Search Results for: Reichert

Rep. Dave Reichert has run out of money, and is pleading with supporters for last minute donations to fund his GOTV efforts.

“This race will be very close: We have had to spend our campaign coffers down to nothing and we still have critical Election Day activities that we must pay for. Can you help Dave in the final push by making a contribution?”

Eh. I wouldn’t worry so much about Dave’s campaign shutting down a day before the election. His party doesn’t seem to have much of a problem engaging in deficit spending.

It’s been a bird-free day — no Seahawks, no Eagles — so tune in for some political football tonight on “The David Goldstein Show” on Newsradio 710-KIRO, from 7PM to 10PM.

7PM: Do Republicans have a prayer? Seattle P-I political columnist Joel Connelly spent the day checking out the spirit at some of our local mega-churches, and he joins me in the studio to talk about Tuesday’s midterm election, and how the latest sex scandal might impact its outcome. We’ll also be getting a field report from fellow blogger TJ of Loaded Orygun, whose been following some very interesting ballot return trends that could have the red team feeling awfully blue down in the Beaver State.

8PM: Is flipping off the President a fireable offense? An Issaquah school bus driver gave President Bush the finger, and his fellow Republicans cheered when Rep. Dave Reichert took credit for getting the woman fired… credit which Reichert now says he doesn’t deserve. Taking Reichert at his word (that is, his latest word) what does this say about the first-term congressman’s character that he would actually brag about getting the single, working mom fired, when he says he had nothing to do with it? Chris Dugovich from the Washington State Council of County and City Employees will call in to give the driver’s side of the story, and we’ll be playing audio and taking your calls.

9PM: What do you get when you pack four drunken bloggers into the KIRO studio? Will, Mollie and Carl join me almost every week on Podcasting Liberally, recorded live at Seattle’s Montlake Alehouse, and they’ll be joining me in the studio for a Drinking Liberally roundtable discussion of electoral push. Is this the year a big blue wave sweeps the Democrats into power? Or will Karl Rove prove that American democracy is dead, and that nothing short of a violent revolution can dislodge the GOP from the reigns of power? Give us a call and let us know what you think, before all of us liberal bloggers are shipped off to Gitmo.

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

Democratic challenger Darcy Burner spoke at a rally this afternoon:

“A long time ago, the Republicans announced that Reichert had raised enough money to put this seat out of reach of any challengers,” Burner told the crowd. “They thought they could buy this seat. But I’m happy to tell you that about ten minutes ago, thanks to the thousands of supporters who have invested in this race, we passed the $3 million mark!”

Wow.

Reichert likes to belittle his opponent for her lack of experience, but Burner has outraised him in every filing period this year, and her $3 million-plus total ranks her amongst the five top Democratic challengers nationwide. Not bad for a political novice, huh?

That’s what hard work and smarts does for you.

There’s been some gloating from the other side recently about the latest SurveyUSA poll that shows incumbent Dave Reichert leading challenger Darcy Burner by a 51% to 45% margin. Yet these results are at odds with the Majority Watch poll conducted around the same time that shows Burner leading Reichert 49% to 47%.

Of course, both polls are within the margin of error so technically, it’s possible both could be right. But I’m leaning towards the Majority Watch figures, and not just because I want to believe them.

The key number that leaps out at me from the SurveyUSA crosstabs is the stunning fact that Burner holds a comfortable 8 point lead with the one quarter of respondents who have already voted. And this number is not an anomaly. Reliable sources now tell me that both candidates’ internal polls show Burner leading with early voters, though I have no idea by how much.

As one longtime observer of Eastside elections recently explained: “Show me a Democrat leading in early absentees, and I’ll show you a winner.” And he’s not the only one to view early ballots as a meaningful statistic. Despite a plethora of polls showing Republican John Kyl with a steady lead over Democrat Jim Pederson, the DSCC just bought gobs of airtime in Arizona after internal polling showed Pederson leading Kyl by 4% with early voters in that Senate race.

That said, there are other numbers which I find suspect. SurveyUSA shows Reichert leading with both women and independents, results at odds with both the Majority Watch survey, and… well… my intuition. I am particularly struck by Reichert’s purported 10 point lead with independents, a result that defies national trends showing independents breaking towards Democratic candidates by wide margins. Usually, independents tend to split fairly evenly between the two parties, but as Stuart Rothenberg points out today, this isn’t your usual election.

