The SECB just dropped by the Montlake Ale House, where the Drinking Liberally crowd is setting up shop for the night. At this hour, the crowd was a mix of families taking their kids out to dinner (from the smell, we’d guess fried food and burgers) and guys who were obviously hard-core bloggers; when the SECB arrived, a heated debate was underway about whether the group should be watching returns on MSNBC—which is apparently calling states earlier than other channels—or CNN, which was blaring from the television.

David Goldstein, blogger for Horse’s Ass and the main organizer of Drinking Liberally events, was checking the scores for his daughter’s soccer team online when the SECB dropped in on him (“they’re kicking ass,” he said), but he quickly switched to election prognostication. Goldstein predicted that unexpectedly high Democratic turnout would propel both Gov. Christine Gregoire and Democratic 8th Congressional District challenger Darcy Burner to victory, and that every statewide initiative except I-985 would pass. Goldstein also predicted that Proposition 1, the mass transit expansion measure, would fail because liberal voters put too many resources behind I-1000, the death with dignity initiative, and not enough behind mass transit. Goldstein also predicted that both local measures—the parks levy and the Pike Place Market—would pass. He had no comment on the fact that his predictions so drastically differed from the SECB’s own, made at 8:00 this morning.