NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, March 13th, 2024

Jessica Bateman, Lisa Parshley ready to provide orderly succession in 22nd LD

Last month, Sen­a­tor Sam Hunt (D‑22nd Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict: Olympia) announced that he would not be seek­ing reelec­tion to the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate this year, cre­at­ing an open seat in a reli­ably blue district.

When sen­a­tors retire, it’s very com­mon for one of their coun­ter­parts in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to move across the rotunda.

Of Hunt’s two coun­ter­parts, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jes­si­ca Bate­man has decid­ed to run for the Sen­ate, with her seat­mate Beth Doglio telling McClatchy’s Shau­na Sow­ers­by she’s hap­py in the House and plans to stay there.

Bate­man wrote in a state­ment that she is “excit­ed about the oppor­tu­ni­ty” to work with law­mak­ers in the oth­er cham­ber of the Wash­ing­ton Legislature.

Bate­man has Sen­a­tor Hunt’s endorse­ment. In a state­ment, Hunt wrote, “As an Olympia Coun­cil mem­ber, 22nd Dis­trict rep­re­sen­ta­tive and com­mu­ni­ty leader, Jes­si­ca has demon­strat­ed a keen aware­ness of the needs of our com­mu­ni­ties and been effec­tive at get­ting results that move us all for­ward. She has my full sup­port to rep­re­sent the dis­trict as our next State Senator.”

In an inter­view with the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, Bate­man stressed her long­stand­ing rela­tion­ship with Sen­a­tor Hunt. “When I even­tu­al­ly ran for city coun­cil, he was the sec­ond per­son that endorsed me,” Bate­man said. “So I have a long, very famil­iar, and very pos­i­tive work­ing rela­tion­ship with him.”

Bate­man sees Hunt as a men­tor, and although she acknowl­edges they have dif­fer­ent leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties, Bate­man wants to hon­or Hunt’s com­mit­ment to pub­lic ser­vice and hopes to learn from his lead­er­ship style.

“In addi­tion to being an effec­tive leg­is­la­tor, he’s known for being kind of an incred­i­ble human and real­ly work­ing well with peo­ple and being real­ly lik­able, and I think that that real­ly helps when it comes to get­ting leg­is­la­tion passed and being effec­tive,” Bate­man said. “And that’s some­thing I def­i­nite­ly hope to emulate.”

Bate­man is also endorsed by Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­i­lyn Strick­land, whose con­gres­sion­al dis­trict encom­pass­es Washington’s 22nd, as well as Wash­ing­ton Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Den­ny Heck. Both high­light­ed Bateman’s work on hous­ing pol­i­cy and repro­duc­tive care in their endorsements.

As a rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Bate­man has focused pri­mar­i­ly on hous­ing and home­less­ness pol­i­cy.  “We absolute­ly have to have afford­able hous­ing for all Wash­ing­to­ni­ans.” Bate­man said. “It’s the largest line item in any fam­i­ly’s bud­get, and young peo­ple need to be able to see a future in the com­mu­ni­ties where they are.”

Bate­man is well known for hav­ing  spon­sored leg­is­la­tion to ease the cre­ation of miss­ing mid­dle hous­ing – House Bill 1110.

Bate­man col­lab­o­rat­ed with Sen­a­tors Trudeau, Kud­er­er, and Sal­daña on HB 1110, and she hopes to con­tin­ue these rela­tion­ships if she is elect­ed to the Sen­ate this fall. The bill passed with broad bipar­ti­san sup­port last year.

Bate­man cur­rent­ly chairs the Health Care and Well­ness Com­mit­tee, and in addi­tion to House Bill 1110, Bateman’s cam­paign web­site pro­motes her work on remov­ing bar­ri­ers to build tiny homes and secur­ing a $1.2 bil­lion bud­get carve­out to address the hous­ing cri­sis statewide. Pre­vi­ous­ly, as a city coun­cil mem­ber, Bate­man worked to des­ig­nate Olympia as a sanc­tu­ary city to shel­ter migrants.

