Tip to the Seattle Times: wanna make national headlines, and feel really, really important? Call Washington’s US Senate race already.
You don’t have to wait for the AP or FOX News or NBC to do it. Really. The Oregonian called their governor’s race yesterday afternoon for Kitzhaber, and he was still trailing at the time, yet everybody took it seriously because they’ve got the word “Oregon” in their masthead so folks figured they must know what they’re talking about.
Yeah, I know, there’s still a helluva lot of ballots left to count, but Patty Murray’s ahead by 28,000 votes, King County turnout is through the roof and disproportionately underreported, and the late ballots—you know, the ones that haven’t been counted yet—are clearly breaking hard for the Dems. It’s kinda obvious.
And… well… you’re the Seattle Fucking Times, for chrisakes. You wanna be our state’s paper of record? Act like it.
UPDATE:
Finally.
UPDATE, UPDATE:
Oh, and just to reiterate, HA called the race for Murray about five minutes after King County posted its results on election night.
Goldy–
What difference does “calling” a race make?
Seriously. So what. They still count all the ballots and the winner is the one with the most…no matter how many new ones they find or how many times they must count.
Do you think if the Times “calls” the race, it means Murray has won?
You are being silly.
Goldy’s right. Everybody but Rossi’s paid flaks can do the math, but because no local media organization has officially called it, the national media is still saying Murray-Rossi is “too close to call.”
Is the Times going to wait until Rossi concedes? That could be a long wait. They should get off their Fairview Fannies and call it, already.
But my guess is that, after tonight’s numbers, AP will step up and do it — just like they called I-1100’s defeat after last night’s numbers.
Cynical @1,
Because narrative matters, and you know it.
1) The longer they take to call this race, the closer it’s gonna feel, and the more that will be used to pressure her to pander to the voters who voted the other way.
2) After waiting days to call a race we all knew Patty won the second the King County returns were dropped, the Times is gonna come out and editorialize in favor to changing the ballot deadline from postmarked on to received by election day… citing how long it takes to determine the outcome of races like this. That’s bullshit.
Goldy–
Narrative matters?? Actually results matter.
Obama just agree to drop Cap-and-Tax.
Read his defeatist comments.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....gases.html
You are beating a dead donkey Goldy.
How in the World with the R’s having a huge House Majority in the Seattle Times calling a race one day later going to impact Patty Murray’s votes??
Ludicrous Goldy.
You need another vacation.
Hey, why not go to Republican dominated Pennsylvania? Your home State. I’m sure you will feel much better knowing you are in R-hands!
Are you going to move to Canada after 2012 if Obama loses and the R’s get trampled in the Senate?? Might be good for your psychy?
However, in 2 years, the impact of all this Marxist horseshit will affect our neighbors to the North too.
AYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEE–
Goldy, the world will be Conservative. You will have to choose the Conservative that most closely mirrors your ideology.
How about IRAN??
Goldy the IRANIAN!
The could make a movie about you.
Cynical @4,
If narrative didn’t matter, you wouldn’t be wasting your time here.
@Goldy,
Haven’t you noticed, the press have given up on narrative. If they call the race they wont have gibberish to mumble.
Why would they call this when they are soaking up the page views every evening when they release the results?
If they call the race they’ll have to do some work and look for a story.
Either way, enough ballots will be “found” to insure Murray wins.
@1 I haven’t seen you criticize the media for “calling” races for Republicans. Double standard?
@4 “Obama just agree to drop Cap-and-Tax.”
And this is good for the country and the environment that feeds us? What you guys won Tuesday (to the extent you won anything) is a reversion to 19th-century ideas. How is that good for anyone, including you?
The difference between a politician like Dino Lossi and one like Dave Reichert is that Rossi at least knows what he’s lying about.
@9 Please spare us your bullshit rightwing talking points … you can’t prove a single bogus ballot has been manufactured anywhere in Washington state in the last 50 years, because none have been.
I didn’t vote for Rossi or Murray, but I think it’s time for Murray to be out-of-office: 18 years is long enough! Now she’s probably gonna be in the Senate for 24!
We need term limits for these damn entrenched politicians. No one should ever be a career politician. It was never meant to be a career!
@13 None? Anywhere in 50 years?
*More ballots that registered voters
*Ballots introduced into the count after the cutoff.
*ACORN registering street peeps and later “helping” them vote.
*Felons voting.
Your right: None…ANYWHERE in FIFTY years.
@13
Didn’t the judge in ’04 find 3 or 4 bogus Republican ones?
Roger Rabbit @11 – sometimes you just totally nail it.
huzzah!
@14
I was disappointed that Murray and Norm Dicks ran again, I’m not a fan of the perma electeds. But, I voted for Murray as I wouldn’t want Rossi in office. I wrote my own name in for congress.
Speaking of narratives, and since cap-and-trade is mentioned here, wasn’t the idea of using cap and trade for CO2 originally a Republican idea that Obama and others had sought as a sensibly moderate, market-affirming alternative to real carbon regulation?
