For me the take-home message to Democrats is to recognize how many people find their culture-war positions ridiculous or even repulsive. If they would stop saying stupid stuff, they'd consistently win elections.
I think Biden wins in 2024 and then Gretchen, Andy, and Gavin are all trying to get the nomination in 2028. Kamala will try too but unsuccessfully because nobody likes her. Ultimately Gretchen will win because she will have had a less hostile legislature and thus actually have accomplished more while Andy is thwarted by Republicans at every turn.
What other Dem governors might shake out? I’m keeping my eyes on Roy Cooper (NC), Maura Healy (MA), and Laura Kelly (KS).
For all the good news for the Democrats from yesterday’s results, the concerns about Biden remains. While issues like abortion can move the dial in many settings, I don’t think that most voters focus on such substantive issues when considering presidential candidates in the general election. Rather, their perception of the candidate is the most influential.
In this regard, I sense that it is not Biden’s relative or absolute age that matters so much as the fact that he looks, well, awfully old. Without going into details, he does not come across as strong, focused and fully engaged; Trump, despite lacking any substance whatsoever, usually seems lively and confident.
I wonder what would happen if Biden leaned into his image, getting away from the aviators and the stiff-legged walk in favor of acting his age. Put on a cardigan and talk conversationally with people. Stay away from jargon and anything that seems like selling -- that’s Trump’s thing. Instead, talk about some concrete actions with visible results. Rather than talk about the American dream or a lot of abstract matters, focus on where things were when he took over, what remedies were considered (and why) and how things have gone. Maybe he can be the first President to admit error -- explain why the Afghanistan withdrawal and inflation were worse than expected and what they did (and are doing) about it.
Biden was elected as the not-Trump but I don’t think that’s going to get moderate voters interested in voting. People need to see him as hands-on, pragmatic and caring, focused on effective government less than social issues. Uncle Joe can talk plainly with ordinary folks about challenges at the border, the need for both short-term efforts to reduce the numbers of people crossing the border and long term changes to our immigration laws and foreign aid programs that would allow America to approach immigration and asylum rationally. Unlike Reagan, who had the avuncular older man style but no real understanding (or interest) in governing, Biden actually knows a lot about the issues and how government deals with them. His age is a problem because his team keeps on trying -- in vain -- to make him seem younger, essentially conceding age as a problem without retaining the experience and mature calm that can go along with it.
I just want to say that reading the smart, respectful and well-considered comments here really have validated my decision to subscribe to Slow Boring recently and to leave social media two years ago. THIS is where I can really get sucked into a screen for an hour and actually come out of it smarter and happier about my fellow humans. Been awhile, let me tell ya.
"I’m not going to do a 2,000 word column on “here’s why your raspberry-sized fetus doesn’t have a soul.”"
2,000 words is a bit much but If you want to persuade someone that an 8-week fetus which looks an AWFUL LOT like a tiny human, or a 12-week fetus which looks even more like a human and can form a fist and suck its thumb, is not actually a person deserving of our protection, I think it's reasonable for us to expect SOME effort on your part, IDK, I'm just saying.
I always find the assertion that anti-abortion folks hold a very sincere religion-based belief that it is, in fact, murder hard to swallow. If you really believed that it was infanticide and millions of children a year were being murdered, would you really just vote every couple years and that’s it?
Seems like some large portion is disliking it, and wanting to do “something” about it, but not actually believing it’s really murder.
I’m late to the party today, but a thought on why Republicans pushing the trans issues isn’t enough to cancel out the abortion issue and gain center or center left votes:
People who worry about the advances in the transgender situation don’t believe this is a political issue at all--in fact, they (we/I) are explicitly trying to depoliticize it. “Gender-affirming healthcare” has been legal for years, and it wasn’t until the US model of care jumped the rails of ethical and evidence-based protocol that some of us started to freak out, and thus now are looking to lawsuits and legislation to keep the medical establishment in check.
Abortion, however, has never enjoyed nation-wide support or apathy, and has always been a political issue, and one that affects far more people personally than transgender issues--although I think that is changing rapidly as the number of kids who ID as trans skyrockets, and women’s sports are increasingly allowing trans women to compete--and win--competitions.