“There just aren’t any independents this year,” joked one Republican strategist I talked with recently. “There are Republicans, Democrats and soft Democrats.”

I dunno. Perhaps 8th CD independents really are different from their national counterparts. Perhaps Reichert’s reputation as “the Sheriff” — deserved or not — really does make him immune to the national Democratic wave. But… I don’t think so.

The civil war in Iraq continues to escalate, with American soldiers caught in the middle. A bomb tore through a crowded Baghdad market yesterday, killing at least 31 and injuring 51 others. At the same time, a marine fighting in Iraq’s Anbar province became the 100th US serviceman killed in October, the highest monthly death toll since President Bush famously announced “mission accomplished.”

Meanwhile, $133 million worth of weaponry has gone missing — nearly 4 percent of the pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other arms the Pentagon has supplied Iraqi security forces. Not that we could track these arms if we wanted, considering that the Defense Department has registered the serial numbers of only 10,000 of the 370,251 weapons it provided — less than 3 percent.

Both these wire stories appeared somewhere in today’s Seattle Times, but apparently neither was important enough to warrant a mention on the op-ed page of the our state’s largest newspaper. Instead, our fair city’s solemn guardians of public discourse chose to dedicate scarce column inches to yet another one-sided, partisan attack: “Denounce the ad, Darcy Burner.”

Compare that to the Seattle P-I, who on the very same morning chose to editorialize on trivial matters… you know… like the escalating violence in Iraq.

The president can’t be held directly responsible because he’s not up for election again. Short of impeachment and history’s harsh judgment, he won’t pay the price for a foreign policy folly that has made the world a more dangerous place.

But those who continue to aid and abet him in this disastrous policy are up for election, in just over a week, and voters across the country can and should hold them accountable.

Unless, of course, we want to stay the course.

As the P-I editorialists point out, in this election, “War is the issue“… an issue their colleagues at the Times seem determined to avoid until after election day. Because the Times knows that if voters do follow the P-I‘s advice, Dave Reichert will lose.

That’s why instead of addressing issues that voters truly care about, the Times editorialists are busy focusing on inside horse race bullshit, and rhetorical legerdemain like demanding Burner pull an accurate ad that she did not run.

Deconstruction anyone? Let’s see…

But there is one TV ad benefiting Democratic congressional candidate Darcy Burner that is beyond the pale, not because of what it says but because it violates a copyright of TVW, Washington’s public-affairs network.

Oh my. In an age when Karl Rove takes a war hero who left three limbs on the battlefield, and morphs him into Osama bin Laden, it’s an alleged copyright violation that the Times finds “beyond the pale.” How shocking.

But the thing is, the DCCC ad doesn’t violate anybody’s copyright. Reichert spoke for about 20 minutes that day, and by any legal definition the few seconds excerpted by the DCCC constitutes “fair use.” I myself have posted to HA longer clips from Reichert’s speech, and I’ve yet to receive any cease and desist orders from TVW. And if I did, I wouldn’t comply.

To argue that the DCCC has violated TVW’s copyright would be like arguing that I have violated the Seattle Times‘ copyright by block-quoting the paragraph above. If that truly represents Times publisher Frank Blethen’s expert interpretation of the “fair use doctrine” then I challenge the Times to sue me now, because I promise you Frank, I’m going to violate your copyright again. And again and again and again. In fact, you know what Frank..? I’m going to violate you again right now:

Burner should denounce the ad and call for its removal.

Take it like a man Frank, and get used to it… because in this new media landscape of excerpts and aggregation, you’re my bitch.

As to the Times‘ admonition that Burner should call on the DCCC to pull the ad, well, either their editorialists are getting their election law advice from the same quack advising them on fair use, or… they’re simply being disingenuous with their readers. (I’m guessing the latter.) Burner can’t call on the DCCC to pull the ad; that would be illegal. The FEC strictly prohibits coordination between campaigns and organizations engaging in independent expenditures, because otherwise the expenditure wouldn’t be, um… independent.

Like their feigned outrage over nonexistent copyright violations, the call for Burner to pull the ad is a red herring. As is the Times‘ tangential reference to the fact that the Burner campaign had ordered a copy of the tape months ago, as the video has been freely available on the internet to all comers since it first aired in May. (I linked to it way back on June 1.)

In fact, the entire editorial is nothing more than an elaborate (if poorly constructed) straw man argument intended to distract from the simple, devastating truth behind the DCCC’s ad: Dave Reichert publicly admitted that the Republican leadership tells him when to vote against them.