Dur­ing Bateman’s time as a state rep­re­sen­ta­tive, the House tran­si­tioned away from hav­ing bifur­cat­ed com­mit­tees to address hous­ing: the Local Gov­ern­ment Com­mit­tee wrote zon­ing laws while a sep­a­rate com­mit­tee focused on home­less­ness and rent pol­i­cy. Bate­man cur­rent­ly serves on the new­ly com­bined Hous­ing Committee.

Bate­man told NPI she cred­its many of the recent hous­ing bills passed in the House to hav­ing a sin­gle com­mit­tee to address both zon­ing laws and home­less­ness. In what she describes as “the year of hous­ing,” the Hous­ing Com­mit­tee was able to pass a num­ber of stalled bills. Bate­man said of this suc­cess: “I think a big part of that was because leg­is­la­tors were hear­ing all of the holis­tic, the prob­lem and the solu­tion in that one committee.”

With two com­mit­tees, Bate­man believes leg­is­la­tors on the com­mit­tee that hears zon­ing pol­i­cy are unlike­ly to make osten­si­bly unpop­u­lar changes to land use because they don’t hear from con­stituents that can’t afford rent or have aspi­ra­tions of home ownership.

In the Sen­ate, Bate­man sees the pos­si­bil­i­ty of assist­ing with anoth­er restruc­tur­ing to merge the bifur­cat­ed com­mit­tees into a sin­gle Hous­ing Committee.

She also hopes to serve on the Health and Well­ness Com­mit­tee, con­tin­u­ing to work on leg­is­la­tion she helped pass in her cur­rent position.

Mean­while, Bate­man has endorsed Dr. Lisa Parsh­ley, who is a cur­rent Olympia Coun­cil Mem­ber, to suc­ceed her in the House.

Addi­tion­al endorse­ments for Dr. Parshley’s cam­paign came from cur­rent and for­mer Olympia May­ors Don­tae Payne and Cheryl Shel­by, as well as local lead­ers from Thurston County’s largest communities.

“On the Olympia City Coun­cil, I’ve applied my per­spec­tive as a vet­eri­nar­i­an, sci­en­tist, and small busi­ness own­er to ana­lyze com­plex prob­lems and pro­mote the health and well-being of our com­mu­ni­ties,” Parsh­ley said in her cam­paign announce­ment. “In the State Leg­is­la­ture, I will con­tin­ue to lead on build­ing healthy com­mu­ni­ties root­ed in our shared val­ues of equi­ty, oppor­tu­ni­ty, and safe­ty for every 22nd LD neigh­bor and beyond.”

Like Bate­man, Dr. Parsh­ley says she’ll pro­vide a leg­isla­tive focus on tack­ling home­less­ness and afford­able hous­ing. As a city coun­cil mem­ber, Dr. Parsh­ley helped devel­op Thurston County’s first Human Rights Com­mis­sion and extend Olympia’s sanc­tu­ary city sta­tus to include repro­duc­tive rights and healthcare.

In an email exchange with NPI, Parsh­ley iden­ti­fied four major areas of focus, all of which have been declared emer­gen­cies dur­ing her six years on city coun­cil: home­less­ness, the opi­oid cri­sis, racism, and cli­mate change. Parsh­ley high­light­ed her work in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er city coun­cil juris­dic­tions to address these issues, and Parsh­ley feels moti­vat­ed to take the next step by run­ning for House.

“I want to take all that I have learned in the last six plus years, work­ing on the front line of so many inter­sect­ing issues fac­ing our com­mu­ni­ties, to the leg­is­la­ture where I can bet­ter impact and reduce the bar­ri­ers to the work of so many com­mu­ni­ties in Wash­ing­ton,” Parsh­ley wrote, lay­ing the foun­da­tion for her cam­paign for the seat that Bate­man has held for the last few years.