Here again you have Obama taking a half-measure as a compromise, followed by a predictably shrill Republican backlash (in which an even lower threshold for “liberal” is defined so that Obama can be beyond it), and finally another compromise from the president, so that nothing actually ever gets done.
WTF?
@15
We’re talking about in real life, not in your fantasy world. This is the internet, back up what you say with links to legitimate court cases.
11. Roger Rabbit spews:
It’s your “messiah” doin’ it asswipe
@19
Cap and trade programs were first started by Bush The First to deal with acid rain. It worked really well. Since then there have been other cap and trade programs to deal with environmental nasties like the Western Climate Initiative and the Emissions Reduction Market System in Illinois. That the federal government isn’t going to do a CO₂ trading market is probably meaningless in the long run. If they don’t do it someone else will.
@20
It a well know fact that felons voted.
Regardless of who they voted for, the ballots were bogus.
The claim was there were NO bogus ballots, anywhere in 50 years.
“14. Politically Incorrect spews:
I didn’t vote for Rossi or Murray, but I think it’s time for Murray to be out-of-office: 18 years is long enough! Now she’s probably gonna be in the Senate for 24!
We need term limits for these damn entrenched politicians. No one should ever be a career politician. It was never meant to be a career!”
Funny, the wingnuts only bring up term limits when it benefits them. They suddenly have amnesia about the issue as soon as Republicans get back into office.
Take Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the Senate. His recent bombasts trumpeted Republican victories in the House as a repudiation of “Congress” and “Washington Interests”.
But McConnell himself was part of the Newt Gingrich’s gang of Republicans who signed the 1992 “Contract with America”, pledging to observe term limits. Of course Mitch, like most of his Republican colleagues, promptly ignored the idea, and while he was campaigning against the Congress in Washington, he has been a solid insider there since his election to the Senate in 1984.
Speaking of Mitch McConnell, he’s got a rather interesting military history.
In March of 1967, he realized that he was going to be subject to the draft when his student deferment expired in June. So he signed up for the Army Reserve, being assured a spot in the 100th Training Division (reserve), based in his home state of Louisville, Kentucky. All he had to do was complete six months of active service and then weekend reserve duty plus summer camp for the next few years, and he was assured of never being required to serve in Vietnam. Such reserve spots were hard to get, there was a long waiting list of people who preferred stateside duty in the reserves to slogging through the jungles in S.E. Asia, where you might actually get shot.
Any wonder about how he got into the reserves were quickly answered. His last semester of law school was spent interning for Kentucky Senator John Cooper, who asked that Mitchel be released from active duty – after only one month – so he could attend New York University. But there’s no record that he actually did so. Instead, he was medically discharged for optic neuritis, a symptom of multiple sclerosis, although he never developed any other symptoms of the disease, and seems to have not suffered any visable symptoms of optic neuritis, either. So instead of serving reserve duty, he served as an intern for Sen. Cooper, then as an intern for Sen. Marlow Cook, and finally as a deputy assitant attorney general under Pres. Gerald R. Ford. After that he entered Kentucky politics, and went on to the Senate. There is little evidence he ever had a job where the way wasn’t paved in golden bricks for him in advance.
It appears that like George Bush, Karl Rove, and Rush Limbaugh, the Vietnam-era draft was only a slight inconvenience to them. Not only did they get out of the draft, but they avoided even fulfilling the terms of their alternative service (George W. Bush got out of his national guard service early, and his record was pretty spotty even when he was supposed to be there; Karl Rove got several student deferrments without apparantly ever taking full-time classes, and apparantly without even completing any of the classes he did sign up for).
Of course, all of these three fellows were more than happy to disparage the record of an opposing candidate who actually served in Vietnam in combat.
King County just dropped for the day, and Murray is up by 50 large.
Somebody put a fork in Dino.
@23
Will stop with the Shibboleths on the 2004 Gubernatorial election? The Rossi lawsuit was thrown out because it was ridiculous, The judge even gave Gregoire 4 more votes!
The whole “felon” argument was baloney as well, given that they voted for both candidates, it wasn’t like they were all living in King County and decided to be projections of the looney right’s worst fears.
Besides, I just looked at Senate vote tally at vote.wa.gov. Murray is now up to 50 thousand over Rossi, it looks like Prince Rossi has to make another concession speech, or blame the King County Election Board again.
Would Rossi demand another recount, with this big of a spread? Of course, he would lose, and he would still have to fork over the cost of the recount.
But his out-of-state masters might figure that’s worth the expense. They would try to hold up Murray’s swearing-in for her fourth term, hoping to deny the Democrats a seat, until the recount (and Rossi’s subsequent lawsuit) were concluded.
Shibboleths?
Does that mean NO bogus ballots?
Felons cannot vote therefore their ballots were BOGUS. Doesn’t matter who they voted for.
Lollapalooza!
@ 13
Please spare us your bullshit…
Roger, you’re arguing with someone who doesn’t know the difference between “insure” and “ensure”. Hell, he’ll probably pick some idiotic nit about the fact that you didn’t qualify “bogus ballot” with the word “Democratic” (after all, there were some bogus ballots in the Rossi/Gregoire 2004 race that turned out to have been cast for Rossi).