Hasn't low turnout been beneficial for Democrats for a long time? Low turnout helping Democrats is why a bunch of school board elections are held on randoms days in like May or August. Basically only teachers come out to vote on those days, so teachers end up electing their managers.
On the trans issue, the reality is the only people who care deeply about this, are the usual reactionaries for the usual reactionary reasons and some freaked out centrists living in D+40 districts, or people who work in disproportionately deep blue jobs.
If you try to make a national issue out of it, as the GOP has, you look like an obsessed weirdo. Maybe you can with a school board race (note though in Loudoun County where it was big news, the Dem's kept control and Moms 4 Liberty candidates ate crap even in conservative areas), but there is gonig to be no massive backlash among voters, because most voters don't care, and will continue not to care, because it turns out, despite what some supposed former liberals post online, there are not that many schools where 1/4 of the kids are changing their gender or whatever.
On the topic to abortion...I think the biggest threat to abortion rights at the federal level is not Congress passing an abortion ban, but executive action taken by a Republican president. In particular, the possibility of a president Trump replacing the FDA head with someone who will revoke FDA approval of not just the pill, but every abortion-related medical procedure, an outcome that would be tantamount to a zero-exception nationwide abortion ban from conception, but without needing Congress to pass a law to enact such a ban.
The Biden re-election campaign would do well to bring this up.
“But I think it’s also in part because abortion rights is an almost uniquely uninteresting topic to debate — it’s what most people think versus a religious doctrine that you can’t really disprove or debunk.”
Matt,
Not to troll or nitpick, but I’ve seen you refer to this as a “religious” issue a couple of times, which it certainly is in one sense. But you can still get to the question life scientifically and philosophically via secular reasoning. Thus, it’s not just a “religious doctrine” versus what most people believe.
Fair. But there are secular arguments, and I think many secular people are too dismissive of those arguments just because religious people make them, too.
I think those suspicions are real. I would only observe again that a lot of reason, even though it is used by religious people, is valid and logical. The pro-life movement is an example. Modern embryology states that, scientifically, life begins at conception. Philosophical inquiry into the metaphysics of when life begins can establish life beginning at a certain point, with science then stating when that process begins in the natural world. The logic of this could lead someone to plausibly say that abortion should be banned at the moment of conception, which is what many pro-lifers advocate for, obviously to their political detriment. But politics is messy, and taking political positions that are all logically coherent is often unrealistic. The fact is, most people don't think in those terms (can you imagine a politician in a campaign trying to persuade the public on the philosophical precepts of when life begins to advocate for an abortion ban?), and this is where politics and public opinion come into play. So I don't think they necessarily dispense with reason per se (sometimes they do, of course), but they are trying to use secular inquiry to persuade people to their side. This is a good tactic but it's where most people, *seeing the implications,* will just recoil and not go along with it. And therein lies meeting the public where they are, even with logically coherent arguments and strong convictions.
I think your pornography analogy applies here, too.
“because [Biden] governed somewhat to the left of what people were expecting,”
The whole scene of Biden having to “reconcile” the Warren-Sanders people to his side was ridiculous but harmless for the general election. It only became pernicious when he put some of those guys in positions of power! He did the opposite of what the playbook says, “Campaign in poetry and govern in prose.”
You don't mention crime here, but there were a few interesting results in that space.
1) Democrats nominated left-wingers for Allegheny County executive and DA; they nearly lost the first race and lost the second. (The incumbent DA, a Democrat, lost to the primary to criminal justice reformer then just kept running as a Republican.) This while the Democratic judicial candidate was winning the county by 25 points. Sara Innamorato, the new executive, had won a state legislative seat as a DSA member, but broke with it and renounced socialism as Republicans warned that she and the DA candidate would turn the area into San Francisco.
2) Rs picked up a few city and county races with anti-crime, anti-homeless camp messaging. But they lost where this stuff just wasn't as much of an issue. They flopped hard in Indianapolis, where the Dem mayor had hired a ton of new cops - people just didn't buy that he was a police defunder, while he trashed the GOP nominee for being a Trump supporter.