In his retire­ment let­ter, Sen­a­tor Hunt remarked, “It is time for some­one else to climb in the sad­dle.” Democ­rats are now seek­ing to estab­lish a clear and order­ly line of suc­ces­sion, allow­ing resources and atten­tion to flow to oth­er dis­tricts where the par­ty has oppor­tu­ni­ties to grow its majorities.

Wednesday, March 13th, 2024

Despite having withdrawn, Nikki Haley still garnered over 20% of the early vote in Washington’s Republican presidential primary

Wash­ing­ton vot­ers used the state’s low-inten­si­ty pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry to help put both Joe Biden and Don­ald Trump over the top with majori­ties need­ed for their par­ty nom­i­na­tions last night. But a size­able chunk of the the elec­torate found ways to reg­is­ter dis­sat­is­fac­tion with their 2024 choic­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the GOP side, with Trump’s near­ly-decade long takeover of the Repub­li­can Party.

A quar­ter those vot­ing in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry cast bal­lots for can­di­dates who’ve already dropped out of the race. Nik­ki Haley was top­ping 20% of the statewide vote, with more than a third in pop­u­lous King County’s ear­ly count. She was over 30% in San Juan and Jef­fer­son Counties.

Joe Biden was bet­ter off. The Pres­i­dent was receiv­ing 85.68% of bal­lots count­ed from those vot­ing in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic primary.

A late pre­elec­tion protest had urged vot­ers to pick “Uncom­mit­ted Del­e­gates” as a protest against Biden’s sup­port for Israel as it con­tin­ues to bomb Gaza.

From the Colum­bia Plateau to the Pacif­ic Ocean, how­ev­er, the Biden votes were pil­ing up. “Uncom­mit­ted” was get­ting only 7.6% of the vote and bare­ly top­ping 10% in King Coun­ty. “Uncom­mit­ted” was the choice of 5% of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in Spokane and Clark coun­ties, and run­ning below 4% in blue-col­lar Grays Har­bor Coun­ty, an area of Wash­ing­ton that has become increas­ing­ly Republican.

The results con­firm a long­stand­ing Wash­ing­ton tra­di­tion, summed up by a ven­er­a­ble slo­gan: The emp­ty drum bangs loudest.

Cham­pi­ons of the Pales­tin­ian cause can put demon­stra­tors on I‑5, but they aren’t mus­ter­ing the votes to meet the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s thresh­old for receiv­ing so much as one del­e­gate. Pro­test­ers march through the streets chant­i­ng, “The peo­ple, unit­ed, will nev­er be defeat­ed”. But when bal­lots are mailed in, they lose.

The state has Demo­c­ra­t­ic tra­di­tions, though it has often shunned insur­gent Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates. Years ago, future par­ty chair Howard Dean drew 8,000 peo­ple to a sum­mer ral­ly in West­lake Park. He was clob­bered half-a-year lat­er by Sen­a­tor John Ker­ry in the state’s 2004 precinct cau­cus­es. A Dean backer, U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim McDer­mott, was out­vot­ed in his home precinct.

Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders filled are­nas with cheer­ing sup­port­ers and dom­i­nat­ed the state’s 2016 cau­cus­es. How­ev­er, Hillary Clin­ton received a greater num­ber of votes in the mean­ing­less Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry that Wash­ing­ton State held sev­er­al weeks lat­er. In 2020, days after a big Sanders ral­ly at the Taco­ma Dome, Joe Biden won our pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, hav­ing spent all of $600 in the state.

The anti-Trump vote does not bode well for the Repub­li­cans’ fall tick­et in Wash­ing­ton State. Ex-Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dave Reichert is no friend of “the Don­ald”, but faces the drag of Trump atop the tick­et. In 2020, Trump man­aged to lose King Coun­ty by a mar­gin of almost half a mil­lion voters.