The Times refutes this, accusing the DCCC of taking the quote out of context:

The TV ad depicts Reichert at a meeting saying GOP leadership comes to him and tells him how to vote, and he’ll take the vote.

It omits his next line: “There are some times when I say, ‘No, I won’t.’ “

But what the Times omits is the five minutes of rambling preamble in which Reichert puts the disputed quote entirely in context:

I’ll tell you that back in Washington there are lots of games played and I just want to give you, we talk about freedom and we talk about America and we talk about the dream. The dream has to include everybody and there has to be compromise and we can’t have, I’ve been to district meetings in my district where people have said, “why in the world should I vote for you. It’s just like voting for a democrat for crying out loud.” I am going to vote libertarian and I said, “you know what sir, that would be a huge mistake and here’s why.” I’ve tried to explain to this person how things work a little bit back in Washington D.C. and why certain votes have to be taken. Sometimes the leadership comes to me and says “Dave we want you to vote a certain way” and they know I can do that over here. Another district isn’t a problem but over here I have to be very flexible of where I placed my votes. The big picture here is to keep the seat, keep the majority, and keep the country moving forward with republican ideals. Especially on the budget and protecting our troops who’re protecting this country and how that will be responsible with taxpayer dollars. That’s the big picture. Not the vote I place on ANWAR that you may not agree with or the vote that I placed on protecting salmon. You have to be flexible. So when the leadership comes to me and says , Dave you have to vote over here because we want to protect you and keep this majority, I do it. There are sometimes when I say no I won’t. There are sometimes when things come to the floor like Schiavo. I was one of five republicans that voted with the Democrats on Schiavo because that was the right thing to do.

Yes, Reichert broke with the GOP leadership on the Schiavo vote. He’d personally been through a wrenching end-of-life decision in his own family, and so he says he voted his conscience. (It didn’t hurt that he also voted with his district.) But that’s the only vote of conscience he cites.

Taken in the context of the entire speech, Reichert makes it absolutely clear that conservative Republicans should ignore his handful of moderate votes on things like the environment because “certain votes have to be taken” in order to “keep the seat.” Reichert bluntly (and stupidly) told the audience that the leadership tells him when to vote against them, and that is exactly what his audience of Republican elected officials understood him to say. How do I know? Two of them told me. State Rep. Toby Nixon (R-45) called the confession “shocking,” but went on to explain…

To be clear, by saying “it was shocking” I was expressing the surprise I felt at the time that Rep. Reichert was so open and frank about being approached in this manner, not at the fact that it happened. It is, in fact, quite common for majority party leadership to go to freshman members of their party and provide such guidance, in order to provide cover for those freshmen in their first re-election campaign when they are most vulnerable to challenge. It happens quite frequently in the Washington State House of Representatives, too.

Surely, the Times editorialists understand this. They read my blog. They’ve seen Nixon’s quote. They know how the political game is played.

And yet they continue to defend Reichert’s cynically manufactured image as a “conscience-driven independent,” because they also understand that his reelection hopes pivot on his ability to separate himself in the eyes of voters from President Bush, the Republican leadership and their failed policies at home and abroad.

That is what this latest anti-Burner editorial is all about. The DCCC ad is devastatingly effective because it uses Reichert’s own words to debunk his myth of independence. It also shows up the Times‘ stubborn defense of Reichert’s fictional independence as either stupid or dishonest. (Again, I’m guessing the latter.)

Indeed, the Times incessant Burning-bashing is almost comical in its logic. When Reichert’s media folks aren’t making up quotes out of whole cloth, they rely on single-word quotations like an ad for a bad movie… and yet it’s the Democrats who the Times accuses of lifting quotes out of context. And while Reichert has run a relentlessly negative and at times sexist campaign, it is Burner who Times editorialist Kate Riley accuses of “conjuring rage.” (Curiously, in her unsigned editorial endorsing Reichert, Riley criticizes Burner for her lack of public service, yet apparently believes she’s more than qualified to represent the voters of the 4th CD. Go figure.)

Yes, Burner has attempted to define her opponent through strongly worded TV spots, but then, so has Reichert. No wonder so many readers, bloggers and journalists have found it absolutely impossible to take seriously the Times‘ one-sided, I’m-rubber-you’re-glue, reality-distorted portrayal of this race.

