Search Results for: drinking liberally

I’ve watched this presentation by Bug Girl on social media a couple times. The part that intrigues me the most is who she finds her competition to be. And it isn’t other insect bloggers, but rather everything else. She finds other insect bloggers to be her collaborators. And I sort of feel the same way about Washington/Northwest liberal blogs.

In the early days of local blogging, the landscape was pretty bare. Before Slog, before Postman’s blog or the rest of the local media, before Goldy started blogging, it was a threadbare community compared to now. And I made an effort with what little platform I had 2 blogs ago to promote the rest of the community. It grew into something fun and interesting. And even with my 100-150 readers a day at most, I remember having people come up to me at Drinking Liberally or at other blog events and thank me for a link and tell me all the traffic they got out of it.

Some of them have gone, but a lot of them are still part of the community. I hope that the support of this community comes through in the Open Threads where I try to link to a variety of local blogs, even if I unfortunately tend toward the more established ones. Because I really don’t consider them the competition. I love the community both of comments and of other blogs. I don’t know what that means going forward, but I’m going to try to keep it in mind when I write here.

– War on Cars

– Market forces are incredibly powerful. It’s amazing what can happen when they’re pushed in a certain direction through regulation.

– It’s time to end the Electoral College.

– Hollywood has run out of ideas.

– I was just telling Darryl at Drinking Liberally, that I probably link to too many bug things in the open threads. This post on zombie caterpillars will have to add to the number.

Young Turks: Bill-O bribes cops to investigate his wife’s lover.

Ed and Pap and Lizz Winstead: No adults at home in the GOP:

Alyona’s Tool Time: Megyn Kelly.

Thom: Presidential firsts.

Dem video blasts GOP on…angry town halls (via TalkingPointsMemo).

Young Turks: GOP—cut FEMA, first responders, and hurricane hunters.

ONN: The Onion Week in Review.

The Return of Darth Cheney:

• Pap: The criminal history of Dick Cheney.
• Young Turks: Cheney says it isn’t okay to waterboard Americans.
• Ed: Cheney’s tell-all book.
• Powell blasts Cheney.
• Ann Telnaes: Cheney says his book will make heads explode.
• Alyona’s Show & Tell: Charge Cheney with war crimes?
• Pap: Dick Cheney belongs in jail, not on a book tour.

Olbermann with Ambassador Joe Wilson: Cheney…Pt I.
Olbermann with Ambassador Joe Wilson: Cheney…Pt II.

TED: Fourth Quadrant Politics.

Piers Morgan asks Rick Santorum if he’s a bigot.

Thom: This is what anti-Americanism really is:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is Worst Person in the World.

Alyona’s Tool Time: FL GOP doesn’t want you ‘living in sin’.

FAUX News viewers are, apparently, confused by Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

Newsy: Obama moves back joint session address.

Sam Seder: Gov. Rick Scott blows money & proves he’s wrong about welfare recipients being druggies.

Young Turks: Republican will lead Supercommittee.

Mark Fiore: The future now.

Newsy: Daryl Hannah arrested for environmental protest.

Olbermann and Makos: The Nat. Geo. Geo. Bush interview.

Republican Committee of Pima County, Arizona is Worst Person in the World.

Young Turks: Eric Cantor’s disaster relief flip-floppery.

Ed with some racist Psychotalk from Rush Limbaugh.

Thom: Sen. Chuck Grassley lies on camera.

Limbaugh: Melanin is thicker than water (via Blatherwatch).

