The Washington Post's Dan Zak was at the Patty Murray party at the Westin on Tuesday night, taking feeds from parties around the nation for a wonderful piece that looks at the grand American tradition of approximating a rager (or not) in some ballroom somewhere as the returns roll in.

What he found here in Seattle: a self-described political paramour sloshing happily about, plus our mayor, alone, advising the Post to look elsewhere for a good time:

The Democrats show up here, at the Westin hotel in downtown Seattle, and tell themselves they did all they could for Patty Murray, their incumbent and endangered senator. Then they order a $10 Seagram's and 7Up in case they didn't do enough. Tuesday evening the fourth-floor "grand ballroom" fills with tweed and tie-dye, elbow patches and men's scarfery, lady berets and union patches and brambly ponytails. And supporters who've already tranquilized their nerves with two dirty martinis.

Why come to an event like this, ma'am?

"I was having an affair with a politician who's probably in this room right now," says artist and Eastlake resident Michele Leal, brown eyes scanning the room. "Sometimes he'd bring cash and sometimes his credit card. And I was like, 'Is Washington state paying for this dinner?' "

She laughs, then pauses.

"But I like to learn from people, and there are people here I can learn from," she says eventually, sweeping her martini glass across the carpeted expanse, sloshing gin onto her shoes. "I need a sippy cup, I told Benjamin." She reels around to face a bow-tied bartender. "Benjamin! My sippy cup."

Later on:

The port city's ruddy mayor, Mike McGinn, sips seltzer with lime, alone, as the din swirls around him in the 9 o'clock hour.

"I will say if you're looking for a good party in Seattle, heading to an election party should not be your first choice," McGinn advises.

But hey, at least the party at the Westin was better than Rand Paul's victory celebration in Kentucky, "where you might expect some kind of bourbon-fueled orgy," Zak writes, but you certainly wouldn't have found one:

They're taking the country back and yet the tea partiers do not, apparently, party. The only evidence of playfulness: Some joker placed a campaign button of Paul's opponent, Jack Conway, in a urinal in the men's room.

Instead of raucous, boo-yah cheerleading, Paul supporters and tea partiers stand and listen and then talk seriously about the Fed. They cluster at the back of the ballroom in small groups, jawing about that pesky deficit.

"Hey, I'm 18," says Robert Cloar, a student at nearby Western Kentucky University. "And when I'm 35, I don't want there to be more debt than what there is now."

Buzz kill, dude.

Seriously.