The truth is, the Times doesn’t want their readers to take this race seriously, because if they seriously discussed the issues at stake — the issues that matter most to local voters — Reichert would lose. That’s why instead of editorializing on the Bush administration’s failed policy in Iraq — a policy Reichert has given every indication he would continue to support — the Times has instead chosen to focus on a bullshit, manufactured, campaign ad dispute that voters couldn’t care less about.

Reichert said what he said: he votes the way the leadership tells him to vote. And that is why he’s going to lose this election.

UPDATE:
Per Another TJ’s suggestion:

The latest round of polling from Constituent Dynamics and RT Strategies shows Washington’s 8th and 5th Congressional Districts both within the margin of error just two weeks prior to the election.

In WA-08, Democrat Darcy Burner now leads incumbent Dave Reichert 49% to 47%. In WA-05, incumbent Cathy McMorris leads Democratic challenger Peter Goldmark 51% to 46%. Both polls were conducted Oct 24-26, and are within their 3.1% margin of error.

I haven’t had a chance to look at the cross-tabs, but it’s interesting to note that when you have an incumbent as well known as Reichert, undecideds tend to swing towards the challenger. As for Goldmark, climbing within five points is incredible considering that two years ago McMorris won by 20, and he’s only been campaigning since April — if the wave is big enough, Goldmark is in a position to be swept into office.

Both races will be determined by turnout.

As reported yesterday on Daily Kos, the GOP is pulling out all the stops in WA-05, sliming Democratic challenger Peter Goldmark with outrageous lies and dirty tricks. You know, like harassing voters with obscene, automated phone calls, waking people up at all hours of the night, claiming to be coming from the Goldmark campaign. (Would you vote for a candidate who robo-calls you at 2 am? The McMorris campaign didn’t think so.) Local police and the FBI are now investigating.

Why are McMorris and the Republicans resorting to such desperate tactics? Because, well… they’re desperate.

As reported this morning by The Hill, the NRCC just sent to donors its “Final Push List” of the 33 GOP members and candidates “most in need of support right now.” And lookie who’s on it.

In an e-mail to congressional officials, NRCC PAC Director Jenny Sheffield states, “…it’s crucial at this point to send in some late money to some [of] our campaigns. The funds our candidates receive now will allow them to increase their TV buys and will make the difference on Nov. 7.

“I have attached our Final Push list for those Members and candidates most in need of support right now. If your boss has not maxed out to those on the attached list, please ask him or her to consider sending a check from a leadership PAC and/or reelection account … IMMEDIATELY!”

Republicans have also sent the list to lobbyists, seeking donations. The NRCC list (see chart) has many endangered Republicans, including four each from Ohio and New York, and three from Pennsylvania. It also contains some surprises, such as Rep. Cathy McMorris (R-Wash.), whose seat was considered safe earlier this month.

I’m not one to say “I told you so,” but… no wait… I am. I told you so. I’ve been warning the Spokane media for months that one of the biggest stories of the ’06 midterms was developing in their own backyard. Well, welcome to the party guys.

Other at-risk Northwest Republicans on the Final Push List? Well, Dave Reichert in WA-08 and Bill Sali in ID-01 of course. As The Hill points out, it’s gonna be an awfully long election night for House Republicans if they’re so worried about protecting seats in conservative districts in places like Idaho and Eastern WA.

Still don’t believe me that Goldmark can win? Then perhaps you’ll believe McMorris:

In Washington’s 5th Congressional District, where former speaker Thomas S. Foley (D) famously lost in 1994 when Republicans seized control of the House, confirmation of an unexpectedly strong Democratic challenge emerged in recent days from a well-placed source: the Republican incumbent, Rep. Cathy McMorris.

“It’s a closer race than I first imagined,” she told Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), according to the Spokesman-Review, a newspaper in Spokane. Changing voter attitudes in her conservative, mostly rural district, she said, have been “pretty dramatic.”

McMorris and Craig apparently thought they were speaking privately before the start of a campaign teleconference with veterans. But an operator had connected Spokesman-Review reporter Jim Camden, who was on mute and could not announce his presence.

Craig, who is not up for reelection, told McMorris that she was not alone in feeling Democratic heat. “The new numbers are just devastating,” he reportedly said.

McMorris’s Democratic opponent is Peter Goldmark, a rancher whose surprising strength has attracted the support of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which last week began spending $323,000 on television ads opposing McMorris.