The G.O.P. Primary Asylum:

• Ed and Pap: G.O.P. candidates think about disaster response.
• Newsy: And then there were two—Perry and Romney.
• Pap: GOP candidates embracing the “Sovereign Citizen” extremists.
• Actual Audio: Mitt on corporate personhood.
• Maddow: How Perry dumps waste in your backyard in exchange for campaign donations.
• Young Turks: No stimulus programs under Perry.
• Thom: Rick Perry is a big-government Socialist!
• Sharpton: Perry’s plan for America.
• Ed: Perry’s gangster government for rich Texans.
• Young Turks: How Rick Perry got rich on the job.
• Buzz 60: Perry Polls
• Pap: Perry, the French cuff cowboy
• Sharpton: Bachmann gasping for air with Perry on the scene.
• The Michele Bachman KKKRAZZZY Comedian video.
• Ed with some major Michele psychotalk.
• Young Turks: Bachmann—Christians should run government.

Young Turks: Tea Party wants blacks lynched.

Olbermann with Brian Beutler on politics of Obama’s EPA decision.

Newsy: Arizona GOP raising funds with Glock gun raffle.

White House: West Wing Week.

Rubio’s Ruin:

• Ed and Pap: Marco Rubio’s troubled financial history.
• Ed: Marco Rubio is so stupid he doesn’t even know when he is being offensive. Pt. I
• Ed: Marco Rubio is so stupid he doesn’t even know when he is being offensive. Pt. II

A big change coming to Whitehouse.gov.

NPR: “It’s All Politics” political news round-up.

Liberal Viewer: FAUX News attacks Google as anti-church?!?

Olbermann: The real-life impact of WI Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union efforts.

Mike Shaw, the acting chairman of the Republican Committee of Pima County, AZ is Worst Person in the World.

Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.

Bill-O the Clown is Back! As Worst Person in the World.

Young Turks: Obama’s jobs speech cave.

PBS: The devastating Texas drought.

Goldy and his friends engage in some Podcasting Liberally at Seattle’s chapter of Drinking Liberally.

Pap: Republicans want climate science removed from text books.

Sharpton: Gov. Haley’s ridiculous response to question on new ‘Jim Crow’ vote rigging law.

Olbermann and Maysoon Zayid discuss O’Reilly-Gate:

Alyona’s fireside chat: US failing on civil liberties post 9/11.

Ed with some major psychotalk from George Pataki.

Young Turks: Strippers prepare for GOP convention.

Eric Cantor cuts the competition on the way to Worst Person in the World.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

The Podcast returns from a long vacation hibernation incarceration a coma the dead to tackle the big political issues of the day last many months. And freshen the sidebar.

The discussion starts with bold analyses of the recent election: the panel re-litigates The Tunnel (long after the topic is hip, relevant, or even interesting), and contemplates the meaning of the pro-tunnel vote for Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn. The discussion meanders into a referendum on Seattle itself (whereupon, Goldy briefly attempts to re-litigate the Chihuly Museum, long after the topic is hip, relevant, or even interesting).

Circling back to the election, the panel ponders the piss-poor performance of King County Councilmember Jane “37.9%” Hague, and the remarkable candidacy of challenger Richard Mitchell. Catalyzed by another lame-ass Seattle Times editorial, the Podcast closes on the topic of public employees, education and (of course) Seattle schools.

Goldy (The Stranger) was joined by Seattlepi.com’s Joel Connelly, and Horsesass’ Carl Ballard and me.

The show is 30:15, and is available here as an MP3.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_aug_30_2011.mp3]

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

– News reports on Laura Ruderman have stated that she’s running for the 1st Congressional District seat being vacated by Jay Inslee, however in her FEC Statement of Organization filing, she left the district field blank. On June 28, the FEC sent her a letter asking her to specify which district she plans to run in.

– Remember those Hitler-loving teenage twins who started a band called Prussian Blue? Well, they’ve changed quite a bit since then…

– Scott Morgan writes about the myth that support for marijuana law reform is political suicide. This actually reminded me of an incident recently at Drinking Liberally in Burien. A certain city council candidate for a city just outside of Seattle showed up with his campaign manager on a night when I came by to collect signatures for I-1149. The candidate himself was very forthright with me that not only did he think marijuana should be legal, but that we should even look at different ways of dealing with harder drugs. But his campaign manager (both men were probably in their 50s) sternly advised him not to sign my petition. He was convinced that if it became public that he signed a petition to legalize marijuana, it would wreck his chances in the campaign.

