Yesterday evening I drove out to Mercer Island to watch a rally and fund-raiser that eastside Democrat Darcy Burner was holding with Rahm Emanuel, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Word that President Bush will visit Washington State to support Burner’s opponent, Republican Congressman Dave Reichert, had reached the Burner campaign earlier in the day and the response was something close to glee.

“Bring it on,” members of the audience shouted as Burner told them Bush was coming.

“You are correct,” Burner replied. “It is terrific news.”

“Kiss of death!” someone in the crowd shouted.

Burner smiled.

Her campaign just finished conducting a poll of the 8th District, and that poll found Bush’s approval rating at 24 percent in the 8th — lower than his approval rating in all those recent national polls that have sent Republican incumbents scurrying to distance themselves from the president.

Meanwhile, Reichert will be embracing the president during his visit here next month, making it all the more easy for the Burner campaign to cast Reichert as a “rubber stamp” for an unpopular president. (Or, as Emanuel put it at a press event he held with Burner this morning at the Seattle Labor Temple: “President Bush, Dave Reichert, hand in glove.”)

I’ll have more on the Burner campaign’s poll results soon.