Open Left - David Reichert

Bad News in WA-08

Matt Stoller — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:33:49 GMT

Reichert has taken a 5000 vote lead, and is even up in King County, which was supposed to be Darcy's base. There are still votes to count, and we have no idea which votes, so it's possible that there are some very pro-Darcy blocs yet to be tallied. Each batch seems to be getting worse for Burner's totals and better for Reichert.

Damn this one hurts.

WA-08: "Both Sides Should Be Very Nervous"

Matt Stoller — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:57:40 GMT

Darcy is currently down by around 1400 votes, around 1%, with what looks like about a third of the vote counted. It's impossible to tell what's going to happen because the uncounted and counted votes are in clumps with distinct partisan leanings. That is, the counted votes are not representative of what the uncounted votes will look like. David Goldstein has the summary of what's going on.

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.

There's limited context around the data we have so far, and the elongated vote-counting is very frustrating. But you can read whatever you want into the data, since the poll voters skew for Reichert and they have been counted, and the early absentees skew for Darcy, and some of them have been counted. The big clump of votes in the middle is the question.

Darcy Up 13 point in King County

Matt Stoller — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 04:23:28 GMT

King County results site is here. Pierce County results site is here. Pierce is far more Republican and has not reported any results. King is Darcy's base and the early votes are her voters.

Dave Reichert
16396
43.15%
Darcy Burner
21594
56.83%

The next drop of voters should be poll-voters, and will probably eliminate her lead entirely.

Darcy Burner Expectations: We Won't Know Tonight

Matt Stoller — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:36:38 GMT

I think this race is going to be very, very close. Though Obama is running far ahead of McCain in this district, if you've been following this site then you've been aware of the aggressive and effective campaign to delegitimize Darcy as both a creature of the netroots and an untrustworthy liar and pump up Reichert as a 'moderate' good guy. Both concepts are absurd, but they have taken hold in certain parts of the district. Reichert, the NRCC, and centrist activist Emily Heffter of the Seattle Times have been able to plant the seeds of mistrust among voters, and we'll see tonight just how much they are going to reap. What does that mean?

Well, it's going to be tight. Additionally, King County's election processes are unbelievably dysfunctional. The county, which is both Darcy's base and provides the bulk of the vote for the district, will count only around 40% of the ballots by the end of the day. By Friday, only about 70% of the ballots should be counted in King County, with the more conservative Pierce County having tallied up its voting totals much earlier. In both counties, the poll votes will be counted today, but most of the district votes by absentee, and the nature of the voting blocs are different depending on when you vote. Like most Democrats around the country, Darcy will have a lead among early voters, but she will probably lose the poll vote that is the first bit to be counted. So she'll wind up behind tonight, even if she's going to ultimately win the seat.
A a certain thresholds, there will be a hand or machine recount, so this race could go on for weeks. My hope is that Darcy puts it away tonight, but I don't think that's very likely. Here's Darcy herself on Dailykos:

I don't know whether we will know the outcome of my race tonight. The good news is that a huge number of people voted early by mail, and the enthusiasm was on our side. The bad news is that both King and Pierce Counties will be counting votes very, very slowly. We're currently expecting to be behind Congressman Reichert in the poll votes because so many of our voters voted early. And those votes of many of our most enthusiastic supporters won't be counted today; many of them won't be counted until late this week or early next week.
To be specific, we'll know the votes of the roughly 100k voters in my district who vote at the polls today, but only about 40k to 50k of the roughly 250k who voted early. Our best guess is that King and Pierce Counties will count 40k to 50k votes per day in my race, which is, obviously, another five or six days of counting.

So there we go. I know people tend to give lip service to the notion that the work doesn't stop the day after election day. In this case, that's actually very true. If the poll vote is at all close, my guess is Darcy takes the seat. If not, hold on to your hats, there's counting to do.

Donor Match on Better Democrats: Two Final Days

Matt Stoller — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:29:52 GMT

Ok, so the big dollar donor match I announced earlier happened with the first $5k, and that money is being moved to candidates as we speak. Congrats, you guys unlocked a bunch of money to great Democratic women. But there's still some money left on the table, since we haven't yet hit $15k that the donors promised to match. This money will be useful for the campaigns; there are last minute cable and TV buys happening and field programs, so if you can put something in, your donations will be doubled.

You can give here. Nearly every woman on the list is in a tough fight, a close fight, and your bit of cash could possibly tip the scales.

Local Media Continues to Pound Darcy Burner

Matt Stoller — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:56:01 GMT

Local Glenn Beck ripoff Ken Schram insults breast-feeding mother.

In most of the country, the wave is breaking hard against Republicans, but in Seattle, the local media, which I'm more and more convinced is and has always been nothing more than a conservative interest group (as Upton Sinclair wrote as far back as 1919), is trying its best keep Republican Dave Reichert in Congress. The Seattle PI, the 'liberal' newspaper in town, came out with its puff piece about Reichert, Reichert seasoned by 4 years in office. Obviously, the Seattle Times used its position to issue a partisan attack on Burner by exploiting a bureaucratic oddity of Harvard. Both papers are collapsing in readership and local political reporting has been decimated by a wave of buyouts and layoffs, but they are still quite powerful.

