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More crackerjack reporting from the Seattle Times:

Burner kicked off her campaign in May by publishing a plan to end the war in Iraq.

In fact, Darcy kicked off her campaign the previous year, and the Responsible Plan was actually published in March. Heffter and the Times may not have been paying any attention to Darcy before May of 2008, but that doesn’t mean her campaign didn’t exist.

Geez… if the Times can’t get simple things right, like, you know, undisputed facts, then how can we trust their reporting on anything?

UPDATE:
In the comment thread, Daniels asks if Heffter is “lying.”  Hmm.  I dunno… maybe it’s just an exaggeration?

(See the last sentence of this post.)

Rummaging through the CNN exit poll results for the gubernatorial race, which starts here, some folks might be interested how many of those vaunted Obama-Rossi voters there really were. (It’s on page three.) In this poll, the answer is 14% of Obama voters supported Rossi. Six percent of McCain voters supported Gregoire.

So now you know.

Late word as I’m writing this post–AP is reporting Rossi will concede at 11:30 AM.

UPDATE (-GOLDY):
No word yet on whether Rossi plans to concede the 2004 election or 2008.

Yesterday, we won nearly every race in which I was emotionally invested… the governor’s race, the statewide ballot measures, most likely Peter Goldmark, and of course, the White House.  Everything except for Darcy Burner in Washington’s 8th Congressional District.

At this point Darcy is trailing Reichert by less than one percent of the vote, but there are tons of ballots left to count, so I really can’t predict this one way or the other.  What seems clear is that Darcy did very well with the early absentees, and Reichert did very well with poll voters.  That shows a clear trend in Reichert’s favor that we can mostly attribute to the rank partisan work of the Seattle Times and their decision to assist Reichert in smearing Darcy’s educational record during the final weeks of the campaign.  And that’s simply pathetic.

That said, both camps should be very nervous right now.  Later today, and possibly tomorrow, after more early absentees are counted, Darcy will likely regain the lead… and then over the next few days, as the late absentees are added to the tally, that lead will likely slowly ebb away.  To what degree either of these predictions hold true, if at all, depends on turnout and the partisan composition of yesterday’s electorate, neither of which we know enough about yet from the ballots that have been counted in the district thus far.

What I can say in that regard is that looking at the governor’s race the statewide electorate appears to have trended at least somewhat more Democratic than the pollsters had predicted.  And that gives me reason for hope.

As Republicans survey the smoldering wreckage of the party of Lincoln and the inevitable reassessment occurs, here’s some free advice for them: stop lying about everything.

I don’t mean spinning and fudging and trying to put a good face on your policy positions. I mean stop lying as a first, middle and last resort about every last damn thing under the sun.

If you think a specific tax proposal is a bad idea, just explain why, don’t paint anyone and everything who might think it is a good idea as a communist. Don’t call birth control abortion. Don’t paint opponents as lovers of sex offenders. If your opposition is pointing out that the Constitution needs to be upheld, don’t call them terrorist sympathizers. If Americans are concerned about the economy, don’t try to blame people who were in office 30 years ago.

Stop lying. If you can. If you can’t, you will never come back as a meaningful political party.

So I’m here at the Bellevue Westin, waiting for King County to actually report some results, and I read on the Seattle Times front page that “Burner goes home, volunteers wait.”  Which was a bit of a surprise to me, as she’s sitting right behind me:

Huh.  Unless Darcy actually lives at the Westin, I think the Times got this story wrong.

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.

Hmm, it seems Darcy Burner is ahead of incumbent Republican Dave Reichert 53.13% to 46.87% as of 10:31 pm.

Burner leads in the “fake America” King County portion of the district, while Reichert holds a lead in the smaller but much more “real America” Pierce County portion.

So at 10:20 pm, the official Secretary of State election web site has Gov. Chris Gregoire ahead of challenger Dino Rossi by 51.75% to 48.25%. You can track things at the vote.wa.gov website yourself if you wish.

I’ve just returned from the Democratic Party ballroom at the Vancouver Hilton, a festive and at times weepy scene. The crowd roared when Obama was declared the winner, and watched his speech with rapt attention. People I didn’t know were hugging me.

One kind of strange thing was that the Republicans were in a nearby ballroom, and I noticed several police officers standing in the corridor in between. Fortunately I saw no signs of Republican depravity that would necessitate police involvement.

A couple of 17th LD Legislative races in Clark County bear mentioning. In the race to succeed disgraced Republican Jim Dunn, R-Vancouver, who was stripped of his committee assignments by Republican leadership after making a denigrating remark to a staffer, Democrat Tim Probst is cruising to an easy victory with nearly 57% of the vote. So add one for Frank Chopp’s uber-majority.

In a nail-biter, Democratic challenger David Carrier is ahead of incumbent Republican state senator Don Benton by a scant 50.11% to 49.78%. That’s a tough lead to hold on to if the daily totals break for Republicans, as they tend to do, but Carrier is still in contention and is to be commended as a newcomer for his fine effort. It’s not over and I sure hope Carrier hangs on somehow.

Get used to it.

Brian Baird BFF Chris Shays loses to new and better Democrat Jim Himes.

No more “bi-partisan” trips to Iraq.

Sad.

“George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Kanye West, Sept. 2005

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.