That said, Republicans are sinking millions of dollars into Washington state in a last ditch effort to save McMorris and Reichert’s asses, and we can’t let Peter and Darcy become victims of their own success. This is the final push, and if we want to win we need to stay competitive dollar for dollar.

299 of my readers have now contributed $22,969.38 via HA’s Act Blue page, but we need to do more. If you care about the future direction of our nation, please give whatever you can to Darcy and Peter so that they can afford to get their message out to voters and respond to their opponents’ lies. And if you’ve already given all you can, then please personally plead with your friends and family to give whatever they can afford.

We’ve got the issues. We’ve got the candidates. We’ve got the wave. The rest is up to you.

I generally find Seattle Times editorials to be stultifying, muddled and, well, boring — but in endorsing Mike McGavick, the editorial board has managed to make one thing absolutely perfectly clear: it is time to remove the word “Seattle” from the paper’s masthead.

Seattle is a liberal city, a big “D” Democratic city that has not sent a single Republican to the state legislature in years. It’s congressman, Rep. Jim McDermott, is amongst the most liberal members of the House, and he hails from one of the safest seats in the nation. Likewise, in statewide elections Seattle voters can be relied upon to vote for Democrats and against right-wing initiatives in overwhelming numbers.

But Seattle is not just a dark blue island in the midst of a sea of red, for over the past decade the nearby suburbs have grown solidly Democratic too. Republican elected officials are becoming a dying breed in former GOP strongholds like Mercer Island, Bellevue and other communities across the Eastside and to both the North and the South of the city. Map election trends out over the past 20 years and what you see is a blue tide inexorably spreading out from the city center as population densities increase throughout the metropolitan region, and the Republican Party abandons the values and concerns of both urban and suburban voters.

This is the region the Times serves. These are the readers who fork over their fifty cents a day, and who patronize the Times’ advertisers. This is the community whose interests the Times is supposed to represent.

Yet even in a year when the Times editorial board has acknowledged that the Bush White House and its rubber stamp Republican majority in Congress are leading our nation towards disaster, Republican candidates have somehow managed to make a clean sweep of the Times endorsements in every contested congressional race. Reichert, McMorris and McGavick — all Republicans who would vote for a leadership that would guarantee the Bush administration a free hand to stay the course in Iraq — all of them endorsed by the editorial board of a newspaper that claims to serve one of the most solidly Democratic markets in the nation.

In obsessively leading the fight to repeal the estate tax, in articulately opposing media consolidation, and in relentlessly pursuing his efforts to drive the competing Seattle P-I into oblivion by severing the two papers’ Joint Operating Agreement, Times publisher and owner Frank Blethen has passionately argued that the community is better served by a local, family-owned newspaper than one operated by a faceless, corporate, absentee owner.

To which I now ask Frank: exactly which community are you serving?

It certainly isn’t Seattle.

Oh, Frank can speak loftily about the unique role five generations of Blethens have played in safeguarding our democracy and fostering civic discourse, but with the McGavick endorsement it has become abundantly clear that the only community Frank Blethen is truly dedicated to serving is the one that consists of him and his heirs. If not for the mean-spirited tone and over-the-top one-sidedness of the Reichert endorsement one could have reasonably written off that and the McMorris endorsement to the usual, establishmentarian, unimaginative, pro-incumbent mindset that tends to take hold of most editorial boards. But with the ridiculously postured and embarrassingly argued logic of the McGavick editorial it is now impossible for the Times to deny that their criteria for endorsement consists of anything more than support for estate tax repeal.

It is tempting to deconstruct the absurdity of the McGavick endorsement line by line, but others have already done so, perhaps none as thoroughly as the Stranger’s Josh Feit. On issue after issue, on gay marriage, assault weapons, net neutrality, drilling in ANWR and teaching Intelligent Design in public schools, the Times has previously editorialized in support of the position opposite to that which McGavick holds. And on the biggest issue of the day, the steadily deteriorating war in Iraq, the Times has repeatedly argued against a course a Republican controlled Senate would surely vote to stay. But according to the Times:

Some see this election as a referendum on George W. Bush. If we did, we would be for a solid Democratic ticket. But like most Washington voters, we take our candidates one at a time.

I’d read on further but I scratched my corneas scraping the bullshit off my eyes.