Reichert is all over TV calling Burner a liar and a fraud using the money from his illegal loan from Media Plus, and local TV personality Ken Schram, a shock jock style reactionary who reminds me of a less intelligent blue state Glen Beck (Schram's compared breast-feeding in public to public urination and embarrassed women who breast feed, leading to a breast feeding rally), spent a few minutes on local TV awarding Darcy a 'Schrammie' for lying about her degree on KOMO. KOMO is one of the stations happily extending credit to Reichert's media buyer. Schram's segment is here, and boy is it ugly. He followed up with a radio show where he bullied and condescended to Darcy. As a quick example, on the show, Schram often snidely said 'Darcy, Darcy, Darcy,', and then wondered why she didn't get a replacement degree after her house burned down. She points out she is running for Congress, replacing everything she owns, Harvard is a huge bureaucracy, and she got the ex-Dean of Harvard to validate her on video, and Schram just continues to call her evasive.

The local Republican press is just jumping all over it. Here's the Bellevue Reporter:

Democrat Darcy Burner is campaigning like she's running against George W. Bush. But she isn't. Congressman Dave Reichert is an independent-minded moderate with strong environmental credentials. That is why both the Seattle Times and the PI, neither of which likes Bush, have endorsed Reichert.
Another reason to support Reichert is that it's not clear who Burner really intends to represent. Reichert believes he's there to support the people back home, not parties and interest groups. But Burner's major constituency seems to be the national network of "netroots" activists who are both liberal and archly partisan. That might fly in Seattle. It shouldn't fly here.
Then there's the issue of character. Reichert has a reputation for being honest and up-front. But twice now, Burner has been caught inflating her job credentials. Two years ago, her campaign misrepresented her status at Microsoft, where she was just a middle manager. And this year she told several audiences that she had an Economics degree from Harvard. No she doesn't, and when the Seattle Times caught her, Burner's instinctive reaction was to attack Republicans for playing "stupid semantic games." That tone - strident, aggressive, diversionary - is classic Darcy Burner. The numbers in this race are close, but they shouldn't be. Dave Reichert by a mile.

This whole attack by the local media and Republican establishment is so egregious that it's comforting to watch the NRCC's latest criticism, a release of this video in which Darcy calls John McCain a 'warmonger'.

Oh, and Reichert is getting obvious illegal donations at this point, a $4000 donation which busts the $2300 cap. No worries, though, he's a Republican and that's fine.

Canvassing and Tagging Along: Why Trust in Politicians Matters

Matt Stoller — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:47:07 GMT

Over the past few days, the major event in the ccampaign has been Seattle Times reporter Emily Heffter's hit piece on Darcy about her degree (for more on Heffter's approach to journalism, read this comment). Reichert is up on TV with this ad, and with the illegal contribution from Media Plus, he has substantial rotation on TV behind the allegation. Burner's response from former Harvard Dean Harry Lewis is also up.

I had hoped to talk to voters and find out how the attack was resonating,so I went out canvassing today. Unfortunately, nearly every knock on a door elicited no response. The weather's beautiful so people aren't home, and when someone's not home, you leave some lit squeezed in between their door knob and hope they take a glance at it and remember to vote. This is especially true with transient rental communities, where low probability voters reside. It's not clear how the race is shaping up now, with Darcy narrowly ahead in the polls but this last minute smear up on TV.

In the slideshow above, you'll see pictures from a variety of events, including a local school festival celebrating cultures from around the world (represented by their student body, whose parents immigrated from all over the world), a variety of senior centers, and a sustainability fair at a local community college.
The most revealing conversation was with a retired machinist, an immigrant from Taiwan hanging out at one of the senior centers we visited. His property taxes, he complains, have doubled since 2004, and he's incredibly angry at Governor Gregoire. He's not upset that his taxes have gone up, mind you, just that the tax rate has stayed the same even as the assessment value has increased. Property values are falling, but his property is assessed at a higher and higher value, and he's unable to dispute the state on that matter. He feels cheated, and so he doesn't like politicians.

I've seen this attitude in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and now Washington state. People don't like property taxes because they seem arbitrary and unfair, but they aren't willing to shift to an income tax basis even when they want a different tax system because they don't believe the politicians who keep raising their property taxes will implement a new tax properly. At heart, this is a problem with trust in government, and not that government is using money inefficiently. No one is clearly explaining the situation in a trustworthy and clear manner and discussing the trade-offs involved.

As property values deflate all over the country, getting the Federal government to help move the states away from property taxes should be a key goal, or states and municipalities will simply be unable to govern.

Local Media, Darcy Burner and the War over the Obama Franchise

Matt Stoller — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 01:26:53 GMT

One part of the story in Washington's eighth district I haven't touched on yet was Darcy's role in a major dispute over local media consolidation between the two papers here - the Seattle Times and the Seattle PI. In 2007, she co-chaired something called the Committee for a Two Newspaper town, which ultimately forced the owners of the Seattle Times to pay out $24M and keep the Seattle PI in business. I'll have more on that fight below, because it segues nicely into the overall conflict between the two wings of the Obama power structure - the center right moderates and the populist left progressives.

Buried in the contours of the massive shift in politics we're seeing with the collapse of the conservative movement is a burgeoning fight between center-right establishment, both locally and nationally, and populist progressives. The McCain campaign is falling apart, and the far right is basically playing for 2012, positioning that race as Palin versus Romney and grooming a new generation of right-wing populist Republicans to come at Democrats in 2010. As Sirota shows, right-wing Villagers are freaking out, while the Chris Matthews of the world are mocking McCain/Palin the way they used to call John Edwards gay. It's a stunning reversal. And it's happening on a local level as well, with newspaper endorsements all over the country - even conservative newspapers - going for Obama.
But as I've noted, these forces are organizing themselves to undercut progressives and are seeking to position Obama as a moderate, like Clinton. In Seattle, I'm seeing this play out as a vicious media hit on Burner, a cooperative set of attacks by local Democratic and Republican political consultants (who both served as sources for this Time magazine piece by Amy Sullivan) and the Seattle Times.