3) The "defund" stuff also seems to have petered out in legislative races, because no Democrat in a competitive seat is dumb enough to say "defund the police." It really does look like people have separated municipal/DA etc races, where the winners can change policy, with legislative races, where to prove that a Democrat will cut police funding you need to stretch and say "he's endorsed by defund the police activists" (which is always going to be true because of the progressive groups that endorsed "defund" during the 10 minutes when it was trending).
The key Virginia race, in Loudoun County, had a Dem prosecutor running against a wealthy Republican who kept insisting that she would let criminals run free. Like, an ad where a guy broke into a house and thanked Russet Perry (the Dem) for making crime legal. At the same time, the Republican was campaigning with the county sheriff who got re-elected *because crime is down.* You just can't fake this stuff after a point.
Also, in NYC, a Democrat won a majority-Asian city council district that had gone hard to the right in recent years by running on a strongly pro-public safety platform. The crime issues had really been hurting Democrats with Asian New Yorkers in recent elections.
In Seattle the first day numbers for our City Council races indicated a hard turn to the Right after many, many cycles of moving ever more Left. A Seattle Right isn't the same as a National Right - Our political spectrum is more like Canada than the US. But the folks ahead are way more "law and order" and "let's see what arresting a lot of homeless people and drug addicts does?" than any candidates that have been successful in past years. We all vote by mail in Seattle and it typically takes about 5 days for all the votes to get counted and during that period there has been historically an 8% to 12% shift Left as more progressive votes seem to vote later. That may flip a few close seats here so we get a fairly balanced council. In my district the more progressive candidate is only down by 400 votes so almost any shift left is going mean he wins. (It made for a weird election night party vibe. "We are only down by 400 votes so we are probably, almost certainly going to win" is a weird thing to toast to) But as of today, the results look pretty shocking and it seems possible he may end up the only real progressive on a council that previously had numerous self declared socialists and where he was previously viewed as very middle of the road.
As an interesting update. The votes did seem to swing a bit left in the second day count but not as much as folks expected. (the closest race narrowed from a 400 vote margin to a 200 vote margin.) It turns out that is because someone sent envelopes full of crushed white powder that appears to be fent in the mail to the King County Elections office and the offices of several other county election offices in the Washington causing building evacuations and slowing the vote count. Election work animus and election denialism is not common in King County at all. Fascinating to see how even an incredibly small faction of a community having those feelings can stick a wrench in the works of democracy. In this case no one got hurt and it just put the count back by a day but still not a good sign for how smooth the elections might run in 2024.
Hard right? Really?? They’re just normal liberals. I guess relative to Kshama Sawant they are much more right but 99.9 percent of the population is much more right of that lunatic
I acknowledged that the political spectrum in Seattle isn't a good match to the rest of the country. It is more similar to Canada or Scandinavia. In my precinct of 296 voters only five voted for the Republican Candidate for Governor and only three for Trump. We don't have a "hard right" in the sense that we do at the National level but that doesn't mean there isn't important daylight between candidates. In Seattle the current divides are around whether we should impose more progressive taxation or is there just fat to be cut; should we continue focusing on housing and expanded treatment services to address homeless encampment and drug addiction or should we shift to using police power and jails; should the police reform continue to be push in the face of a police union that opposes all changes or should we trust the police do whatever they think is best so they can start responding to anything, and should we support increasing density in the City by making it easier to build low-income and market housing or should we continue to prioritize neighbor input and neighborhood character even if that means more expensive and slower development. For a City dealing with a serious crisis of budget shortfalls, exploding numbers of homeless and ODs, a police force that is currently not responding at all to many 911 calls about violence, and housing prices that continue to skyrocket, those are actually pretty important questions for folks day to day lives. The voters for the last several election cycles have been firm is wanting the first option to all of those questions. This year that seems to overwhelmingly prefer the second.
Also many of the candidates were hardly part of some left wing fringe. Andrew Lewis is losing quite badly in the 7th District. He is someone who has been referred to by our local press as "someone who gives the strong impression of having lost his virginity on a yacht" and "Seattle's straight Pete Buttigieg." He is a former assistant city attorney. He is a progressive centrist not a Democratic Socialist. He just pissed off folks in Magnolia by telling them that in order to keep homeless people from camping in the area, the City would need to provide somewhere else for them to sleep and so it would be helpful if they wouldn't fight every attempt to put a tiny house village of sheds folks could sleep in the neighborhood short term or long term supportive housing in their neighborhood.