A far-right ultra MAGA Repub­li­can, Joe Kent, seems head­ed for a rematch with Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Marie Glue­semkamp Perez in South­west Washington’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict. In Clark Coun­ty, the district’s main pop­u­la­tion cen­ter, a quar­ter of Repub­li­can votes were going against Trump.

We have near­ly eight months until the Novem­ber elec­tion, but Tues­day night pro­duced a cou­ple of trends. Despite com­plaints, a great many Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers like Biden. And while Nik­ki Haley did­n’t beat Don­ald Trump, her per­for­mance sug­gests there could be more cracks in Trump’s elec­toral coali­tion than in Biden’s.

Tuesday, March 12th, 2024

As expected, Joe Biden and Donald Trump cruise in Washington presidential primary

Joe Biden and Don­ald Trump have pre­vailed in Wash­ing­ton’s 2024 pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, bring­ing the allo­ca­tion phase of the Ever­green State’s major par­ty cau­cus and con­ven­tion cycles to an anti­cli­mac­tic conclusion.

With 1,254,074 total bal­lots count­ed so far, the two pre­sump­tive nom­i­nees — our incum­bent pres­i­dent and his neo­fas­cist pre­de­ces­sor — have each cruised to vic­to­ry, van­quish­ing their with­drawn oppo­nents with­out any difficulty.

Biden had 85.68% of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote as of press time, with Dean Phillips and Mar­i­anne Williamson in the sin­gle dig­its, at 3.04% and 2.65%, respec­tive­ly. “Uncom­mit­ted del­e­gates” had the sup­port of 7.44% of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers, well short of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s fif­teen per­cent via­bil­i­ty thresh­old, mak­ing it unlike­ly that Wash­ing­ton will send any uncom­mit­ted del­e­gates to the 2024 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, as is the case in Michi­gan.

Don­ald Trump had 73.79% of the Repub­li­can vote, dwarf­ing Nik­ki Haley, who had 21.6% as of Elec­tion Night. Ron DeSan­tis received 2.17%, Chris Christie 1.06%, and Vivek Ramaswamy received 0.86%. These results are in line with what NPI’s polling sug­gest­ed could hap­pen. Last month, in a sur­vey of Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry vot­ers con­duct­ed for NPI by Civiqs, we found Trump polling in the sev­en­ties, with his rivals all in the sin­gle dig­its.

As we sus­pect­ed she might, Haley is out­per­form­ing the poll, in which she only mus­tered 8%. Haley appears to have reeled in unde­cid­ed vot­ers and also received the sup­port of some folks who were orig­i­nal­ly for Ron DeSan­tis. But, sad­ly for Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy and the future of the par­ty, Trump is still defeat­ing her by a more than 3‑to‑1 mar­gin. Even here in the Ever­green State, where pro­gres­sive Repub­li­cans like Dan Evans and John Spell­man once gov­erned, Repub­li­can vot­ers are com­mit­ted to Trump — an insur­rec­tion­ist and sex­u­al predator.

Though Repub­li­cans were once elec­toral­ly dom­i­nant in Wash­ing­ton, the state has not vot­ed for a Repub­li­can for Pres­i­dent since 1984. Repub­li­cans haven’t won a U.S. Sen­ate race since 1994 or a guber­na­to­r­i­al race since 1980, either.

Democ­rats present­ly hold every posi­tion in the state’s exec­u­tive depart­ment and hope to con­tin­ue their win­ning streak in the com­ing pres­i­den­tial election.

“Thank you to every vot­er who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry process,” said Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Chair Shasti Conrad.

“Tonight’s result demon­strates the over­whelm­ing sup­port in our state for Pres­i­dent Biden and Vice Pres­i­dent Har­ris’ vision for Amer­i­ca. An Amer­i­ca where we lift each oth­er up, defend our hard won civ­il rights, and com­mit our­selves to a Demo­c­ra­t­ic future that respects the rule of law.”