This election is a referendum on President Bush and the Republican leadership, and unless you’re itching for a catastrophic ground war with Iran it is deeply irresponsible to approach it any other context. If Sen. Maria Cantwell had voted for estate tax repeal she’d have had the Times endorsement, and the fact that Frank would use his paper to prop up a failed Republican majority over this single, selfish issue is morally and ethically reprehensible.

The Times editorial board has become a joke. I have not spoken to a single professional journalist who has not rolled his eyes or derisively laughed at the Times‘ contorted logic and unmitigated gall. Even some of Frank’s own employees have expressed their disgust to me.

Not that any of this really has any impact on the actual election. David Postman writes:

Critics on both sides like to say that MSM newspaper endorsements don’t matter much in this age of New Media. But they must mean something given how much of the blogosphere was filled up with discussion about them the past week.

But David misses the point. Us bloggers and journalists and political activists do care about the role the op/ed pages should play in promoting public discourse — and passionately — and that is why it pains us so much to see Frank trivializing the opinion pages of the state’s largest newspaper. But why the fuck would the average Seattle voter give a Times endorsement an ounce of credence when the paper consistently supports candidates and issues contrary to the interests of their community? Us bloggers aren’t the average reader, and the truth is, the average reader no longer gives a shit about what that estate-tax-repealing, labor-busting, dog-shooting Frank Blethen thinks is best for them.

Local newspaper industry observers tell me that it was the bitter newspaper strike that radicalized Frank and flipped him over to staunchly supporting the GOP and its anti-Labor agenda. At the time, Frank threatened to move the newspaper’s editorial operations out to Bothell to join its new production facility, but stayed in Seattle fearing a public backlash.

Well as far as I’m concerned, good riddance. Go ahead and move your operations out to Bothell, Frank, and while you’re at it, you might as well change the name of your paper to “The Bothell Times.” At least that way your readers can rest assured that there will always be at least one honest piece of information printed in your newspaper daily: the masthead.

I was in the middle of writing a response to the Seattle Bothell Times ridiculous editorial endorsement of Mike?™ McGavick, when I got sidetracked reading Jim Vesely’s latest column, “Mirror, mirror: Eastside’s urban politics.”

If Democrat Darcy Burner wins in November against incumbent Reichert, the heavy weight of running as a Republican and as a first-termer will be the burden that brings him down. That will turn the 8th into another battleground district in two years, as Burner will see a fierce attempt by the Republicans to reclaim the seat.

First, if Reichert loses it won’t just be because of shifting demographics or first-term vulnerability, and neither will it simply be due to this year’s unique political climate. If Reichert loses, it will at least in part be due to the fact that he is a mediocre congressman and a weak candidate who is facing an extraordinarily well-run, energetic and smart campaign from Darcy Burner. If Reichert loses, it’s because he got beat, and the fact that Vesely is already making excuses 16 days out gives a little insight into how weak a candidate Reichert’s strongest backers know he really is.

But…

If Reichert wins a second term, the Democrats will go away. Parties are like perfectly evolved sharks

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From Sunday’s Seattle P-I:

P-I Endorsement: Burner is better

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

This newspaper didn’t endorse Republican Dave Reichert for the 8th Congressional District House race two years ago because he then faced a bright, terribly well-informed Democrat whose votes we believed would better represent the district and serve the nation.

This time, Reichert faces an even more substantial Democratic challenger in Darcy Burner.

Nonetheless, we believe it’s only responsible to be able to first make a case for removing and incumbent, no matter how impressive the challenger.

Reichert is a man seemingly pulled into elective office, first when the King County sheriff’s position to which he had been appointed was changed to an elected office, and then when asked to run for Congress, largely on the strength of his fame in the Green River case.

Once in Washington, D.C., to his credit, Reichert bucked House leadership and President Bush on some controversial votes, including stem cell research and the disgraceful business of Terri Schiavo.

But Reichert has been on the wrong side of votes regarding minimum wage, tax cuts, Tom DeLay’s ethics and, most recently, detention and trial of foreign detainees.

Burner, a former Microsoft manager, is as informed in her views as she is forceful in delivering them. Frankly, at a P-I Editorial Board session, it was difficult to tell who was the incumbent because her answers carried weight.

From how to balance the federal budget (and how urgent it is to do so) to how crucial it is to reduce human contributions to global climate change to Congress’ role in Iraq war policy, Burner has the better grasp of the issues and the greater passion to deal with them.