Sawant wasn't advocating Maoism. Pretending that the Democratic Socialists running in local races in the Pacific Northwest are communists let alone Mao is bad faith and unhelpful. If people don't like their ideas they should debate them on the merits not pretend they are something they are not. She was to the left of probably 90% of Seattle voters. She would be left of 99% of voters in the Country. (She would probably be left of about 70% of voters in Vancouver, BC or Copenhagen) But she was apparently wasn't that far to the left of the voters in her district though because she won every election she was in. I wasn't a Sawant fan. I thought she was self-aggrandizing and a poor communicator. I was frequently frustrated when she would manage to badly hurt the causes we agreed upon. The decision to call a previously uncontroversial business head tax an "Amazon Tax" and get Jeff Bezos' panties in a knot and willing to pour money into fighting it being a great example. I don't think that there is a reason folks need to run as Democratic Socialists in a city where there are already folks identifying as Democrats who are just as progressive on every issues. But no one was running as a Communist in this general election.
Fair enough. But FOX News has folks thinking that Seattle is now a anarchist pinko hellscape run by Maoists. In that context, tongue in cheek characterizations can confirm misinformation whether that is the author's intent or not. I recently got back from a vacation at resort in Mexico with my parents. Folks from all the the US who were staying there were asking me in all sincerity if we were okay given what was happening in Seattle and how soon we planned to move whenever we told them where we were from. It was pretty surreal. Those folks clearing believe the city is run by Maoist and is on fire.
For me the take-home message to Democrats is to recognize how many people find their culture-war positions ridiculous or even repulsive. If they would stop saying stupid stuff, they'd consistently win elections.
I think Biden wins in 2024 and then Gretchen, Andy, and Gavin are all trying to get the nomination in 2028. Kamala will try too but unsuccessfully because nobody likes her. Ultimately Gretchen will win because she will have had a less hostile legislature and thus actually have accomplished more while Andy is thwarted by Republicans at every turn.
What other Dem governors might shake out? I’m keeping my eyes on Roy Cooper (NC), Maura Healy (MA), and Laura Kelly (KS).
For all the good news for the Democrats from yesterday’s results, the concerns about Biden remains. While issues like abortion can move the dial in many settings, I don’t think that most voters focus on such substantive issues when considering presidential candidates in the general election. Rather, their perception of the candidate is the most influential.
In this regard, I sense that it is not Biden’s relative or absolute age that matters so much as the fact that he looks, well, awfully old. Without going into details, he does not come across as strong, focused and fully engaged; Trump, despite lacking any substance whatsoever, usually seems lively and confident.
I wonder what would happen if Biden leaned into his image, getting away from the aviators and the stiff-legged walk in favor of acting his age. Put on a cardigan and talk conversationally with people. Stay away from jargon and anything that seems like selling -- that’s Trump’s thing. Instead, talk about some concrete actions with visible results. Rather than talk about the American dream or a lot of abstract matters, focus on where things were when he took over, what remedies were considered (and why) and how things have gone. Maybe he can be the first President to admit error -- explain why the Afghanistan withdrawal and inflation were worse than expected and what they did (and are doing) about it.
Biden was elected as the not-Trump but I don’t think that’s going to get moderate voters interested in voting. People need to see him as hands-on, pragmatic and caring, focused on effective government less than social issues. Uncle Joe can talk plainly with ordinary folks about challenges at the border, the need for both short-term efforts to reduce the numbers of people crossing the border and long term changes to our immigration laws and foreign aid programs that would allow America to approach immigration and asylum rationally. Unlike Reagan, who had the avuncular older man style but no real understanding (or interest) in governing, Biden actually knows a lot about the issues and how government deals with them. His age is a problem because his team keeps on trying -- in vain -- to make him seem younger, essentially conceding age as a problem without retaining the experience and mature calm that can go along with it.
Matt should totally write the "raspberry soul" piece (although Kate shouldn't have to edit it)
He just said on Twitter "Should I do the raspberry/soul column?", so it must be tempting...
