Pocket those hankies

The rain fell a little harder yesterday for Dino Rossi and his people, for those who believe their candidate had been robbed and that America isn't so much a democracy as one big conspiracy.

To them, I offer the words of the great Ray Davies: Stop your sobbing.

But I bet I'll be singing alone.

For there will be those who will refuse to let this go, who will allow the murkiness of the last seven months to cloud the next four years of their lives.

They will look at Christine Gregoire not as a governor to support and respect, but as a woman who got into the big house by wiles, not wisdom.

They will always wonder who she was in cahoots with and what favors she now owes.

I pity them.

The hard truth is that the Republican Party did not prove its case. Its lawyers made allegations that they just couldn't support over the course of a two-week trial that should be remembered not only for its historical value but for its expedience and lack of Court TV-like drama.

We are lucky for that, you know.

Still, there were those who compared this trial to O.J. Simpson's: "We all know he did it," one reader wrote yesterday, "but the prosecution just couldn't prove it."

Let's remember that the case entered the Chelan County Courthouse on the GOP's terms: "They chose the county, they chose the court, they chose the method of proof," said Jenny Durkan, an attorney for the Democrats, after Judge John Bridges' ruling.

"There is no corner for them to run to in that decision."

Rossi and the GOP were smart not to continue this fight by marching into the state Supreme Court without any proof — only a hunch that they had been bamboozled.

Since they could not prove the election illegal, Rossi will always be known as 129 votes short of a governorship.

And is that such a bad thing?

He is free now to play Bridges' decision for all it's worth, and spend the next four years wandering the state with an arrow in his back, like a soldier wounded in the fight for a balanced budget — and fewer poor kids getting basic health care.

But while he does that, let's remember that the real enemy in his battle was never Gregoire, the Democratic Party, its lawyers or the wild-eyed liberals who voted her in.

The real enemy is the state's election system, specifically the King County elections division, where Bridges found "a lack of communication, lack of taking responsibility for action, a lower level of accountability and a difficulty documenting procedures."

"It's inertia, it's selfishness, it's taking our paycheck but not doing the work."

That's being bamboozled. And it's something that every taxpayer should be sobbing over, no matter your politics.

It will be Gregoire's job to get us to stop.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

The Pretenders covered it.