The structure here is similar to what you see in DC and around the country. As reported by Josh Feit in the Stranger, some of the political consultants are bought off by AT&T and co, and even some of the 'liberal' ones work for both sides, as Erica C. Barnett showed in her reporting. Burner, who did not come out of this establishment, defeated a Blue Dog Democrat in the primary, using her support from the netroots to first clear the field (of Rodney Tom, a local developer who chose to drop out and endorse Burner) and then win the primary. This primary candidate, Jim Vaughn, then turned around and endorsed Reichert, realizing that he agrees with Reichert "on all the major issues and the only difference I could find was that I am pro choice and Dave is pro life." Vaughn lavished praise on Reichert and the Blue Dogs and noted he was "tired of going to work each day and getting taxed to death (over 50 different taxes in our state) to pay for someone to sit at home and abuse unemployment, the welfare system and worker's compensation."

The Seattle PI, the more liberal of the two major papers, decided to show its bipartisan credentials and endorse Reichert, as did the Tacoma News-Tribune and the conservative Seattle Times. Even liberal journalists like Eli Sanders of the Stranger in the alternate weekly drove an odd sort of anti-netroots conventional wisdom, choosing to overlook polling data to make an anti-Darcy case. Sanders analogized this latest fiasco over Burner's degree to the 'macaca' moment of George Allen, as if a falsified attack from a Republican is equivalent to a long legacy of racist slurs and actions revealed by a bullying comment towards an Indian-American campaign worker. The NRCC is focusing on this race, one of the few incumbents in the country they are spending money to defend, and they have even set up a phone bank in the basement in DC to make thousands of calls out here.

Burner isn't just opposing the DC establishment in terms of issues like FISA and by putting forward plans like a Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, she's also fighting through this local set of kingmakers. In 2007, she began a stint as a co-chair of The Committee for a Two-Newspaper Town, a citizens lobby (partially funded by labor) to prevent the Seattle Times from putting its competitor out of business.

In the 1980s, the Seattle Times and the Seattle PI struck a deal to combine non-news operations and split the profits in a special Joint Operating Agreement. The Times publisher, Frank Blethen, wanted to get rid of this agreement in 2003, as it would lead to the end of the Seattle PI and allow the Times to become a local monopoly. There was a four year lawsuit between the Blethen and the owner of the PI (Heart). In addition, a citizens committee emerged to fight Blethen, citing a compelling public interest to gain standing in the case and seeking to keep both papers open. The committee successful intervened in the case and Blethen cited them as a reason to settle with the PI.

The net payout from the Seattle Times to the Heart company as part of the settlement to keep the Joint Operating Agreement going was $24 million. That's $24 million that Burner, as one citizen activist among many, helped cost Blethen and the Seattle Times. As they say, don't make someone mad who buys ink by the barrel. Only, Burner ignored this rule just as she ignored the rule to be silent about a bipartisan consensus to enable illegal wiretapping, and fought successfully for a diverse media in Seattle. Now Blethen is getting his revenge via his reporter Emily Heffter's 'scoop' that Burner falsified her degree (a charge repudiated by Harvard ex-Dean Harry Lewis). This hit piece is part of a series of slanted articles going after Burner for, among other things, her association with the netroots. And the local TV stations are extending credit to Media Plus, Reichert's media buyer, who is lending money to Reichert, to let him push this charge around on TV.

The pushback from the progressive populist space has been fierce. Heffter is thoroughly embarrassed by her shoddy reporting job, the Seattle Times changed its headline (without explanation, of course), and a response from Lewis is online. Dailykos is doing its own polling and has helped raise massive sums to aid in pushback. And the volunteer operation here is stuffed to the gills, which will hopefully solidify the Obama vote behind Burner.

But what's important to understand is that the lies from Reichert are not isolated tactical events, but are laundered and pressed firmly by a whole series of interlocking Democrats, journalists, media business executives, and Republicans threatened by progressive populists like us that look to the public and not the good ole boys for legitimacy. At every step, progressive populists are going to encounter this nexus - the consultants, the journalists, the publishers, the magnates, all couched under the rubric of 'moderate' Republicans and 'conservative' or 'Blue Dog' Democrats.

The only way through this thicket is to have these fights and slash through the branches, one at a time. Backing candidates who rely on us and not the establishment network makes us stronger, and them weaker. It's not that we're giving to Burner or Grayson or Franken or anyone else, it's that we're freeing them from having to kowtow to people like Steny Hoyer, Frank Blethen, Michael Bloomberg, and their servants like reporter Emily Heffter. It's a complicated set of steps we've taken, but it's working. Obama has repudiated lobbyists in his campaign, and has acquired massive amounts of power and influence through his ability to inspire trust in the electorate. Unlike Burner, though, he did this both through the networks of the establishment and the progressive populists; he doesn't need any of us to get elected and never did, and he's shown that through his vote on FISA and his whipping for the bailout.

Obama, though, is not just a guy, he's a franchise, a network of people currying favor and looking for jobs and seeking to impose their own stamp on the world through differing ideas about how to govern. And by fighting through these thickets, by helping people like Burner and Merkley into office, we help give Obama and the people in his orbit a little bit more space to make the choice to be a progressive populist.