I just want to say that reading the smart, respectful and well-considered comments here really have validated my decision to subscribe to Slow Boring recently and to leave social media two years ago. THIS is where I can really get sucked into a screen for an hour and actually come out of it smarter and happier about my fellow humans. Been awhile, let me tell ya.
"I’m not going to do a 2,000 word column on “here’s why your raspberry-sized fetus doesn’t have a soul.”"
2,000 words is a bit much but If you want to persuade someone that an 8-week fetus which looks an AWFUL LOT like a tiny human, or a 12-week fetus which looks even more like a human and can form a fist and suck its thumb, is not actually a person deserving of our protection, I think it's reasonable for us to expect SOME effort on your part, IDK, I'm just saying.
I always find the assertion that anti-abortion folks hold a very sincere religion-based belief that it is, in fact, murder hard to swallow. If you really believed that it was infanticide and millions of children a year were being murdered, would you really just vote every couple years and that’s it?
Seems like some large portion is disliking it, and wanting to do “something” about it, but not actually believing it’s really murder.
Not what seems like would be necessary if a hundred million people in the country sincerely thought they literally were murdering children though.
24th thought: your SB school board candidate lost :(
It was a close race! 51-49. Lost by 39 votes in the highest turnout election for our city.
I’m late to the party today, but a thought on why Republicans pushing the trans issues isn’t enough to cancel out the abortion issue and gain center or center left votes:
People who worry about the advances in the transgender situation don’t believe this is a political issue at all--in fact, they (we/I) are explicitly trying to depoliticize it. “Gender-affirming healthcare” has been legal for years, and it wasn’t until the US model of care jumped the rails of ethical and evidence-based protocol that some of us started to freak out, and thus now are looking to lawsuits and legislation to keep the medical establishment in check.
Abortion, however, has never enjoyed nation-wide support or apathy, and has always been a political issue, and one that affects far more people personally than transgender issues--although I think that is changing rapidly as the number of kids who ID as trans skyrockets, and women’s sports are increasingly allowing trans women to compete--and win--competitions.
Hasn't low turnout been beneficial for Democrats for a long time? Low turnout helping Democrats is why a bunch of school board elections are held on randoms days in like May or August. Basically only teachers come out to vote on those days, so teachers end up electing their managers.
On the trans issue, the reality is the only people who care deeply about this, are the usual reactionaries for the usual reactionary reasons and some freaked out centrists living in D+40 districts, or people who work in disproportionately deep blue jobs.
If you try to make a national issue out of it, as the GOP has, you look like an obsessed weirdo. Maybe you can with a school board race (note though in Loudoun County where it was big news, the Dem's kept control and Moms 4 Liberty candidates ate crap even in conservative areas), but there is gonig to be no massive backlash among voters, because most voters don't care, and will continue not to care, because it turns out, despite what some supposed former liberals post online, there are not that many schools where 1/4 of the kids are changing their gender or whatever.
On the topic to abortion...I think the biggest threat to abortion rights at the federal level is not Congress passing an abortion ban, but executive action taken by a Republican president. In particular, the possibility of a president Trump replacing the FDA head with someone who will revoke FDA approval of not just the pill, but every abortion-related medical procedure, an outcome that would be tantamount to a zero-exception nationwide abortion ban from conception, but without needing Congress to pass a law to enact such a ban.
The Biden re-election campaign would do well to bring this up.
“But I think it’s also in part because abortion rights is an almost uniquely uninteresting topic to debate — it’s what most people think versus a religious doctrine that you can’t really disprove or debunk.”
Matt,
Not to troll or nitpick, but I’ve seen you refer to this as a “religious” issue a couple of times, which it certainly is in one sense. But you can still get to the question life scientifically and philosophically via secular reasoning. Thus, it’s not just a “religious doctrine” versus what most people believe.
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/06/13254/
Just wanted to share. Thanks for a great thread!
Fair. But there are secular arguments, and I think many secular people are too dismissive of those arguments just because religious people make them, too.
