So, Dave Reichert won. This is good. Now would anyone be surprised the netroots isn't taking the loss with much humility or class?
Hey, stop laughing.
In all seriousness, I do think it is important to take defeats on the chin as well as one celebrates hard-earned victories. Accordingly, in theory one would hope for more than the responses to Burner's concession from Horse's Ass, the NW Progressive Blog, and Daniel Kirkdorffer. Their tone can be summarized as "yes, but...", as in, "Yes, Darcy Burner lost, but here's why you shouldn't pay attention to that because Dave Reichert tricked the voters..." (with the exception of Goldy who takes it farther, essentially saying "I should have been more of an ass." Right).
Ok, fine. They're grumpy, I know that feeling after last Tuesday. But let's for a minute engage in some rationale discourse about this recently concluded election season. Darcy Burner lost despite the aid of a mighty Democratic wave, while running a well-funded campaign (my compliments to her and her campaign team on that front, that was a lot of coin) against a Republican freshman incumbent in a district tilting increasingly Democratic. Meanwhile, Peter Goldmark was beaten soundly as well, despite the fervor of the netroots, a reasonably funded campaign, and likely being the best fit for that district Democrats could have hoped to find...all that and running in a Democratic year to boot. These were the two pillars of the local netroots movement, well them and Ned Lamont. They lost.
Now to be fair, let me demonstrate a little of the candor I was perhaps naively hoping for from the other side:
Mike McGavick got crushed. He got hammered, whipped, creamed, taken to the woodshed. Pick your cliche, that election was not a pretty sight; in a race many Republicans had reasonable hopes for heading into the fall. Meanwhile, Republicans were shellacked in key Legislative races. It was embarrassing, there's no other way to put it. And to put the icing on the cake, conservatives lost every initiative on the ballot [Side note: to be fair, I think liberal bloggers are making to much of those initiative "victories" for their side. A state-level estate tax doesn't exactly keep most Republicans up at night, and was a dead-initiative-walking based on the effective ads from the "no" campaign that screamed "if you vote for this initiative, you'll take away this child's education." Meanwhile, Republicans were themselves divided over I-933, another hopeless issue to put on the ballot in this state. Lastly, the "clean energy" initiative was pretty darn boring, with neither side being able to prove it would have any real impact either way. These are not measures one should prudently use as a yardstick for either the liberal or the conservative cause].
There you have it. Republicans took a beating on Election Day, while Burner and Goldmark both lost. I tip my hat to the netroots for their enthusiasm, and their ability to focus campaign contributions and volunteers to their preferred locations. But, I still don't think they were as influential as they claim. The scope of McGavick's loss is way beyond the influence of any one person, group or event. Meanwhile, the Legislative defeats were a down-ballot function of an overall Democratic wave and some notable Republican flaws (which I will get to at a later date). I would hardly, for example, call either Chris Marr in the 6th LD or Steve Hobbs in the 44th LD followers of the netroots banner.
In the end though, elections happen, sometimes we like the results, sometimes we don't. But we shouldn't be afraid to tell it like it is, take stock, and go from there with some degree of intellectual seriousness.
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Footnote: Andrew at NPI seems bothered at some shots at him I took during the campaign season, at posts here and here where I referred to him as "the resident naif of the local blogosphere," and then augmented the title to "petulant resident naif." Andrew says in his latest post I'm calling him "inexperienced." No, actually.
Naif means "a naive or inexperienced person." If I wanted to say Andrew was inexperienced I would have said so. I meant the "naive" part of the "naive or inexperienced" definition. One can have experience in politics, which Andrew obviously does, but still be naive. That is what I think he is. He may very well be a nice fellow, a real charmer perhaps. We even find ourselves not wildly far apart in our criticism of Tim Eyman and our support for Sound Transit (though we would no doubt disagree on certain particulars of both matters). Yet on the whole I find his political analysis and ideological reasoning to be wrong, as I do with most self-ascribed liberals and progressives; just like he no doubt finds my political thinking, and that of my fellow conservatives, appalling.