The vast intellectual waste land that exists between the ears of these trolls is a chasm that cannot be spanned by mere reason alone. Scaffolding, consisting largely of 2×4’s nailed to their sculls, might help, but that’s about it.
@ 29
Doesn’t matter who they voted for.
Oh, look! I was right. This guy’s not just stupid. He’s predictably stupid.
Don’t cry for Dino, trolls. He’ll just go back to his filthy career sucking the blood of helpless under-water homeowners.
@30 Please rewrite that scathing rebuke….too many big words and no pictures.
Sculls? I didn’t know we were racing.
It’s a freaking full 3% point lead for Murray with the only ballots left to count in the counties that HEAVILY favor her. The race is LONG over. It’s done. Call it.
With the final votes all in….it’ll be pretty much 52 – 48. Not a “blow out” but a pretty decisive victory (no 150 vote difference).
@32
And Patty will save the world.
I can sleep easy now.
Yeah, call it.
Personally, I was looking forward to the drama of a recount.
Cyn,
Your buddy Ken Buck lost his senate race in CO. ;-)
The Tea Party candidate for governor of CO also went down in flames, as did the Tea Party favorite running for senate in Alaska and of course what’s his head running for the governor of NY lost 61% to 34%.
Sad news on our side of the isle, Jim Oberstar lost his race.
Looking at the results of the election, I’m not seeing a whole lot to be down about. Oberstar and a couple others in DC were a real hit, but he Republicans took care of some really crappy Democrats for us. We lost a bunch of governors, but got a few really good ones elected or re-elected.
The Republicans picked up a few real howler monkeys in the house. Dan Quayle’s kid is head to DC to “knock the hell out of the place.”
Murray now has a 50,000 vote lead with about 1/3 of King County ballots uncounted. It’s over.
I think the question is “when will Rossi put his man-pants on and concede his loss.
@39
Rossi has man-pants?
The Times relents:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....te05m.html
I wonder if Charlette Holmgren was able to vote for Dino Rossi again.
SA @ 29: Actually, felons COULD vote, as long as their civil rights were restored.
The mechanics were somewhat confused back then – the old system was that they had to have completed any probation and paid all fines and restitution, AND have a judge sign off on it. But by 2004 whether you needed to have a judge sign off on it depended upon in which court you were convicted. (Now the criteria is simply that the felon is no longer incarcerated).
In the 2004 election challenge, the Republicans cross-checked voting records in King County against felony convictions, and asked the court to ASSUME that their civil rights had not been restored, AND that they had voted for Murray in the same percentage as the county as a whole. The Democrats responded by pulling the same cross-check, but from EVERY county in the state – but they checked first to see if the voting rights had been restored.
Things went badly for the Republicans when the judge (a) refused to assume that the contested votes be rejected based upon percentages, and insisted on direct evidence that evidence be submitted concerning which candidate the person had voted for, and (b) insisted that the Republicans submit evidence that the felon’s civil rights had not been restored.
This put the Republicans in a pretty bad spot. There weren’t that many contested “felon” ballots in the first place, at least not when you look only at King County. If they went through the work of finding out if the person’s civil rights had been restored, they might not have enough left to change the outcome. Moreover, the only way to determine who they voted for was to ask them to testify under oath – even though they would essentially be admitting to a new felony of illegal voting, something they wouldn’t be inclined to do on their own volition. The only ones who would be willing to cooperate freely were the ones who wanted Rossi to win, and were willing to take the consequences, but of course THEY had voted for Rossi anyway.
The Republicans tried to get the judge to grant immunity to the witnesses, but the judge responded that he had no authority to do so, only the prosecuting attorney could do that.
So the Republicans ended up putting a handful of “felons” on the stand, four of whom admitted voting for ROSSI, and the rest refusing to say who they voted for, or whether they voted at all (I’m guessing that they claimed the 5th). The Republicans gave up at that point – they knew the Democrats were standing by with their own lists of felons from Rossi-leaning counties who could reduce Rossi’s total even further.
At this point the Republicans pretty much gave up trying to prove that Rossi had actually won the election, and instead tried to argue that the election should be a do-over. The judge properly pointed out that Washington law did not give him any authority to issue such an order.
Of course, the Republican’s case was so flakey from the beginning, and seemed to be assuming that by choosing a Republican county with Republican judges, that they would go along with any hairbrained theory or evidence the Republicans chose to submit. It turns out they got a judge who properly followed the law, and from that point out they were screwed. Their only hope was a biased judge, and in that they badly miscalculated.
@40, I am trying to use up the tiny bit of Tea Party lingo I know before it went completely out of style.
But, no, no man pants.
rhp6033,
I’m not a wing nut. I’m totally in favor of getting rid of the entrenced Republicans, too. We don’t need any more Strom Thurmonds any more than we need any more Teddy Kennedys hanging out for life in the Senate.
Please go fuck yourself.
Michael spews:
Sad news? He’s a crazy old bastard and folks in his District in Minn. finally had enough of his endless rambling. Good riddance!