Harvard ex-Dean Harry Lewis Backs Burner

Matt Stoller — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:18:45 GMT

Harvard computer science professor and ex-Dean Harry Lewis went out in a big way for Darcy Burner, taping this video validating her claims about her degree. That doesn't seem to matter to the remarkably malicious media crew in Seattle, as Manuel Valdes of the AP runs uncritically with Reichert's accusations about Burner's degree, who writes that "Harvard officials say that Burner's degree doesn't "indicate anything for economics."

Apparently, ex-Dean Lewis, the official in charge of the process at the time, is not a Harvard official for the purposes of this storyline. It's important to understand the backstory here, and the cooperation between the Reichert campaign and Emily Heffter, because it's a useful illustration of this noxious ecosystem. Mike Shields, Reichert's campaign manager, emailed me the storyline his campaign is pushing: "This issue is very simple: She lied. It's devastating to her campaign, they know it, so they are trying to cover it up with a distraction." One can't really fault Shields for overtly lying; if journalists let him use lies for political advantage, he will.

What's notable is the cooperation here between GOP operatives and supposedly nonpartisan journalists. Lewis himself explains in a comment on this blog that Seattle Times reporter Emily Heffter (whose work Valdes clearly cribs) was hostile and clearly seeking a certain type of response so she could tell the story Shields fed her.

I was surprised and puzzled by the tone. It seemed a simple matter for me to verify that Darcy had an Ec specialization within her CS concentration, and as I noted above, the Registrar would not have been in a position to do that so I was glad to do it. I didn't expect that it would be the reporter's intention to try to discredit the significance of that fact, but that is how I interpreted her odd question about what that Economics specialization would qualify Darcy to do. For some reason the reporter's questions struck me as hostile, so I simply repeated myself and ended the conversation rather quickly after that. But I did explain what a specialization consisted of in terms of coursework.

Emily Heffter has a stock response she is sending to those of you who email her, a response that is as dishonest and superficial as her original reporting.

Thanks for your note. Even Darcy Burner doesn't claim that she actually has a degree in economics, dual or otherwise. I spent quite a bit of time yesterday talking to officials at Harvard about Burner's degree, and they all agreed she does not have a degree in economics. So for me, it comes down to the claim Darcy Burner made in her debates, which you can see on the video. Did she claim to have a degree in economics? Yes. Does she have one? No.
Reasonable people can disagree about the way we played the story or the way I wrote it, but in the context of the national economic crisis, the way Burner characterizes her expertise in economics matters. That's why I wrote the story.
I hope that's helpful.

Despite Lewis's assertions that Burner has substantial and deep expertise in economics, that she has a specialization in economics in the computer science field, and that multiple Harvard graduates and former faculty members back up Burner's characterization of her education and attempt to correct Heffter's description of a system she clearly does not understand, Heffter chooses to characterize Burner's expertise as fictitious. And her justification for her dishonest reporting is that the "context of the national economic crisis" makes Burner's characterization important. One could as easily point out that this context applies to Heffter as well; getting this right is more important than ever, and getting it wrong cheats the voter.

But more than that, the superficial condescending tone obscures a total lack of substance. Heffter is not actually concerned with whether Burner or Reichert has actual expertise on the economy, for if she were she might have reported that Reichert has said that he is not an "economic expert" and that Burner actually has serious chops in the field. Indeed, by couching her email in soothing establishment friendly tones as 'reasonable people' and 'the way Burner characterizes her expertise in economic matters', Heffter substitutes what is essentially a discredited gossip column peddled by GOP operatives using sources that directly contradict the main thrust of the narrative for an actual examination of the region's economic difficulties and the two candidate's different approaches.

Furthermore, Heffter argues that since people care about the economy, whatever she writes and whether it's accurate is mostly irrelevant as long it has the words 'economy' in it. As Lewis indicates, Heffter had a story she wanted to tell. And certainly, you can expect Reichert's campaign or the NRCC to go on the air with this narrative (if they can actually afford to, considering the heat being put on them for the illegal money they are probably using to run ads).

I've focused my blogging on Heffter, but the rest of the journalists around here aren't exactly covering themselves in glory. Joining the anti-netroots and anti-progressive Manuel Valdes, Emily Heffter, and Amy Sullivan, Eli Sanders of the Stranger blames Heffter and Valdes doing sloppy and inaccurate work on ... Darcy Burner. Quite the wankfest.

And the Backstory of the Seattle Times Massive Punkage

Matt Stoller — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:02:25 GMT

So the Seattle Times political department spent yesterday doing two things. The first part of the day involved smirking about a story 'journalist' Emily Heffter was about to publish making false claims about Burner's Harvard degree. The attitude was probably something along the lines of Boo-ya! This was Heffter's Watergate, she busted that Darcy doin' lots of exagerrating. The editors probably said something like, nice job, Emily, you sure showed that you're no liberal media. Do more of that and you may get a raise, and by that we mean your buyout package might be larger when we lay you off.

The second part involved walking that story back out of sheer embarrassment, changing the headline, and acting defensively towards the various academic, ex-students and ex-faculty who pointed out how obviously this journalist and the Seattle Times editors had been punked by Reichert. And indeed, we found out today that's what happened, from Melissa Santos of the Tacoma News Tribune (a somewhat conservative paper) in a post titled 'Reichert camp "shocked" about Burner education claim ... or are they?'
Reichert spokeswoman Amanda Halligan, who posted on this blog (hi Amanda), was revealed as an obvious liar.

