The latest attack on quasi-candidate for Senate Dino Rossi involves his decision to headline a conference next week that aims to teach people in his business—real estate—how to profit off of the foreclosure crisis. Not the most sensitive of speaking gigs, certainly, and today local Democrats tried to give the story some additional legs by providing an image to go with the angst: Dixie Mitchell, nearly 70, who says she was the victim of predatory lending and is now facing foreclosure on her Central District home after signing on for an adjustable-rate home equity loan that she didn't realize was destined to adjust upward so fast.

This was the soggiest press conference I've been to in a long time, and the most wide-ranging. In addition to attacks on Rossi ("How can Mr. Rossi go out and speak about making money off of foreclosures?" Mitchell asked, suggesting later that he must want her to have to live in a tent) and statistics on how many foreclosure-facing Washingtonians there currently are for Rossi's acolytes to capitalize on (30,000, according to Bev Spears of the Statewide Poverty Action Network) there was also discussion of the upcoming Juneteenth celebration in the CD and a plea for donations from the public to keep Mitchell from being forced out of her house. Add in the rain-streaked reporters' notebooks and some failed efforts to put up a tarp, and you have quite a scene.

But the broader political point was crystal clear: Democrats think Rossi is going to jump into the race for Senator Patty Murray's seat soon, and they're intent on hitting him every chance they get before—and after—that happens. Rain or shine.