The Stranger speaks

Seattle's "only newspaper," The Stranger, makes its endorsements. A few highlights:

For a freshman in the minority party, Cantwell's record of achievement is jaw dropping: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge filibuster; extending the federal tax deduction for Washington's regressive sales tax; protecting Snohomish ratepayers from Enron; keeping oil-tanker traffic out of the Puget Sound; extending low-income health-care coverage; passing identify-theft protection; and helping pass campaign-finance reform.

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Seattle prepster McGavick is a conservative hack—he came up through Slade Gorton's political machine, worked as an insurance-industry lobbyist, and at Safeco he used controversial tactics to bully minorities and low-income customers out of coverage.

The Election Control Board is on fire. Perhaps literally, you don't know what the heck goes on in that place. But they continue:

Vote for Darcy Burner.

Democrats need only 15 seats to take the majority in the House, and current polls are showing that Democrats may pick up more than that. If they do, the President's agenda will grind to a halt—no more right-wing wacko appointees to the Supreme Court, no more cake-walk declarations of preemptive war, no more failing to heed the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

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Burner's success so far is a clear sign of Reichert's vulnerability and the public's dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, but it's also a sign of Burner's own smarts. She's introduced herself with a compelling story that plays well in the suburbs (military family, Harvard grad, Microsoft mom) and has relentlessly linked "independent" Reichert to Bush and his congressional apparatchiks—not hard to do, given Reichert's "whatever-the-president-says" position on the Iraq war, his opposition to abortion, his late-blooming acceptance (like, two weeks ago) of the reality of global warming, and his support of the Bush tax cuts.

I could go on, but that would be wrong, and maybe illegal, and I am not going to get Dan Savage mad at me. He ain't naming nothin' after me, no way.

Seriously, just go read what the Election Control Board has to say.