I think those suspicions are real. I would only observe again that a lot of reason, even though it is used by religious people, is valid and logical. The pro-life movement is an example. Modern embryology states that, scientifically, life begins at conception. Philosophical inquiry into the metaphysics of when life begins can establish life beginning at a certain point, with science then stating when that process begins in the natural world. The logic of this could lead someone to plausibly say that abortion should be banned at the moment of conception, which is what many pro-lifers advocate for, obviously to their political detriment. But politics is messy, and taking political positions that are all logically coherent is often unrealistic. The fact is, most people don't think in those terms (can you imagine a politician in a campaign trying to persuade the public on the philosophical precepts of when life begins to advocate for an abortion ban?), and this is where politics and public opinion come into play. So I don't think they necessarily dispense with reason per se (sometimes they do, of course), but they are trying to use secular inquiry to persuade people to their side. This is a good tactic but it's where most people, *seeing the implications,* will just recoil and not go along with it. And therein lies meeting the public where they are, even with logically coherent arguments and strong convictions.
I think your pornography analogy applies here, too.
Fair enough. I appreciate your honesty and good faith!
“because [Biden] governed somewhat to the left of what people were expecting,”
The whole scene of Biden having to “reconcile” the Warren-Sanders people to his side was ridiculous but harmless for the general election. It only became pernicious when he put some of those guys in positions of power! He did the opposite of what the playbook says, “Campaign in poetry and govern in prose.”
I am a fan of Beshear, but as the son of a popular former governor, I am not sure his success is as replicable outside the state of Kentucky.
You don't mention crime here, but there were a few interesting results in that space.
1) Democrats nominated left-wingers for Allegheny County executive and DA; they nearly lost the first race and lost the second. (The incumbent DA, a Democrat, lost to the primary to criminal justice reformer then just kept running as a Republican.) This while the Democratic judicial candidate was winning the county by 25 points. Sara Innamorato, the new executive, had won a state legislative seat as a DSA member, but broke with it and renounced socialism as Republicans warned that she and the DA candidate would turn the area into San Francisco.
2) Rs picked up a few city and county races with anti-crime, anti-homeless camp messaging. But they lost where this stuff just wasn't as much of an issue. They flopped hard in Indianapolis, where the Dem mayor had hired a ton of new cops - people just didn't buy that he was a police defunder, while he trashed the GOP nominee for being a Trump supporter.
3) The "defund" stuff also seems to have petered out in legislative races, because no Democrat in a competitive seat is dumb enough to say "defund the police." It really does look like people have separated municipal/DA etc races, where the winners can change policy, with legislative races, where to prove that a Democrat will cut police funding you need to stretch and say "he's endorsed by defund the police activists" (which is always going to be true because of the progressive groups that endorsed "defund" during the 10 minutes when it was trending).
The key Virginia race, in Loudoun County, had a Dem prosecutor running against a wealthy Republican who kept insisting that she would let criminals run free. Like, an ad where a guy broke into a house and thanked Russet Perry (the Dem) for making crime legal. At the same time, the Republican was campaigning with the county sheriff who got re-elected *because crime is down.* You just can't fake this stuff after a point.
Also, in NYC, a Democrat won a majority-Asian city council district that had gone hard to the right in recent years by running on a strongly pro-public safety platform. The crime issues had really been hurting Democrats with Asian New Yorkers in recent elections.
https://elections-daily.com/2023/11/08/2023-new-york-city-council-election-recap/
In Seattle the first day numbers for our City Council races indicated a hard turn to the Right after many, many cycles of moving ever more Left. A Seattle Right isn't the same as a National Right - Our political spectrum is more like Canada than the US. But the folks ahead are way more "law and order" and "let's see what arresting a lot of homeless people and drug addicts does?" than any candidates that have been successful in past years. We all vote by mail in Seattle and it typically takes about 5 days for all the votes to get counted and during that period there has been historically an 8% to 12% shift Left as more progressive votes seem to vote later. That may flip a few close seats here so we get a fairly balanced council. In my district the more progressive candidate is only down by 400 votes so almost any shift left is going mean he wins. (It made for a weird election night party vibe. "We are only down by 400 votes so we are probably, almost certainly going to win" is a weird thing to toast to) But as of today, the results look pretty shocking and it seems possible he may end up the only real progressive on a council that previously had numerous self declared socialists and where he was previously viewed as very middle of the road.