I found that to be laughable and said that in the greater Seattle area today, the opposite is almost true. Failing to support the legalization of marijuana could actually hurt you politically. Not to mention that Ron Paul, who’s been on record supporting the legalization of marijuana for over twenty years, keeps getting re-elected in the one of most conservative parts of the country. But this is how many folks in the political establishment still think. The taboo that marijuana represented long ago still lives on in the minds of political consultants, even though the political risks to supporting reform are non-existent today.

Later on at that Drinking Liberally event, though, State Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon – one of the youngest, if not the youngest, member of the state legislature – signed my I-1149 petition as that same campaign manager tried to warn him not to.

– Seattle has become the first city in the state to move forward with a plan for regulating medical marijuana establishments. Under the parts of the bill that escaped the governor’s veto pen, it’s now legal for a group of up to 10 authorized patients to band together and form a “collective garden”. And there’s nothing in the new law that prevents someone from opening up a storefront and making it the shared access point for a large number of those collective gardens (Seattle alone probably has more than 20,000 authorized patients, meaning the city could have over 2,000 collective gardens). The city of Seattle has an interest in controlling where those access points will be located and have them pay business taxes just like any other establishment.

But now, attorney Douglas Hiatt is threatening to sue the city over the regulations. I’ve worked with Douglas a lot for I-1149 and I’m frankly baffled by what he’s doing. When I emailed him about why he was planning to sue, he told me that it’s because marijuana is illegal at the state level still, so the city can’t regulate it. After re-reading the actual language of SB 5073 that passed, I don’t think that’s true, but that’s actually beside the point. These are regulations that will allow for Seattle to have a system of access for medical marijuana that’s above-ground and – while still an administrative mess (thanks governor!) – better for patients. And the relevant local law enforcement figures are perfectly ok with it. The only entity I would expect to nitpick the legality of all this in order to shut it down is the DEA, not someone with a well-earned reputation for defending the state’s medical marijuana patients in court.

Will the Republicans come up with a credible challenger to Sen. Maria Cantwell for 2012? The topic came up at Drinking Liberally last week, and I’ve been been thinking about it on and off since then. Specifically…who?

Jim Brunner puts together a good analysis. At this point, the big challenge for any potential Republican is money. The clock is running. Cantwell is raising money. Her non-existent Republican opponent isn’t.

Former Washington state Republican Chairman Chris Vance has the political side figured out. (I like how he is able to say reality-based stuff that current Chairman Kirby Wilbur could never say):

“[R]ight now, it’s very much in doubt whether there is going to be a strong candidate.”

“The Republican brand got hammered on the West Coast during the Bush years, and it has not recovered….There are just so many more Democrats than Republicans in Washington state right now — the math just becomes very difficult.”

and

“If a Republican is going to have any chance to beat Cantwell, they have to immediately and sharply distance themselves from the national Republican Party”

Brunner offers three possible challengers: Susan Hutchison, who lost a race for King County Executive to Ron Sims Dow Constantine in 2009, Rep. Dave Reichert, and Port of Seattle Commissioner Bill Bryant.

Not impressive.

Dino! Your party needs you!

I think as the campaign season kicks into swing, I’m going to ask candidates for various offices questions. But I’d like to hear from the folks here. So far, I can think of some things I’d like to ask Seattle, King County, and Port candidates. If pressed, I could probably reasonably ask some things of some people running for mayor in some of the ring cities and some of the bigger cities in the area, or Seattle School board. But it’s an odd year, so nothing statewide. And I don’t know what local issues exist outside of the Puget Sound area.

Basically, while I have preferences that I’ll probably express pretty strongly about some of those positions between now and November, I want to ask questions that are more openended and to ask all of the candidates the same questions. So I’d email, say, 3-5 questions to each candidate per position and post them unedited here in some predetermined order on a predetermined date.