It’s a fairly strong endorsement, but notice how it’s neither mean-spirited nor totally one sided. And notice how it focuses on issues instead of some bullshit, I’m-rubber-your-glue, NRCC talking point about Darcy running a negative campaign. Notice how it’s written by grownups.

According to the latest FEC filings, the National Republican Congressional Committee spent $425,000 attacking Darcy Burner… yesterday alone. This brings the NRCC’s grand total to over $1.3 million dollars in WA-08, all of it spent on attack ads.

Darcy could potentially become a victim of her own success. This supposedly “third tier” challenger is now drawing first tier attention from the NRCC, which has made her one of its top ten targets over the past few weeks.

The good news is that this is a clear demonstration of the netroots’ “50-State Strategy” at work. Ten months ago the NRCC wasn’t expecting to spend much money defending Dave Reichert’s seat, but Darcy’s strong challenge has forced them to pull money from other races, leaving the door open for challengers like Peter Goldmark to sneak up on incumbents like Cathy McMorris in Washington’s 5th Congressional District. The bad news is that unless Darcy has the resources to respond, and Peter has the cash to out-flank the R’s out West, both Reichert and McMorris could eke out victories.

That’s where you come in. Darcy needs to raise $500,000 during the month of October to stay competitive, and Peter’s budget requires bringing in about half that. So to help them meet their goals and bring a Democratic majority to Congress, I’m asking you to join me in a bold and innovative fundraising experiment.

Since March, 234 of you have contributed over $17,000 to Burner and Goldmark via my Act Blue page, a truly amazing performance that gives the HA community one of the highest dollar to reader ratios of any blog in the nation. On several occasions I have personally asked you to give to these two campaigns, and you have responded. I promised you that these races would become competitive, and with your help they have.

I am now asking you to make the same sort of personal appeal to your friends and family, not just in Washington state, but throughout the nation. The goal: to double the number of contributions via HA’s Act Blue page between now and October 31.

If only 50 of HA’s thousands of readers respond to my challenge and bring in just five new donors each, we will easily meet our target. If the 234 of you who have already made generous donations bring in only one new contributor each, well… you can do the math for yourself.

Here is what I am asking you to do. I want you to put together a list of like-minded friends and relatives, and I want you to email them and personally beg them to give money to Darcy and Peter. If they say no, ask them again. If they do not respond, I want you to give them a call. I want you to personally plead with them that this election may be our best and last shot at turning our nation around, and that Darcy and Peter will be leaders that will make them proud.

I’m not going to tell you exactly what to write or say; you know these people best, so you are the best person to craft an appeal. But I do want you to set a personal goal — say, 10 new contributors — and specifically ask your friends and family to help you reach your target. I also suggest that you emphasize that any amount will help, even as little as $10.00 — although experience shows that most people will give more.

Finally, I want you to embed in your email the following link — http://actblue.com/page/horsesass?refcode=OctDrive — to facilitate giving, and to keep track of our progress. And if you want, you can replace “OctDrive” with an alphanumeric string of your choice to identify your own efforts, and at the end of the month I will list the fundraising results for each of you. Think of it as a friendly competition.

Darcy and Peter personally reached out to me. I have personally reached out to you. And now you need to reach out to your friends and family and personally ask them to make that final effort to put us over the top this November.

We are counting on you. We are counting on us.

Constituent Dynamics just released a new round of polls in 48 of the most competitive House contests around the nation, and they show the Democrats currently ahead in the race for control of the House by a 224 to 205 seat margin. Of course, it’s only a poll, and the election is still almost 4 weeks away… but I’d rather be a Democrat right now than a Republican.

Here in WA-08 the poll shows Dave Reichert leading challenger Darcy Burner, 48% to 45% — well within the poll’s 3.09% margin of error. Six weeks ago Constituent Dynamics shocked local race watchers by reporting Burner leading Reichert, 49% to 46% — also within the margin of error. But since then the results have been corroborated by a number of public and private polls, all of which show the race within the margin.

There can be no doubt now that WA-08 is a dead heat; the candidate who does the better job of getting their message out over the next few weeks, wins. Of course, Reichert still has a cash-on-hand advantage, so if you want to give Burner the resources she needs to take this seat, please give now.

I was listening to this week’s edition of Podcasting Liberally yesterday while writing up the blurb, and one particular point just sticks in my mind.