Halligan said the campaign has been stretching the truth about Burner's degree to say the ex-Microsoft manager is more qualified than Reichert to deal with the economic problems plaguing America. Voters should now know that's not the case, Halligan said.
She added that the Reichert campaign was "completely shocked" by the revelation in today's Seattle Times.
But Reichert questioned the legitimacy of Burner's claims in a phone interview with me Oct. 10, more than two weeks ago.
He was criticizing Burner for proposing her own plans to fix the economy and withdraw from Iraq, areas he said are outside her realm of expertise.
"She's not only a computer science major from Harvard, she's now an economics major," Reichert said. "And she's also a general."

So Reichert himself was pushing the story two weeks ago to various journalists, Heffter meekly served her role as stenographer, and then Reichert's campaign professed to have learned of it today. Ok then. No one could have predicted that uncritically reporting Republican opposition research on an obviously falsifiable hit job would backfire.

Meanwhile, ex-Dean Harry Lewis points out that Darcy didn't just study economics, she studied non-wussy economics.

I'm the professor and ex-dean who was quoted in the story, and as it happens, also the guy who wrote the CS degree requirements. At the time Darcy was at Harvard, she would have needed, as part of her CS degree requirements, several courses in a technical specialization area related to CS. She fulfilled that CS degree requirement by specializing in Economics (which meant, by the way, that she couldn't have taken just the easy, non-mathematical Ec courses). So it's not exactly a minor (which we didn't have then, though we do now), and it's also not anything that the registrar would be able to certify (because it's an internal requirement of the computer science faculty). But it's something everyone getting a degree in CS had to do (though other students would have other specialties). The way Darcy is describing herself is accurate.

And Matt Yglesias, who went to Harvard as well, chimed in.

Harvard, as you know, is old and fancy. Consequently, it has a lot of old and fancy terminology and procedures that differ somewhat from the American norm. They don't, for example, have "teaching assistants" (TAs) instead they have "teaching fellows" (TFs). You don't live in a "dorm" you live in a "house." Instead of "RAs" there are "proctors" and "tutors." And instead of "majors" there are "concentrations." If I want to communicate some fact about my college experience in a normal way, however, I'll say that "when I was in college I majored in philosophy, Walid Hussein TAed two of my classes, and my dorm was near Noch's." By the same token, there are no minors at Harvard. What Burner did is the Harvard equivalent of doing a joint degree in computer science and economics, though it's not technically called that and the process (which would involve taking an adequate number of economics courses and then writing a thesis that bridges both subjects) is probably somewhat different from what you might find elsewhere. That she chose not to give a tediously detailed description of the academic procedures of her undergraduate institution is just common sense.

Emily Heffter, I tried to warn you.

Seattle Times Changes Headline, Harvard Students and Professors Push Back

Matt Stoller — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 05:04:53 GMT

Well, the emails are working. The Seattle Times changed the headline from:

Darcy Burner's claims of a Harvard degree in economics aren't true

To:

Darcy Burner's Harvard econ degree an exaggeration

The Seattle Times also updated the story twice. Many of you have contacted the editor or Emily Heffter at eheffter@seattletimes.com and the emails I've seen have been polite and well-reasoned. Meanwhile, former Harvard faculty and students are posting about how stupid the article is.
Here's MarkARKleiman:

Whoever wrote this story doesn't understand the Harvard system. I used to teach there. It's perfectly reasonable to say that Burner has a Harvard degree in computer science and economics.

Here's mediamaverick:

Hmmm....I teach journalism at the graduate level and actually earned a degree from Harvard. Your reporter should have been more careful with the facts. You may want to check out your own bio for Darcy Burner which cleary states here degree status (from Harvard). Earning what is essentially a joint degree is more difficult that a regular major.....You owe her a big apology for your misleading headline and half-baked reporting effort.

countrymouse

I was a freshman at Harvard when Ms. Bruner was a senior (never knew her). As other commenters have noted, if you wanted to double-major, you had to choose one 'home' department, and then you made arrangements to take upper-level classes in another department. CS and Ec would have had overlapping pre-requisites (Math, etc), so taking 5 upper-level Ec classes sounds about right for what she is claiming ("a degree in computer science and economics").
Did the reporter even give Burner the simple courtesy of a chance to answer the charge that she was lying before going to press? If not, maybe she needs to go back to journalism school. May I suggest a minor in journalistic ethics

Here's JK465:

As someone who has been on faculty at Harvard, I can attest that this is simply twisting words for political opportunism. Harvard doesn't have "majors". They only have concentrations. And they don't have "minors" -- so to gain other credentialed experience, someone gathers coursework in joint, or dual concentrations. However only one department can appear on any transcript. Period. Even if you had major coursework across three departments (say your joint major area was "Molecular Biochemistry", you would Biology, Chemistry and Molecular Biology courses) but you would have to designate ONLY one of those as the primary department and thus folks might think you had only biology OR chemistry OR molecular biology work.
Ms. Burner's description is accurate if you understand the Harvard system (which also until recently had a 14 pt GPA scale -- I don't hear folks calling Ms. Burner a 'liar' about any 12.76 GPA average that she likely had). You just need to understand the Harvard system and its terminology which is quite different from most University systems.

Survey USA: Darcy Burner Up 50-46 Over Reichert

Matt Stoller — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 01:08:33 GMT

I just saw that King 5 TV reported a new Survey USA poll, Darcy is up 50-46 over Reichert. The ad which pointed out that he's ineffective really knocked him down, the first time his reputation has been damaged in any serious way. Reichert's even set up a site, http://www.davereichertdelivers.com, to rebut the claims.