I think we should be able to be adults about that, albeit with sharp tongues expressed in the pixels of the blogosphere. It means we disagree, not that we think people on other side are inherently bad. I don't think liberals are evil, just wrong. Likewise, I would hope Andrew, and others like him, recognize conservatives aren't evil either, even if liberals think we're wrong. That's part of the charm of our democracy, or at least it should. I don't bemoan it, and neither should Andrew. Frankly, I think there should be more moments like this in our heated political discourse. The next pitcher is on me.
UPDATE: Commenter "me" says the 8th CD was a "safe seat;" a meme I recall hearing before from some on the left. Reasonable analysis doesn't support that conclusion.
Even though the district had always elected a Republican to Congress it had begun to vote consistently Democratic in major statewide races. Moreover, Reichert had a highly competitive election in 2004. Then this year he was running as a freshman incumbent, in a district increasingly trending against Republicans, in the President's 6th year in office, when President's typically lose House seats of their own party. These are all ingredients that say the seat was not "safe," and that generic expectations going into the campaign season, even before any Democrat declared for the seat, would be that the race would be a pickoff opportunity.
Republicans did have to spend a lot defending Reichert's seat, but smart people should have expected that starting shortly after the 2004 Election. Did the vigor of Burner's challenge make them spend more than they expected? Probably. Likewise, Rahm Emmanuel and other Democratic campaign gurus would likely grimace if you showed them the final price tag for this losing race a year ago, covering expenditures by Burner and the DCCC.
The notion that this was a "safe" seat or that Republicans weren't expecting to have to expend serious resources to defend it is flawed political thinking.
Posted by Eric Earling at November 14, 2006 09:50 PM | Email ThisFrankly, I think it's impossible for Golddstein to show humility. His writing makes it pretty obvious that he lacks the shame gene.
Posted by: Jeff B. on November 14, 2006 09:57 PMI do think lie-ber-alls are evil. They are.
Posted by: pbj on November 14, 2006 10:02 PMIf anyone on the political right had shown any of this during the last dozen years, we liberals might take it seriously. Anyone who cares can revisit what Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh said about their political opponents back then. Or, they can listen to President Bush tell red-state audiences that voting for liberals aids terrorists. (That was two weeks ago.) This blog has spent most of the past two years making slanderous claims against local officials, even after a Republican judge in a Republican county flatly rejected every such claim put before his court. You are the very last persons eligible for making such a lecture, and the laughter that you hear comes from us liberals for that reason.
By the way, it's going to get a lot worse for the political right. Jack Abramoff claimed to have bribed the entire House leadership, and they all got re-elected. (Sadly, Rep. Reichert will not again entertain us by voting for Speaker Hastert. Not because Rep. Reichert has learned anything about character and integrity, but because Speaker Hastert will not even stand for re-election.) As they're dragged out of our House in chains, to join Robert Ney at Club Fed, their empty seats will be filled by appointments-- made, for the most part, by Democratic governors.
Meanwhile, our House will issue subpoenas to the White House. Not about the trivialities which Rep. Boehner inquired of President Clinton, but about such matters as where the $8.8B missing from Iraq went, and why Karl Rove still receives a salary from us taxpayers. It's going to be a long, agonizing slog for anyone foolish enough to believe that this Congress or Administration did anything positive. We liberals have years of encrusted filth and corruption to clean from our civic institutions, and we're not happy at what has been done to our once-proud country. If anyone on the right thinks it has a monopoly on righteous anger, the next two years will truly shock and awe.
Posted by: Paddy Mac on November 14, 2006 10:08 PMSomething about pots and kettles... now what was it....
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskold on November 14, 2006 10:15 PMSomething about pots and kettles... now what was it....
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskold on November 14, 2006 10:15 PMHad you actually READ, you would have known that goldy SHARED a pitcher with Stefan (didn't Stefan buy??) and the author of this thread is ...drumroll please... taaa dum... ERIC.
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskold on November 14, 2006 10:29 PMIt's entertaining to watch the left act pious.
Posted by: Jeff B. on November 14, 2006 10:43 PMGladly. Throw every corrupt one in jail. If you want to help retire Rep. Jefferson, you have your chance: he has to run in a special election now. DailyKos is collecting money for his opponent, so if you really care about that, please put your money where your mouth is. (I certainly will.)