“Pres­i­dent Biden has already gar­nered more than 100,000 votes over Don­ald Trump in Wash­ing­ton state and we expect that lead to only grow over the com­ing weeks. Pres­i­dent Biden’s State of the Union laid out what’s at stake in this elec­tion. This is a bat­tle for the soul of our nation and we are full steam ahead towards Novem­ber and Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ries up and down the ballot.”

Don­ald Trump ordi­nar­i­ly takes lit­tle notice of Wash­ing­ton State. But tonight he is, because thanks to the loy­al­ty of Repub­li­can vot­ers here, he has clinched the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. “It is my great hon­or to be rep­re­sent­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty as its Pres­i­den­tial Nom­i­nee,” Trump said. He then hurled sev­er­al sen­tences of invec­tive at Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, who he despises.

Tuesday, March 12th, 2024

Joe Biden clinches the 2024 Democratic nomination for President of the United States

Incum­bent U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has secured enough nation­al con­ven­tion del­e­gates to clinch the 2024 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, observers not­ed today. Biden’s renom­i­na­tion is now effec­tive­ly assured, though it has not been in doubt giv­en that he had no cred­i­ble oppo­si­tion from oth­er Democrats.

The Biden-Har­ris cam­paign and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty both cel­e­brat­ed the news.

“Four years ago, I ran for pres­i­dent because I believed we were in a bat­tle for the soul of this nation,” said Pres­i­dent Joe Biden. “Because of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, we won that bat­tle, and now I am hon­ored that the broad coali­tion of vot­ers rep­re­sent­ing the rich diver­si­ty of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty across the coun­try have put their faith in me once again to lead our par­ty – and our coun­try – in a moment when the threat Trump pos­es is greater than ever.”

“Since deliv­er­ing the State of the Union address, I have been trav­el­ing the coun­try hear­ing direct­ly from vot­ers about what’s on their minds. The Amer­i­can peo­ple are work­ing tire­less­ly every sin­gle day toward a brighter future. Despite the chal­lenges we faced when I took office, we’re in the mid­dle of a come­back: wages are ris­ing faster than infla­tion, jobs are com­ing back, con­sumer con­fi­dence has soared.”

“Amid this progress, we face a sober­ing real­i­ty: Free­dom and democ­ra­cy are at risk here at home in a way they have not been since the Civ­il War.”

“Don­ald Trump is run­ning a cam­paign of resent­ment, revenge, and ret­ri­bu­tion that threat­ens the very idea of Amer­i­ca. He is glo­ri­fy­ing dic­ta­tors and pledg­ing to become one him­self on day one. He seeks to bury the truth of Jan­u­ary 6 by vow­ing to par­don the insur­rec­tion­ists who placed a dag­ger at the throat of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. This week, he vowed to cut seniors’ hard-earned Medicare and Social Secu­ri­ty. He’s root­ing for the econ­o­my to crash, push­ing tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, and plan­ning to ban abor­tion nationwide.

“Vot­ers now have a choice to make about the future of this coun­try. Are we going to stand up and defend our democ­ra­cy or let oth­ers tear it down? Will we restore the right to choose and pro­tect our free­doms or let extrem­ists take them away?”

“Will we final­ly make the wealthy pay their fair share in tax­es – or will we allow cor­po­rate greed to run ram­pant on the backs of the mid­dle class? I believe that the Amer­i­can peo­ple will choose to keep us mov­ing into the future. With every cri­sis, Amer­i­ca has always emerged stronger and more unit­ed on the oth­er side. This Novem­ber will be no dif­fer­ent – and I believe we will do it together.”

“From the start, the Pres­i­dent and I nev­er took this re-nom­i­na­tion process for grant­ed,” said Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris in a state­ment. “We have cam­paigned in earnest because we know doing so is an impor­tant step towards earn­ing reelec­tion and will help us mobi­lize the vot­ers we need in November.”