He has $725k of TV on the air right now just this week, in all likelihood thanks to an illegal corporate contribution from Republican media buying firm Media Plus.

Meanwhile, a former Harvard faculty member responded to the Seattle Times article in the comments of the article:

As someone who has been on faculty at Harvard, I can attest that this is simply twisting words for political opportunism. Harvard doesn't have "majors". They only have concentrations. And they don't have "minors" -- so to gain other credentialed experience, someone gathers coursework in joint, or dual concentrations. However only one department can appear on any transcript. Period. Even if you had major coursework across three departments (say your joint major area was "Molecular Biochemistry", you would Biology, Chemistry and Molecular Biology courses) but you would have to designate ONLY one of those as the primary department and thus folks might think you had only biology OR chemistry OR molecular biology work.
Ms. Burner's description is accurate if you understand the Harvard system (which also until recently had a 14 pt GPA scale -- I don't hear folks calling Ms. Burner a 'liar' about any 12.76 GPA average that she likely had). You just need to understand the Harvard system and its terminology which is quite different from most University systems.

This person is writing under the pseudonym 'JK465', but if they are willing to speak out under your own name, contact me at stoller at gmail.com.

How the Seattle Times Is Trying to Take Out Darcy Burner

Matt Stoller — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:45:55 GMT

Emily Heffter at the Seattle Times just published a story falsely alleging that Darcy Burner's claims of a Harvard degree in economics aren't true. The story is literally made up out of whole cloth. Burner has a degree in computer science and economics from Harvard, as her website says. Having gone to Harvard, I know how this works. You get a degree under one department, take classes in another, write a thesis joining the two, and that thesis is reviewed by professors from both departments. It's actually much harder to get a joint degree, but the registrar shows a degree only from one department because Harvard doesn't have minors. In fact, economics is a fairly easy degree to get, while computer science and economics takes a lot more work.

Heffter took this to mean that Burner made up her Harvard degree, and misquotes Harvard officials to prove the story. Heffter quotes Harvard computer science professor Harry Lewis, who supervised the computer science students when Burner attended Harvard.

"She doesn't have a degree in economics," he said. "It's a specialty within the computer science degree that she has."

Here's Harry Lewis's recounting of the conversation.

Talked to her and told her you had a degree in CS with a specialization in Ec. She said you were claiming to have a degree in Ec and I just repeated myself. She asked me what that consisted of and I said a block of Ec courses. She started to ask me if that would make you qualified ... and I cut her off, saying I couldn't judge economics qualifications. She thanked me and said that was helpful.

Heffter is the only journalist covering this race, and is simply making things up and pressuring sources to say what she wants them to say. It's a travesty. Heffter should be pulled off this race and fired, but of course, since it's her editor who made up the headline, she won't be.

I talked to Mike Shields, Reichert's campaign manager, and he told me "Apparently, after basing her entire economic message on Harvard, that turns out to have been a big lie. She didn't get a degree in economics."

This came from the Reichert campaign and the NRCC, and the Seattle Times printed the press release. This is what we're running against, a conservative propaganda machine and their willing. Unbelievable; well quite believable, actually.

You can help out here. Heffter, incidentally, has a history of superficial reporting in her career, upsetting readers with facile stories full of false choices and misleading information. I talked to her, and she was just set on telling this story the way she wanted to, without actually trying to understand anything about how Harvard awards degrees.

Heffter's email is here: eheffter@seattletimes.com

Be polite, and let me know if you get a response.

Update: Oh Jesus, it's getting worse. The Burner campaign provided the Seattle Times with information about this. Here's her bio page on the Seattle Times website.

Education: Harvard University, B.A. in computer science with a special field of economics, 1996.

Yeah, there's someone trying to mislead voters, alright.

Down the Stretch: Watching the GOP Lawbreaking in WA-08

Matt Stoller — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:01:23 GMT

A beautiful set of berries in Bellevue from earlier this year

One of the biggest competitive disadvantages for Democrats is our unwillingness to break the law for our own benefit. Where law is weak and meaningless, like election law, the Republicans go nuts. And that's what Dave Reichert is doing, as he somehow found a corporate media firm (Media Plus) to give him $500K to help him down the stretch. Basically, instead of getting a bank loan, which he can't get because banks won't lend to political campaigns without collateral, Reichert's campaign is getting a loan from his media firm, which is buying TV ad time on credit from four corporate TV stations and extending his campaign credit. This is basically a corporate campaign contribution, and corporate money in politics is ostensibly illegal (ha ha, tell the US Chamber of Commerce that). The Federal Election Commission is obviously toothless and irrelevant these days, totally unwilling to do anything about lawbreaking during elections, when it actually matters. And the press doesn't care, since one FEC complaint looks like another.
Reichert's media firm is also extending this deal to Dino Rossi, the Republican gubernatorial candidate boosted by about ten million dollars of money from developers with whom he's illegally coordinating. Their agenda is basically eviscerating smart growth regulations and increasing sprawl. Still, why would Media Plus make such a risky bet with no upside? Why make an incredibly high risk loan to Reichert and Rossi for no upside?

Well, Media Plus is a major PR firm with government and corporate contracts, including local drug stores, mobile homes, and a slew of Republican politicians. I don't know what kind of money is sloshing around in that company, or what kind of deal they've cut. Companies don't just put a $500k into a risky campaign for an irrelevant Congressman, and a further slug of cash into a campaign for a GOP Governor without some sort of rationale.