So is there anything you’d like a semi-popular Washington State political blog to ask of anyone?

Here are basically what I have so far, I’ve kept them vague for the most part so far so people can flesh out ideas in the comments without me saying here’s the question ahead of time:

Seattle City Council:

• Something about the Viaduct, probably cost overruns
• Something about police, preferably including accountability and safety
• Something about faster Internet across the city
• What is the city’s role in education and public transportation given how important they are to the city, but that other agencies are tasked with them?

King County

• Something about Metro service
• Something about services in general since the voters rejected Proposition 1 last year

Port of Seattle

• Something about how people run on reform, but it doesn’t seem like much has been done.
• How can the Port create jobs in the region?
• How can the Port reduce pollution/greenhouse gases, etc.
• Something about parks*

[Read more…]

Between Memorial Day weekend and my general laziness, we went a long time sans an open thread from the end of last week (From Friday morning to the DL Thread put up early on Tuesday). By the end of that time conversation generally dried up in the previous open thread, and people started writing off topic in other threads.

Those off topic comments got deleted, and it naturally caused some anger. It’s one thing to say “post that in an open thread” when there’s an open thread from today or yesterday. It’s another thing to say, “post that in an open thread, um from a week ago.” Darryl and I discussed it at Drinking Liberally, and I’m not sure we came up with an answer, but we had some thoughts. I’d like to explain what I usually do and what I did the rest of this week, and then I’ll discuss some possible things going forward.

Normally, I try to do 2 or 3 open threads a week, spaced out, but it’s more when I have enough things that I find interesting to link to than a specific amount of time. I try to have at least one local link and one thing that doesn’t involve politics (sports, science, music, etc.) in every open thread. I’ve been making an effort to link to some Eastern WA content with not that much success, and to link to women and people of color with more success, but neither of those has been a hard and fast rule. Also, if someone else does an open thread, I’ll wait until the next day to do one, even if mine is ready.

This week, on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I changed that up a bit. I posted open threads all three of those days (and tried to post all in the morning, but didn’t have the time on Thursday). I don’t think the quality of the links was as good in general, and there was a pretty major fuck up in one of those links on Thursday (from me scanning the headlines instead of reading the post). I think that looking for stuff for more open threads took away time for writing other posts.

So, going forward, I don’t really want to manually do an open thread with links every day. But here’s some thoughts that Darryl and I discussed:

• Just keep doing what we’re doing. We usually have them every few days, and so what if nothing comes up because of long weekend or one of us is on vacation, well that’s not the end of the world.
• Creating an open thread user that the rest of us can edit. Everyone add links as we find them. There’s some possibility that we can step on each other’s toes, and it might be annoying to do it from the back end. We’d have some problems deciding when it’s ready to go.
• There’s no inherent need to have links. I think they add a place to start the discussion and in general I like most of the blogs I link to. I think there’s some responsibility for higher traffic blogs to link to other blogs, especially in my case where my place at a high traffic blog isn’t really from my own hard work, but from being given the spot. But I imagine people will find something to talk about even without a link.
• We could do some sort of hybrid where, for example, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we just have an open thread and on Tuesday and Thursday we have an open thread with links.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten something since I discussed with Darryl on Tuesday, but those are my thoughts. I’d like to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

At a recent Drinking Liberally, Goldy and I were discussing what the comment threads have become. I think regular open threads have kept most of the things that would otherwise be off topic out of the other threads (although not completely). And while the threads have always been pretty loose, since the 3 regulars are all part time, the enforcement of the comment policy has gone somewhat downhill.

So the question is: do we need a new comment policy now that Goldy isn’t posting, do we need better technology, or is it working fine now? Goldy said he would be willing to work on something with registration, but I’m not sure that he has the time, and I don’t know exactly what it would look like. I can step up enforcement somewhat, but between 8:30 and 4:30 (give or take depending on the day) on weekdays, that’s not going to happen, and I can’t really force the other posters to do anything.