“Now, the gen­er­al elec­tion tru­ly begins, and the con­trast could not be clear­er. Don­ald Trump is a threat to our democ­ra­cy and our fun­da­men­tal free­doms. He is proud of his role in over­turn­ing Roe, and has talked open­ly about plans for a nation­wide abor­tion ban. He rou­tine­ly prais­es author­i­tar­i­an lead­ers and has him­self vowed to be a dic­ta­tor on Day One.”

“Just this week, he said that cuts to Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare would be on the table if he receives a sec­ond term. Each of these stances ought to be con­sid­ered dis­qual­i­fy­ing by itself; tak­en togeth­er, they reveal the for­mer Pres­i­dent to be an exis­ten­tial dan­ger to our country.”

“With his State of the Union speech last week, Pres­i­dent Biden pas­sion­ate­ly pre­sent­ed our alter­na­tive vision. We will reduce costs for fam­i­lies, make hous­ing more afford­able, and raise the min­i­mum wage. We will restore Roe, pro­tect vot­ing rights, and final­ly address our gun vio­lence epi­dem­ic. The Amer­i­can peo­ple over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port this agen­da over Don­ald Trump’s extreme ideas, and that will pro­pel our cam­paign in the months ahead.”

“This year, as we brought voic­es of vot­ers of col­or to the fore­front and embarked on the most inclu­sive Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry in his­to­ry, Democ­rats across the coun­try – from South Car­oli­na to Neva­da, from Michi­gan to Geor­gia – have over­whelm­ing­ly cho­sen Pres­i­dent Joe Biden to be our party’s pre­sump­tive nominee.

“Four years ago, Pres­i­dent Biden ran on the val­ues that bring us togeth­er as Amer­i­cans: hon­esty, decen­cy, and fair­ness,” said DNC Chair Jaime Harrison.

“While Pres­i­dent Biden and Democ­rats have made his­toric progress in this first term by help­ing cre­ate 15 mil­lion jobs, tak­ing on Big Phar­ma and low­er­ing pre­scrip­tion drug costs, and rebuild­ing our nation’s infra­struc­ture, there is more work to be done. Make no mis­take: this year’s elec­tion will decide the future of our democ­ra­cy. Don­ald Trump is run­ning a cam­paign focused on revenge, ret­ri­bu­tion, and his own self-inter­est. Pres­i­dent Biden is run­ning a cam­paign focused on what makes our coun­try so great: the Amer­i­can people.”

“Pres­i­dent Biden under­stands that our free­doms, our democ­ra­cy, and the very future of our coun­try are at stake – and once again, he will meet this moment and bring Democ­rats togeth­er this November.”

“As we move for­ward in this pri­ma­ry sea­son and set our sights towards the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion this sum­mer, we are enor­mous­ly proud of the work we have done to lift up the voic­es of vot­ers who have been too often left behind, and look for­ward to our con­ven­tion in Chica­go where we will offi­cial­ly nom­i­nate Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris as our nom­i­nees for Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. Let’s fin­ish the job.”

“Amer­i­ca spoke, and today, Joe Biden has become the pre­sump­tive Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. We have arrived at this moment because mil­lions of Amer­i­cans made their voic­es heard, choos­ing Joe Biden’s vision of free­dom and progress for all Americans.

“As vot­ers across the coun­try con­tin­ue to put their faith in the Biden-Har­ris tick­et through­out the pri­ma­ry, we are now look­ing ahead to the next step in our demo­c­ra­t­ic process and prepar­ing a con­ven­tion in Chica­go where Pres­i­dent Biden, Vice Pres­i­dent Har­ris, and Democ­rats will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell our sto­ry direct­ly to the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” explained con­ven­tion chair Miny­on Moore.

