has spent the past month feeding dirt on Rossi to media outlets, and Democratic ringers in the blogosphere community.

As the best read and most influential liberal blogger in the state, I can only assume Joel includes me in his list of “Democratic ringers,” and I have to say, I find that both flattering and insulting.

On the one hand, the term “ringer” implies a high degree of skill, and yeah, I am a pretty damn good blogger, so thanks Joel, for the compliment. But on the other hand, the term implies a degree of false representation… the insinuation that I’m not quite what I appear to be, and well, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Unlike, say, the editorial board at the Seattle Times, I have always worn my bias on my sleeve and trusted my audience to read me in that context. And as for being a “Democratic” ringer, yeah, Democrats sometimes feed me stories the same way they feed other journalists, but nobody – and I mean nobody — tells me what to write, nor pays me for that privilege. If I’m a ringer, I’m at worst a conscience-driven independent ringer.

So as much as I appreciate Joel for being one of the few legacy journalists to engage with us upstart bloggers, I can’t help but take his distinction between “media outlets” and “Democratic ringers in the blogosphere” as an effort to diminish us… to somehow dismiss what bloggers like I write as false, misleading and propagandistic. Facts are facts, and if I get mine wrong, Joel and others are free to shove that in my face. But when you write me off as a mere “Democratic ringer,” well that’s just an excuse to ignore the sometimes uncomfortable things that I write… for example, like the Times ignoring the leaked Reichert audio that blows up their meme of him as a pro-environment moderate.

Or, like Joel ignoring it, for that matter.

What started as a rumor running through the halls and barrooms of Olympia has jumped to the other Washington today, with the National Journal’s Reid Wilson confirming that Gov. Chris Gregoire is indeed on the White House’s short list to replace Elena Kagan as Solicitor General:

WA Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) leads a short list to replace Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the WH has told members of Gregoire’s home-state delegation.

Gregoire, a 2-term incumbent and a former WA AG, has been a rumored contender for other admin positions. But the WH has informed top aides to WA members that she is under serious consideration, according to several sources inside the delegation.

An admin official confirmed Gregoire’s name is one of those being considered. Gregoire endorsed candidate Obama just before the WA caucuses in ’08, offering a helping hand as Obama picked up two-thirds of the state’s delegates.

Yesterday, Gov. Gregoire’s aides seemed eager to quash the rumor, but in the wake of today’s reports, the most definitive comment I’ve been able to extract from insiders today are assurances that the Governor “has not been seeking” the job. Clearly unanswered in that response is whether Gov. Gregoire would consider the position if offered.

Of course, she’d be crazy not to, at least in terms of her own career. Gov. Gregoire does not appear to be planning to run for a third term, and there’s a better than even chance she’d lose if she tried. So there’s zero downside to her moving on to the national stage.

As to the political chaos her early retirement would create here in Washington state, well, that’s a different matter.

Even putting aside the unsettling prospect of Lt. Gov. Brad Owen’s brief stewardship, the political disruption would be immense, resulting in either a cakewalk for Dino Rossi in a special election, or a messy free for all that could leave several open seats in its wake. Would Rep. Jay Inslee suddenly abandon his congressional reelection for an early run at the governor’s mansion? Would Reps. Adam Smith or even (don’t laugh) Dave Reichert? Would WA Attorney General Rob McKenna defer his own gubernatorial dreams in favor of Rossi, or would he try to muscle the two-time loser out… or even risk splitting the Republican vote?

Given the circumstances, I’d have to put my money on Rossi. I’ve often joked about how well Rossi runs in the polls during off years, but a special election with little time for an opposing Democrat to gain statewide ID would be just the opportunity Rossi needs to break this cycle.

Hmm. Much to think about. Especially for Rossi as he continues to contemplate a near hopeless run at Sen. Patty Murray.