– This post brought back strong memories of doing flash cards with my mother on the train to her parents’ house.

– This is 100% factual.

– Freedom!

– This looks like a hoot, but I’ll be at Drinking Liberally tomorrow.

– I wouldn’t say genius.

– I’m sure glad we voted for a Republican house, or we might never get a vote on this shit.

Goldy has been (mostly) gone for almost two months now. And during this evening’s Drinking Liberally event, the topic of a slight HA re-branding arose. The winning slogan idea was:

The New HorsesAss…Same great flavor, 50% less “fuck.”

What do you think?

(H/T to occasional poster Goldy for contributing the “50% less ‘fuck'” bit.)

The state Senate Democratic Caucus just released its recommendations for committee chairs, elevating Seattle Sen. Ed Murray to the top position on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. And according to a statement released through the caucus, this leaves Ed very, very humble.

“I’m humbled to be considered for the role of Ways & Means chair.

I don’t come with any illusions about the challenges facing our state budget. But I believe my experience working across the aisle to write a budget well prepares me for the significant task ahead.”

I dunno, Ed’s never struck me as particularly humble, but he is the kinda a guy who will occasionally show up at Drinking Liberally and argue with dirty bloggers, so I’m cheered by the news.

So congrats Ed. And if you stop by DL tonight and join us for a frosty brew, I’d be happy to tell you how to solve the budget crisis.

I posted the results earlier today of the Washington Senate race based on KPLU’s news reports. At noon today, the KCTS/KPLU/Washington Poll top lines were released for public consumption.

In that all-important race between the single most powerful mom-in-tennis-shoe in the Senate & nation, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), and the single most sought-after motivational speaker on the foreclosure profiteering seminar circuit, Dino Rossi (R), we find Sen. Murray leading 50% to 42%. This makes five polls in a row that has Murray in the lead.

This poll surveyed 500 people from October 5th to the 14th. Hence, it overlaps every one of the other five October polls. Here is summary of all the polls this month:

	Start	End	Samp.		%	%	%
Poll	date	date	size	MOE	Murray	Rossi	Diff
WA Poll	05-Oct	14-Oct	500	4.3	50	42	D+8
SurveyUSA	11-Oct	14-Oct	606	4.1	50	47	D+3
CNN/Time/OR	08-Oct	12-Oct	850	3.5	51	43	D+8
Elway	07-Oct	11-Oct	450	4.6	51	38	D+13
Fox	09-Oct	09-Oct	1000	3.0	47	46	D+1
Rasmussen	06-Oct	06-Oct	750	4.0	46	49	R+3

What does this poll tell us by itself? A Monte Carlo analysis using the observed sample size and percentages gives Murray 902,830 wins to Rossi’s 92,001 out of a million simulated elections. That is, the poll provides evidence that Murray would have a 90.8% probability of beating Rossi in an election held now.

But we can pool the results from all six of the polls shown in the table. This gives us a total of 4,156 “votes”, of which 3,890 of them go to either Rossi or Murray. Murray gets 48.9% to Rossi’s 44.7% (or, if we look at just the votes for Murray and Rossi, Murray is up 52.2% to 47.8%). A simulation analysis finds Murray beating Rossi with 975,049 wins to his 24,332 wins.

The new KCTS/KPLU/Washington Poll has added a bit more certainty to Murray’s lead. Yesterday, this same analysis using all but today’s poll gave Murray a 94.5% chance of winning. Today, with six polls, we find that Murray would have a 97.6% chance of beating Rossi in an election right now.

Finally, let me address a meme about this race that has been quite prevalent in the recent media. There is an idea the the polls are “all over the place.” Maybe. But not really. Let’s look at results of polls taken in September and October:

Since these polls are taken on a sample of the underlying voting population, there is some uncertainty about the results. The vertical bars on the poll results show the plausible range that the voting population could have, given the margin of error inherent in the poll. (Other problems can lead to biased estimates; the margin of error only incorporates uncertainty reflecting the size of the sample.) And even then, by chance, we expect the true value to lie outside of the plausible range in about one in twenty polls.