But the consequences are the same. Reichert will be outspending Darcy down the stretch, with commercials going back to back to back slamming her as a tax raiser and using my video footage of 'FISA sucks'. The NRCC will be on the air as well, following on the US Chamber of Commerce and the NFIB. This is the only Congressional race in the country where the Democrats will be outspent (sorry, I meant top-tier), and there was no way to plan for this. You can't plan for a half a million dollar corporate contribution.

Now, there are only two possible routes to respond. One is legal; file for an injunction or complain to the FEC. Neither of these will have effect, since neither will be resolved before the election, after which time Reichert and Media Plus might or might not be fined, but it won't matter. That's what it means for election law to be weak and irrelevant. The other response is up to us. Can we offset some of this illegal corporate cash with a fundraiser or our own?

I don't like bringing this up, because we've all dug deep already. But there really is no other choice at this point. It's up to us. Donna Edwards and Brad Miller has thrown in for Darcy. Lots of you have already kicked in.

I've set a goal for our Actblue page for Better Democrats of $50,000. We're currently at a touch below $40,000, with an average donor size of slightly less than $100. OpenLeft traffic is around 50,000 readers a day, which means if just over 1% of you hit the contribute button for two days in a row we should hit that goal easily.

Head over to that page and kick in a bit. With Better Democrats in Congress and hundred seat majorities, we can put a stop to this rampant lawbreaking from Republicans. But it's not going to stop on its own. We've got to get our people in Congress. There's no substitute for more good votes, and it's impossible to put a price on great leadership.

WA-08: VoteVets Sends Mail on Reichert

Matt Stoller — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:04:00 GMT

While this is an issue ad pointing out Dave Reichert's vet record to WA-08 voters, you can help out Darcy here. She just hit $5000 even on Better Democrats. Some Better Democrats with ugly candidate totals that need to be topped off are Tom Perriello ($1,979), Jeff Merkley ($6,975) Annette Taddeo ($1,808), Debbie Cook ($828), and Jim Martin ($1,475).

For those of you who are slightly OCD, kick in a few to make these totals nice and even. I can't stand uneven totals.

The FISA Bill Does Indeed Suck

Matt Stoller — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:05:32 GMT

Here's the latest ad from cop in the Village People look-alike and US Congressman Dave Reichert.

Apparently, Reichert is psyched that the NSA is illegally listening to soldier's having phone sex with their wives.

Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer.
"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News.
Faulk said he joined in to listen, and talk about it during breaks in Back Hall's "smoke pit," but ended up feeling badly about his actions.
"I feel that it was something that the people should not have done. Including me," he said.

I can see why Reichert would want to attack Darcy on this. Then again, I can also see why he might support illegal eavesdropping on phone sex from US soldiers.

Second Poll Confirms Darcy Burner Lead, 47-40

Matt Stoller — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:34:46 GMT

Despite Reichert campaign manager Mike Shields's attempt to unlock right-wing money for Reichert through a savvy PR campaign (including this Amy Sullivan article in Time titled Will the Netroots Sink a Microsoft Dem?), the wave has caught up in the Northwest. Darcy's up 47-40 over Reichert in the latest Lake Research polling, with Reichert's reelect number at just 36%.

The full polling memo is on the flip, but the key here is that Reichert's floor of 52 has been cracked, and he's now in the low 40s. That means that his main asset, his image of a hard charging sheriff is no longer working in the district. Lake is Darcy's pollster, but there are reasons to think this confirmation of yesterday's DCCC poll is on target. Her message is getting out there, as even sportsbloggers are complaining about how many commerials they are seeing.

The latest Lake Research Partners survey of likely voters in Washington's 8th District shows Democrat Darcy Burner leading Republican Dave Reichert for the first time in the history of our polling.
• Burner now leads Reichert 47% to 40%. This is the first time she has ever led, signaling that the voters of WA-08 are ready for the kind of change on behalf of middle class families that Burner promises to bring.
• Reichert's job performance rating has plummeted to 34% good or excellent versus a majority (55%) just fair or poor. Voters are waking up to the reality that Reichert has been exceptionally ineffective on behalf of the district, and are tired of his being a rubberstamp for George Bush's policies.
• Reichert's re-elect stands at just 36%. The remaining two thirds of the electorate would consider voting for someone else, vote to replace Reichert, or aren't sure.
• Burner's positive message is starting to penetrate, while Reichert's lack of leadership is exposed. Voters who have recently heard, seen, or read something about Burner feel more favorably toward her by a better than 2-to-1 margin (39% more favorable to 18% less favorable). By way of contrast, voters who have recently heard, seen, or read something about Reichert are twice as likely to feel less favorably than more favorably about him as a result (16% more favorable to 30% less favorable).
With enough resources to continue to communicate Burner's strong messages and inform voters about Reichert's ineffectiveness, Burner is on a path to emerge victorious in 20 days.

Darcy Burner Up 49-44

Matt Stoller — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:41:53 GMT

From the DCCC:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee today released a new Bennett, Petts & Normington poll that shows Democrat Darcy Burner leading Republican Congressman Dave Reichert by 5 percent. In the initial head-to-head in the race for Washington State's 8th congressional district, Burner leads Reichert 49 to 44 percent. Conducted October 8-9, the poll surveyed 400 likely voters and has a 4.9 percent margin of error.

