Goldy

ABC, CBS and CNN have called the governor’s race for Chris Gregoire.

Four years ago I cut my teeth as a blogger defending the legitimacy of Gov. Gregoire’s election from the mean spirited and misleading attacks of Stefan Sharkansky and the (un)SoundPolitics crowd, and while she ultimately won at the polls and won in the courts, she lost in the court of public opinion.  So had Dino Rossi won this rematch, largely on the strength of the lies spread during the election contest, Stefan would have won and I would have lost.

Yeah, I know… I’ve once again personalized an election, but hell, if that’s what it takes to motivate me, that’s my business.  I’ll post some more cogent commentary tommorrow, but for the moment all I know is that I kicked Stefan’s ass, and that’s a sweet victory in itself.

Get used to it.

It’s over.  CA, OR and WA alone take Obama to 277.

“President Barack Obama.” Get used to it, righties.

Obama is leading McCain 175 electoral votes to 70.  And McCain’s home state of Arizona is “too close to call.”  Kick ass.

I know it’s early, but so far McCain is kicking Obama’s ass, 16 electoral votes to 3.  It’s a landslide.

UPDATE:
Oops.. spoke too soon.  A bunch of polls just closed, and now Obama leads 77 to 34.  What a relief.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
We’re watching CNN, but MSNBC has called Pennsylvania for Obama, which really puts a knife through McCain’s electoral strategy.

That said, the early exit polls that seem to be making the rounds have Obama up 4 in PA, up 2 in Virginia, up 1 in Florida and Ohio, and down 2 in North Carolina.  It’s pretty meaningless, yes, but there’s really not much else to report right now, so what the hell.

FYI, I’ll start blogging live from the Montlake Ale House at around 4PM.

An anti-Gregoire email has been making the rounds since the weekend, and has apparently gone viral in the agricultural community.  The email falsely characterizes the governor’s record on water issues, and touts an anti-Gregoire rally that never happened.

Farmers Rally in Yakima Against Governor Christine Gregoire

YAKIMA, WA – Over 100 Farm Bureau members braved strong winds and heavy rains to hold a rally in Yakima on November 1st to protest against Governor Christine Gregoire and her lack of support and action in building water reservoirs in Eastern Washington during her first term in office.

In particular, the Farm Bureau members at the rally expressed strong dissatisfaction at Governor Gregoire for her lack of leadership on several issues…

[…] During the rally, the Farm Bureau members chanted “Jay Manning must go!” in reference to Department of Ecology Director Jay Manning.

Nearly all of the farmers at the rally indicated that they would now be supporting Gubernatorial Candidate Dino Rossi because of the lack of action that Governor Gregoire and Ecology Director Jay Manning have shown in regards to building water reservoirs in Eastern Washington.

The email even includes pictures, presumably taken at the rally:

Only problem is, the rally never happened.  The image on the right is cropped from a farm rally in New Jersey, while the image on the left is cropped from a milk protest in Germany.

Dino Rossi couldn’t actually generate much support from farmers in central Washington, so he had to fabricate it.  Pathetic.

Sandeep Kaushik, Darcy Burner’s communications director, was rushed to the emergency room this morning with what turned out to be a sizeable kidney stone… a non-life threatening, yet extremely painful condition.  His primary responsibility being interacting with our local media, Sandeep has perhaps the most stressful job in the Burner campaign, and I suppose this is what comes from a steady diet of cigarettes and Maker’s Mark.

Of course, as far as the ill health effects of stressful campaign work goes, I suppose it could be worse.

Get well soon, Sandeep, and remember, like the election, this too shall pass.

I always vote at the polls around 9AM, so I have a sense of relative turnout, and this was the busiest I have ever seen my polling place.

Vote.  Vote, dammit. Vote.

Election winners like to talk about something called “the will of the people,” but what we’re really talking about here is “the will of the people who actually showed up to vote that day.”  And since there are more of us than there are of them, it should be our will that is expressed today… that is, if we all actually bother to vote.

Let’s be clear: study after study shows that Democrats almost always benefit from high turnout while Republicans benefit from low turnout.  They don’t want you to vote; that has always been their strategy.  Don’t let it be a winning strategy.

If Democrats turn out in equal or greater strength than Republicans today, Gov. Gregoire and Darcy Burner will cruise to victory.  If we stay home, the Republicans will win.  It’s as simple as that.

And at the presidential level, don’t be fooled into complacency by Barack Obama’s imminent victory, for the battle to discredit his administration has already begun.  Obama is going to need a huge electoral mandate if he’s to have a hope of turning our nation around, and so every vote counts… even those here in a West Coast state he will surely win, and hours after the East Coast declares him the presumptive president-elect.

So vote, dammit, vote.  Or shut up and deal with the consequences.

FIND YOUR POLLING PLACE:  KING | PIERCE

WA STATE PROGRESSIVE VOTERS GUIDE

NOTE:
The Pierce County polling place finder has been down intermittently.  You can find a list of polling places here.

Joan is spending the final few days of the campaign with Darcy, and apparently, she has a camera.

In their headlong race to the bottom, which will the Seattle Times shed faster?

Sad.  I can only imagine how much it would have meant to her and Obama for her to have lived to see her grandson elected president.

It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer. She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility. She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances. She was proud of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and left this world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure.

No doubt the hard core righties will call it a pre-election day stunt.

Obama wins, Stefan does not stop by DL to share a pitcher with me.

A couple weeks ago it appeared Darcy Burner might be cruising to victory.  A number of polls showed her with a small but substantive lead amongst all voters, and a comfortable lead with those who had already cast their ballots.  And then the Seattle Times decided to step in and play kingmaker.

No doubt Dave Reichert’s bullshit “Harvard Hoax” ad, propped up by hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal loans from his media buyer, is having an effect—Darcy’s campaign has received a number of calls from confused voters asking if Darcy actually graduated from Harvard, or even has a college degree at all.  The Times and their collaborators on talk radio took confusion over the unusual wording of Harvard degrees—essentially a niggling complaint over a lack of specificity—and knowingly gave Reichert the ammunition to lie to voters about Darcy’s extraordinary education.  And it may be working.

Essentially, if Dave Reichert wins this election, it will be a huge victory for the Seattle Times and the power of the corporate media to manipulate public opinion, and a devastating loss for those of us in the netroots who have put so much time, energy and passion into electing a qualified and competent representative in WA-08.

Please don’t let that happen.

Darcy needs our help now more than ever, and it’s time for us to leave everything on the table.  The campaign is launching a new ad today, refuting Reichert’s lies, and she needs to put every cent she can behind it to set the record straight with confused voters.  But unlike Reichert, Darcy has to pay as she goes, so if you haven’t already given everything you can, please go to Darcy’s website and contribute now.

And if you have more time than money, you can still contribute to Darcy’s campaign by volunteering today and tomorrow, knocking on doors, making phone calls, and helping with her Get Out The Vote efforts.

For the third election in a row, and with the tacit cooperation of the press, Dave Reichert is closing out his campaign by smearing his opponent.  It is time to show that people power can trump the entrenched interests of our state’s media-political complex.