Looking at the recent polls, it seems the last five polls mostly overlap, suggesting that the truth lies somewhere near a 54% Murray, 46% Rossi result. We also see this in early September. From mid-September to early October, Murray appears to do significantly worse.

Remember the discussion with the Elway poll last Tuesday? Elway was compelled to justify his noticeably higher numbers for Murray, and suggested that there was a difference between robopolls and live-interview polls. (Of course, if we consider the plausible range, the Elway poll fits right in.) The polls released since Tuesday support Elway’s suggestion.

Elway did not offer a hypothesis why robopolls would turn in different results than the live-interview polls, but I did. Via Goldy:

As Darryl suggested the other night at Drinking Liberally, what if the enthusiasm gap we’ve all been hearing about is largely manifested in who is or is not willing to give up ten minutes to interact with an automated poll? I know I’ve hung up on a couple robo-polls this year, but find it harder to do so with a real live person. Interesting hypothesis.

This looks right for all the recent polling. We see that the three live-interview polls (Elway, WA poll, and CNN) all post numbers on the high side and the robopolls (SUSA, Rasmussen and FOX News) all come in on the low side. That big dip in the middle is formed from six robopolls taken in a row. In fact, Rasmussen and FAUX News both use the same company—Pulse Opinion Research–to do their polling. It may not be chance that FOX New and Rasmussen both give Murray her worse performance in this series. And this would explain the question I posed in August, “What the hell happened to Survey USA?”

The robopoll/live interview/enthusiasm gap hypothesis was offered Tuesday before the three most recent polls were released, and I am now pretty confident that this is what is happening in the Murray—Rossi race here in Washington.

I am less confident about other House and Senate races nationally, but if it can happen here, it might well be happening elsewhere. I think there is a fair possibility that robopolls will systematically underestimate the performance of Democrats nationwide, which will make for a pretty darned interesting election night!

(Cross posted at Hominid Views.)

My trolls tell me that President Obama’s upcoming rally in Seattle is an act of desperation, and that nobody is more unpopular around here these days than the president, except, perhaps, Gov. Chris Gregoire.

Maybe. But I’m just not feeling the gloom and doom right now, especially with the latest SurveyUSA tracking poll showing Obama’s approval rating jumping 12 points in Washington state last month, rising from 40% to a comfortable 52%. That’s Obama best showing since January, and represents a 24-point swing in the margin, from 16 points under to 8 points over.

Add to that the new CNN/Time poll that has Sen. Patty Murray up 51-43% over Dino Rossi, plus the Elway Poll that showed Washington Dems holding a 46-37% advantage in the generic congressional, not to mention the sudden tightening in WA-08, and you gotta wonder if the tide is shifting, at least in this corner of the country.

Or, perhaps, there’s something to Elway’s effort to distinguish between automated polls like Rasmussen and SurveyUSA, and live interviewer polls like his. As Darryl suggested the other night at Drinking Liberally, what if the enthusiasm gap we’ve all been hearing about is largely manifested in who is or is not willing to give up ten minutes to interact with an automated poll? I know I’ve hung up on a couple robo-polls this year, but find it harder to do so with a real live person. Interesting hypothesis.

I know there have been some polls that show Democratic seats at risk in WA-03 and WA-02 (and allegedly even WA-09), and we’ll certainly give back some of our recent legislative gains, but apart from that, there really isn’t very much hard evidence to suggest that Washington Dems should brace themselves for a red tsunami of the likes that swept them from office in 1994. At least, there’s not much evidence from this momentary vantage point some three weeks out.

It’s no secret I didn’t want Dino Rossi to jump into the race against U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, not because I think he stands much of a chance of winning — he doesn’t — but because of all the other intangibles his candidacy brings with it.