As an interesting update. The votes did seem to swing a bit left in the second day count but not as much as folks expected. (the closest race narrowed from a 400 vote margin to a 200 vote margin.) It turns out that is because someone sent envelopes full of crushed white powder that appears to be fent in the mail to the King County Elections office and the offices of several other county election offices in the Washington causing building evacuations and slowing the vote count. Election work animus and election denialism is not common in King County at all. Fascinating to see how even an incredibly small faction of a community having those feelings can stick a wrench in the works of democracy. In this case no one got hurt and it just put the count back by a day but still not a good sign for how smooth the elections might run in 2024.
Hard right? Really?? They’re just normal liberals. I guess relative to Kshama Sawant they are much more right but 99.9 percent of the population is much more right of that lunatic
I acknowledged that the political spectrum in Seattle isn't a good match to the rest of the country. It is more similar to Canada or Scandinavia. In my precinct of 296 voters only five voted for the Republican Candidate for Governor and only three for Trump. We don't have a "hard right" in the sense that we do at the National level but that doesn't mean there isn't important daylight between candidates. In Seattle the current divides are around whether we should impose more progressive taxation or is there just fat to be cut; should we continue focusing on housing and expanded treatment services to address homeless encampment and drug addiction or should we shift to using police power and jails; should the police reform continue to be push in the face of a police union that opposes all changes or should we trust the police do whatever they think is best so they can start responding to anything, and should we support increasing density in the City by making it easier to build low-income and market housing or should we continue to prioritize neighbor input and neighborhood character even if that means more expensive and slower development. For a City dealing with a serious crisis of budget shortfalls, exploding numbers of homeless and ODs, a police force that is currently not responding at all to many 911 calls about violence, and housing prices that continue to skyrocket, those are actually pretty important questions for folks day to day lives. The voters for the last several election cycles have been firm is wanting the first option to all of those questions. This year that seems to overwhelmingly prefer the second.
Also many of the candidates were hardly part of some left wing fringe. Andrew Lewis is losing quite badly in the 7th District. He is someone who has been referred to by our local press as "someone who gives the strong impression of having lost his virginity on a yacht" and "Seattle's straight Pete Buttigieg." He is a former assistant city attorney. He is a progressive centrist not a Democratic Socialist. He just pissed off folks in Magnolia by telling them that in order to keep homeless people from camping in the area, the City would need to provide somewhere else for them to sleep and so it would be helpful if they wouldn't fight every attempt to put a tiny house village of sheds folks could sleep in the neighborhood short term or long term supportive housing in their neighborhood.
Sawant wasn't advocating Maoism. Pretending that the Democratic Socialists running in local races in the Pacific Northwest are communists let alone Mao is bad faith and unhelpful. If people don't like their ideas they should debate them on the merits not pretend they are something they are not. She was to the left of probably 90% of Seattle voters. She would be left of 99% of voters in the Country. (She would probably be left of about 70% of voters in Vancouver, BC or Copenhagen) But she was apparently wasn't that far to the left of the voters in her district though because she won every election she was in. I wasn't a Sawant fan. I thought she was self-aggrandizing and a poor communicator. I was frequently frustrated when she would manage to badly hurt the causes we agreed upon. The decision to call a previously uncontroversial business head tax an "Amazon Tax" and get Jeff Bezos' panties in a knot and willing to pour money into fighting it being a great example. I don't think that there is a reason folks need to run as Democratic Socialists in a city where there are already folks identifying as Democrats who are just as progressive on every issues. But no one was running as a Communist in this general election.
Fair enough. But FOX News has folks thinking that Seattle is now a anarchist pinko hellscape run by Maoists. In that context, tongue in cheek characterizations can confirm misinformation whether that is the author's intent or not. I recently got back from a vacation at resort in Mexico with my parents. Folks from all the the US who were staying there were asking me in all sincerity if we were okay given what was happening in Seattle and how soon we planned to move whenever we told them where we were from. It was pretty surreal. Those folks clearing believe the city is run by Maoist and is on fire.
Always like seeing your appearances here! Good stuff.