By the way, the infamous "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska does not lead "nowhere". It goes to a sparsely-populated island where Sen. Stevens owns land. Will you help us drive him from power, or will you sit on your hands whilst whining about liberal corruption? (Speaker Hastert has a similar piece of land, near a highway that he ordered built.) If this Congress really did see such corruption as normal, we'll have a lot more work to do, and while we won't enjoy doing it, at least we will do it. Too bad that every right-wing "leader" from Gringrich onwards had no moral compass, or our country might not have fallen so far, so fast.
As for the decorated Marine, I don't know to what your comment refers.
Posted by: Paddy Mac on November 14, 2006 10:48 PMAs for Abscam, a recent book by George Crile, a producer for CBS's "60 Minutes," provides damning evidence that Mr. Murtha escaped severe punishment for his role in the scandal only because then-Speaker Tip O'Neill arranged for the House Ethics Committee to drop the charges, over the objections of the committee's outside prosecutor. The prosecutor quickly resigned in protest.
Outside observers are equally aghast that Mr. Murtha could win tomorrow's election. Thomas Mann, a Brookings Institution scholar who is co-author of "The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track," told the Los Angeles Times that "John Murtha is not the right poster child" for a Democratic House that says it wants to sweep away corruption.
Melanie Sloan, the liberal head of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, was cheered on by Democrats six weeks ago when she helped reveal the Mark Foley scandal. Now she says that "Ms. Pelosi"s endorsement of Rep. Murtha, one of the most unethical members of Congress, show that she may have prioritized ethics reform merely to win votes with no real commitment to changing the culture of corruption."
Former members are also speaking out. Chris Bell, a former Democratic House member from Texas who was his party's unsuccessful nominee for governor this year, told the Washington Post that Mr. Murtha was instrumental in making Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee. Mr. Bell says Reps. Mollohan and Murtha both helped to slow ethics reform to a crawl for much of the last two years. This spring, Mr. Mollohan was forced to step down from his Ethics Committee position after The Wall Street Journal reported that he had underreported personal assets and steered earmarks to various West Virginia entities founded or controlled by his close political allies.
Mr. Murtha has also been front and center in the controversy over earmarks, the individual portions of pork members of Congress often secretly secure for their districts or favored constituents. Mr. Murtha is the ranking Democratic member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and for the past three years has been the House's top recipient of defense industry cash. Few in Washington are surprised that his lobbyist brother, Robert "Kit" Murtha, was until his retirement this summer an enormously successful "earmark specialist" for the Beltway firm KSA Consulting. In recent years, Kit Murtha brought in a mother lode of earmarks for at least 16 defense manufacturers with business before the Appropriations Committee.
Last year, the Los Angeles Times reported that "most of KSA's defense contractor clients hired the firm in hopes of securing funding from Rep. Murtha's subcommittee, according to lobbying records and interviews. And most retained the firm after Kit Murtha became a senior partner in 2002." Kit Murtha told the Times that he saw Rep. Murtha only infrequently, but said the congressman knew he was a KSA lobbyist. "I don't think that influences him," Kit said of his brother. "I certainly would hope not."
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskold on November 14, 2006 11:31 PMTo me that is a 'read my lips' gaffe.
Posted by: swatter on November 15, 2006 07:06 AMAbramoff reveals his dealings with Democrat senators, particularly Harry Reid. Reid's land deals are shown to be corrupt, and he is forced to resign his position. The Republican Governor of Nevada appoints a Republican to replace him.
With the Senate at 50-50, Lieberman goes Republican.
Posted by: Janet S on November 15, 2006 08:13 AMThat's just plain stupid and an ineffective campaign strategy. That one change alone and she would have won the race. That's why this is not a narrow win for Republicans, but a big loss for Democrats. Who's kidding anyone, this is not a Red area. Even if there are still some vestiges of Red in the 8th, the western half of this state is trending towards progressive lunacy. But that's the silver lining. Lunacy doesn't always win elections.
Maybe its got something to do with the fact that David Goldstein's take away lesson is "Don’t be afraid to go medieval on a candidate’s ass, if that’s what it takes to win."