The Reichert campaign finally went on the air this week, and they immediately came out negative against Darcy Burner, following the lead of the NRCC attack ads that had already been running. Joel Connelly pointed out that it could be a self-defeating strategy for an incumbent like Reichert, with such a huge name ID advantage, to be out there pushing Burner’s name and face before voters. And as is Joel’s wont, he made his point by recounting an anecdote from WA political lore.

Then state senator Jack Metcalf was running against the legendary Sen. Warren Magnuson, adopting the campaign theme: “Wrong Again Maggie.” When asked to comment on Metcalf’s relentlessly negative campaign, Sen. Magnuson reportedly quipped: “Well, if this fellow wants to spend his money producing TV commercials using my name, I’m not going to stop him.”

No doubt, negative advertising generally works. Else candidates wouldn’t use it. But you’ve got to wonder about a campaign strategy that focuses almost exclusively on driving up the negatives of an opponent whose biggest weakness is her relative lack of name recognition.

You also have to wonder about the decision to focus on taxes as their main line of attack. Republicans always accuse their opponents of wanting to raise taxes — in their lingo, that’s part of the definition of being a Democrat. So while I understand that he wants to use his cash-on-hand advantage to define his opponent, I’m not so sure that defining her as a Democrat is gonna hurt Burner all that much in a district where polls show that voters are much more concerned about ballooning federal deficits than high taxes, and where President Bush’s approval ratings threaten to plunge below thirty percent.

The fact is, voters in the 8th CD are very fortunate to have a distinct choice in November’s election. If you want to stay the course in Iraq, and you want a congressman who will vote 90 percent of the time with President Bush and the Republican leadership, then cast your ballot for Reichert. But if you oppose a permanent occupation of Iraq, if you want new leadership, and you think our nation needs to take a new direction both at home and abroad, then cast your ballot for Darcy Burner.

The Reichert folks chafe at the description of their candidate as rubber-stamp Republican, not because it isn’t basically true, but because it’s not a popular thing to be in the current political climate. But by using the same tired old themes in attempting to define Burner as a “tax-and-spend” Democrat, they end up, by comparison, defining Reichert as an establishment Republican.

And in this district, in this race, in this year… I’d rather be an ass than an elephant.

There was an overflow crowd at the much anticipated Darcy Burner/Dave Reichert debate, and so most of us flowed over to Drinking Liberally to debate amongst ourselves.

Joining me in our unique brand of drunken debate were Mollie, Will, Carl, Sandeep and Seattle P-I political columnist Joel Connelly. Will gives us a first-hand account from the Burner/Reichert debate, Joel reports from his recent trip through the political wilds of Montana, and Sandeep fills us in on his futile existence begging editorial boards to oppose an initiative sponsored by the newspaper industry… and yet once again, I seem to do most of the talking. Go figure.

The show is 56:44, and is available here as a 40.9 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.]

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Of course, the much awaited Burner/Reichert debate is also taking place this evening, so I’m guessing we’ll have some latecomers with first hand reports from the battlefield.

Not in Seattle? Washington liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities and Vancouver. Here’s a full run down of WA’s ten Drinking Liberally chapters:

	Where:	When:	Next Meeting:
Burien:	Mick Kelly’s Irish Pub, 435 SW 152nd St	Fourth Wednesday of each month, 7:00 pm onward	October 25
Kirkland:	Valhalla Bar & Grill, 8544 122nd Ave NE	Every Thursday, 7:00 pm onward	October 12
Monroe:	Eddie’s Trackside Bar and Grill, 214 N Lewis St	Second Wednesday of each month, 7:00 PM onward	October 11
Olympia:	The Tumwater Valley Bar and Grill, 4611 Tumwater Valley Drive South	First and third Monday of each month, 7:00-9:00 pm	October 16
Seattle:	Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Ave E	Every Tuesday, 8:00 pm onward	October 10
Spokane:	Red Lion BBQ & Pub, 126 N Division St	Every Wednesday, 7:00 pm	October 11
Tacoma:	Meconi’s Pub, 709 Pacific Ave	Every Wednesday, 8:00 pm onward	on hiatus
Tri-Cities:	Atomic Ale, 1015 Lee Blvd, Richland	Every Tuesday, 7:00 pm onward	October 10
Vancouver:	Hazel Dell Brew Pub, 8513 NE Highway 99	Second and fourth Tuesday of each month, 7:00 pm onward	October 10
Walla Walla:	The Green Lantern, 1606 E Isaacs Ave	First Friday of each month, 8:00 pm onward	November 3