With Rossi in the race, the national Dems will now spend money here that would be better spent defending more vulnerable seats elsewhere, while state Democratic money and focus will be distracted from a host of down-ticket races, not the least of which being the open seat in WA-03, and to a lesser extent WA-02, where Rep. Rick Larsen appears to have finally drawn a reasonably viable challenger. Furthermore, win or lose, this pretty much eliminates Rossi from the 2012 gubernatorial contest where he could have proven a substantial roadblock to Rob McKenna’s naked political ambitions, and a potentially weaker opponent to nearly-inevitable Democratic nominee Jay Inslee.

All in all, I’d always thought of a Rossi candidacy as a net plus for his party, if not for him personally.

But, that doesn’t mean a Rossi candidacy doesn’t present some serious risks to state Republicans — and opportunities to Democrats — especially given his late entry into the race, and the unique political climate in which his party currently finds itself. When life gives you Dino, make Dino-ade… that’s what I always say.

Or, perhaps, make tea.

I’ve never been one to take our state teabaggers too seriously as anything more than a symbolic gesture, and had Rossi jumped into the race back in March, I still wouldn’t have considered them much of a political factor. But Rossi’s last minute candidacy, and the invasion of out-of-state establishment money and consultants he brings with him, is nothing if not a big “fuck you” to Clint Didier and the entire Tea Party crowd.

Oh, the NRSC and the WSRP still want you to show up at rallies and angrily wave your misspelled signs, as long as it’s their chosen candidates you’re rallying for, instead of one of those crazy, constitutionally illiterate hicks that so excites your base. (And no, behind closed doors, mainstream Republicans don’t show you guys much more respect than I do.) You might think you want Didier, or perhaps Sean Salazar, to be the nominee, but the GOP elite… they know better. That’s why they’re force-feeding you Dino Rossi.

And how well Rossi goes down with the Tea Party, especially after the GOP machine brutalizes their preferred candidate, remains to be seen. (That recent hit piece on Didier in the Seattle Times? You don’t suspect that the story was pushed by Republican operatives in an effort to clear the way for Rossi? Welcome to the big leagues.) I don’t know how much sugar Didier supporters put in their tea, but it could take an awful lot for them to willingly swallow Rossi after a bitter primary battle.

Who knows? Perhaps the tea baggers are merely the deluded paper tigers I’ve made them out to be, and they’ll just roll over in front of the Rossi Express. Or, perhaps they’ll prove to be a more potent grassroots force, and fight for the nomination tooth and nail, turning out voters not just in the Senate primary, but in congressional and legislative primaries as well? Perhaps Rossi’s candidacy just made it that much more difficult for establishment GOPer Jaime Herrera to make it to November in WA-03? Perhaps the crazier Republican will triumph in a handful of legislative primaries, Ellen Craswell style, making GOP pickups that much more difficult in the general?

Perhaps… you know… if the Tea Party is really more than a handful of angry Tenthers with a penchant for drawing Hitler mustaches.

And that’s the risk for Republicans in Rossi’s Dino-come-lately candidacy, in a year in which they were counting on Tea Party enthusiasm to get out the vote. Rossi could energize tea baggers… to come out and vote for non-establishment candidates in the August primary. Or, Rossi could totally alienate and/or demoralize his party’s tea bagger base, thus undercutting chances of a Big Red Wave™, at least here in Washington state.

Yeah sure, Rossi makes life at least a little more difficult for the DSCC, and in the unlikely event of a wave election sweeping through this Washington, he gives Republicans a better chance of winning than they might otherwise have. You know, the 50 State Strategy and all that. But by so explicitly dissing the Tea Party faction and their Palin-endorsed candidate, Rossi also creates down-ticket complications that don’t so clearly work out in the GOP’s favor.

So no, tonight at Drinking Liberally, on the eve of Rossi’s announcement, I won’t be crying in my beer. Instead, I’ll be enjoying a tall, refreshing glass of ice-cold Dino-ade in anticipation of making the most out of the opportunities Rossi’s candidacy presents me.