Goldstein whines that given the overall Blue trend in WA, we've got nothing to celebrate. But, if voters in an overwhelmingly Blue state are smart enough to sniff out that kind of comment as over-the-top unhingedness that is dangerous to the quality and character of our representation, then that is indeed something to celebrate. It's one thing to be represented by those with left leaning ideas, and altogether another to be represented by those who view elections as Medieval battles.
Quite chivalrous Pierce County. Thanks for re-eelcting sanity!
Posted by: Jeff B. on November 15, 2006 10:10 AMwhile we whip out endless subpoenas and fight among ourselves, the enemy will creep up to our door and set off their version of strap-on subpoenas that require you to report to Heaven.
investigations? let's start with Pelosi's family members' lobbying as with Murtha's family lobbying. fair is fair. and didn't Hastings get censured or something? poster boy for ethics, eh?
saloon door swings both ways, folks.
Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on November 15, 2006 11:21 AMIn the meantime, the Repubs had better not lay down, stay out of touch, show no passion and lack testosterone - that is a recipe for defeat in 2008.
Posted by: KS on November 15, 2006 12:54 PMWell, Rep. Murtha is one of the most right-wing Members of the incoming majority, so his departure will not cause much pain here in Seattle. (You gotta love those right-wing, "nutroot"-wanna-bees, who raised money for his opponent. They didn't notice that we netroots chose our opponents with some care.)
"So, Dave Reichert won. This is good."
How does the 8th district, or Washington state, benefit from having the least senior Member of the minority party represent it, when it almost had a rising star of the new majority? How does the United States benefit from having a loyal follower of Rep. Boehner still voting in our Congress? Please explain.
Wow, that's the very first accusation of stupidity I've ever read against Jack Abramoff. Do you really think he spent his bribe money on powerless Members of the minority? Next you'll accuse him of having bribed Rep. Reichert, whose (admitted) subservience to Speaker Hastert and Rep. Boehner meant he'd always do as they told him. Abramoff himself claimed that he hoped to drive liberals from power forever-- but he secretly gave them money? He was arrogant, he was corrupting, he was the top-ranked Republican lobbyist, and he was a felon. He was not stupid.
Posted by: Paddy Mac on November 15, 2006 05:57 PMThe culture of corruption continues !
Posted by: KS on November 15, 2006 06:41 PMWhere is this "well-documented"? In the same place where REPRESENTATIVE Rostenkowsi, former Chair of the HOUSE Ways and Means Committee, was listed? If Reid's a crook, then to jail with him, but not on say-so of this quality. What, do you people think this is going to look like Whitewater, with fools like Boehner issuing subpoenas for White House banquet details? The Coalition Provisional Authority hired 25-year-olds from the Heritage Foundation, and put them in charge of rebuilding Iraq. $8.8 billion went missing, and Iraqis now have less electrical power and clean water than they did under Saddam. And that's just the stuff we know about right now. After a year of these investigations, we'll have groups with names like "Republicans for Impeachment", desperate to have him gone before he contributes to another Republican-free freshman class in the Congress.
Posted by: Paddy Mac on November 15, 2006 07:59 PMDid you read any of the preceding posts? If you want anger and hyperbole, stick to your loony right-wing websites and talk radio.
Posted by: brian on November 16, 2006 02:06 AMBut, noooooo....You have dissembled JFK's plea to say; "Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you".
Posted by: KS on November 16, 2006 01:13 PMI don't care if he is a conservative Dem. What's more important is he is ethically challenged - in other words - a f***ing crook. Maybe the Dems are getting some sense of decency by not electing him as the whip - will see...
Posted by: KS on November 16, 2006 01:18 PMYour Republicans must run the Senate much differently from the way they run our House. One of our House's Republican leaders, Rep. Ney (R-Jack Abramoff), admitted to federal felonies in open court. For the next seven weeks, he remained a Member of Congress, drawing paychecks from our taxes. The Republican Speaker of our House could have called a special session to expel Rep. Ney, but didn't. That's what the House Republicans call "ethical leadership", and it may well be part of the reason that not one new Member of Congress will be a Republican.
Posted by: Paddy Mac on November 16, 2006 07:39 PM