This is the first poll that has shown Darcy Burner leading Dave Reichert. While she's been on TV unopposed by his campaign directly, the US Chamber of Commerce and the NFIB have been going at her on taxes. The DCCC is up as well, tying Reichert to Bush, and the NRCC has yet to play. The NRCC has publicly budgeted a little more than a million on behalf of Reichert, but they are canceling media buys left and right and this is one expensive media market. And frankly, if the US Chamber and NFIB ads aren't making a difference, why throw more down this hole? Obama is popular in this district, and the undercounts are starting to swing to Darcy.

The wave finally hit the Northwest.

Que Sera, Sera

Matt Stoller — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:55:41 GMT

About a third of the entire construction crane capacity in North America is between Bellevue and Seattle.

I've been traveling around over the past few days throughout the unbelievably beautiful and ridiculously wet Northwest, and I'm struck by the commitment of this new generation of organizers, both on the Obama campaign and the campaigns of both Darcy Burner and Jeff Merkley. Merkley's race in particular has really heated up in the last few weeks, concurrently with the financial meltdown. They are progressive, they work extremely hard, and they are dedicated to a new way of doing politics. It's fascinating and inspiring.
Both Washington and Oregon are going for Obama, and the big question is whether there will be a substantial undervote. How many Obama-Reichert voters or Obama-Smith voters are there? How can you pull them over to go for the whole Democratic ticket?

Those are some of the questions I'm asking. Still, I'm struck by a particular piece from this wonderful profile of Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight). Nearly all electoral forecasters used polls in the primaries to make predictions, what Silver did was use straight demographics and predict forward how people would vote based on their demographic identity. His model worked.

One interesting consequence of this theory about voting behavior is that much of politics is simply out of the hands of campaigns. You can't persuade someone to be black or a woman or a young person, and you can't make a strategic call to have the financial system melt down. You can register voters, handle policy ideas, communicate clearly or badly, but much of 'the political strategy' is just about being ready when an opportunity emerges. Political strategists should be focused on long-term demographic impacts of policy, voter registration, and pulling various levers of the economy. That's what the right does; Fed chairs love raising rates before elections when Democrats are the incumbents, but put the pedal to the metal when it's a Republican. Bush actually withheld military spending in 2007 and juiced it in 2008.

A month and a half ago, Merkley probably wasn't going to win, the conventional wisdom has changed 180 degrees. The difference? The financial crisis. I know activists complain when a campaign is behind in the polls, talk about how the energy just isn't there, or argue that the candidate is bad or doesn't fit with the district. Obviously, as I'm sitting in Bellevue right now in WA-08, one of the only races that has not seen the Democratic surge resonant all over the country, this is weighing on my mind. But realize that almost everything that happens in the overall environment is uncontrollable, and how skilled a candidate is may not come in to play. Obama wasn't any more skilled a six weeks ago than he is today, McCain hasn't lost capacity. The world simply changed.

Seattle, Portland, and North Carolina are doing really well economically because high tech sectors have located sustainable energy industries here. In fact, Bellevue isn't so much a city right now as it is a massive large construction project. There's no controlling for that. All we can do as activists is register voters, volunteer, give money, and work to tell the truth as we see it. Will any of our candidates win? Yes, of course. But let's fear, not losing, but hubris. Given an opportunity to govern, Democrats must govern well, or else this could shift as quickly as it has in the last six weeks.

As for Darcy, I think she's going to win, because ultimately this financial crisis is going to scare people here and a lot of the Obama voters are probably going to pull the lever for Darhercy. How can I be sure? Well, I can't. As Pink Martini performed (really really well, I might add) last night at a Merkley event, Que sera, sera.

A Saturday Sammamish Canvas in WA-08

Matt Stoller — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 03:33:25 GMT

I spent this beautiful crisp afternoon canvassing in Sammamish for the Obama-Gregoire-Burner coordinated campaign. Sammamish is a wealthy suburban area full of software types, progressive but with strong bias towards sprawl. For instance, one woman told me she's voting for Obama and Burner but doesn't like Gregoire because Gregoire doesn't want to address transportation problems by widening the highways as much as Rossi does. There are many wealthy immigrants, and a lot of Obama voters who are undecided about the lower ticket races.

The main takeaway from talking to lots of random voters is that basically no one is paying attention to the Congressional race.
Obama's Bellevue office is situated in the same office as Darcy Burner HQ, and this canvass was the last of the persuasion parts of the campaign. The earlier registration campaign had tallied up 37,000 new voters in the state, and persuasion has been happening for the last few weeks. Next week, the ballots drop since this is a vote by mail state, and so GOTV will be the focus from now until election day. Obama's priority here is lower ticket. There's no TV or mail coming into the state, and every canvas bag had Burner and Gregoire literature. Biden and Gore are coming to help out Gregoire, who is in a tight race with Dino Rossi. In my encounters with voters in Sammamish, there's a clear sense of dissatisfaction with Gregoire, and activists are frustrated she hasn't run a strong campaign. Rossi is a slick candidate, and the Republicans are quite energized around him.

The vibe on the ground is very different from 2006. Darcy had all the energy in the last race, and though Maria Cantwell was also running, Cantwell was 20 points ahead the whole time and activists were excited to work for Darcy. This time, Obama is energizing volunteers to a whole new level, and knowledge of the Burner-Reichert race is far lower. It's a very information rich environment, but there's no room in the conversation for a separate Burner-Reichert race. I don't get the sense that newspaper endorsements or debates matter much, the question is whether the economy crumples or how much Burner is associated with Obama and Reichert with McCain.