“We will tell a sto­ry of the his­toric Biden-Har­ris record: cre­at­ing good-pay­ing jobs, low­er­ing costs, pass­ing bipar­ti­san bills, and deliv­er­ing for the mid­dle class. We will tell a sto­ry about the stakes of this next elec­tion and how Democ­rats plan to keep mak­ing Amer­i­ca a place of progress and pos­si­bil­i­ties. As we face anoth­er bat­tle for the soul of our nation, we encour­age every Amer­i­can to tune in to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion this sum­mer to cel­e­brate the Biden-Har­ris tick­et and ral­ly around Democ­rats’ vision of a free and fair America.”

Many states still have nom­i­nat­ing events to hold in the mean­time, includ­ing Ore­gon and Ida­ho, which will allo­cate their del­e­gates this spring. Wash­ing­ton’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry con­cludes tonight after a three-week vot­ing period.

Monday, March 11th, 2024

Cult above country: Mitch McConnell again bends the knee to Donald Trump

Don­ald Trump is renowned for unpaid legal bills and stiff­ing con­trac­tors. But he has tak­en on his own kind, refer­ring to influ­en­tial Sen­ate Repub­li­can Leader Mitch McConnell a “bro­ken down crow” and a “dumb son-of-a-bitch.”

McConnell is not dumb. He is the longest serv­ing par­ty leader in U.S. Sen­ate his­to­ry, has rep­re­sent­ed Ken­tucky in the Sen­ate for forty years, and respon­si­ble for con­firm­ing three Supreme Court jus­tices who vot­ed to over­turn Roe v. Wade.

McConnell, eighty-two, is giv­ing up his lead­er­ship duties at year’s end but will stay in the Sen­ate, with his cur­rent term due to end in Jan­u­ary 2027. Don­ald Trump cost Repub­li­cans their Sen­ate major­i­ty in 2020 — the Democ­rats flipped both Geor­gia seats. The Repub­li­cans, bur­dened by the Supreme Court’s abor­tion deci­sion, failed to regain con­trol in 2022 despite many “red wave” predictions.

Yet, despite the ridicule he’s received — and the fact that he pri­vate­ly detests Trump — McConnell has stayed with Biden’s pre­de­ces­sor. He has not only endorsed Trump’s come­back bid, but can be described as Trump’s enabler.

McConnell was there for Trump when the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 2019 passed its first impeach­ment res­o­lu­tion. He moved to shut down the Sen­ate tri­al almost before it began and defend­ed Trump, say­ing: “I’m not an impar­tial juror. ”This is a polit­i­cal process. There’s not any­thing judi­cial about it.”

The Sen­ate Repub­li­cans lead­er­ship, in McConnell’s words, was in “total coor­di­na­tion with the White House counsel’s office.”

In the fall of 2020, as Amer­i­cans pre­pared to elect their Pres­i­dent, U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg breathed her last. After the death of Jus­tice Antonin “Nino” Scalia, McConnell had refused to so much as hold a hear­ing on Pres­i­dent Obama’s nom­i­na­tion of fed­er­al appel­late judge (now Attor­ney Gen­er­al) Mer­rick Gar­land to fill Nino’s seat. The seat was held vacant as polit­i­cal cat­nip for evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers being wooed by Don­ald Trump’s campaign.

In 2020, how­ev­er, with Repub­li­cans still hold­ing a 52–48 major­i­ty, McConnell rushed through con­fir­ma­tion of Jus­tice Amy Coney Bar­rett in just over a month’s time It gave Trump his third Supreme Court appoint­ment and a two-to-one right major­i­ty on the high court. A lav­ish recep­tion in the White House Rose Gar­den sent numer­ous cel­e­brants away with the virus that caus­es COVID-19.

Remak­ing the fed­er­al courts was Trump’s sig­na­ture sell­ing point in lin­ing up reli­gious right sup­port. The court has tak­en into itself qua­si-leg­isla­tive duties and dis­dained prece­dent, act­ing to end affir­ma­tive action in col­lege emis­sions, rolling back fed­er­al author­i­ty under the Clean Water Act and gut­ting a key pro­vi­sion of the 1965 Vot­ing Rights Act signed into law by Pres­i­dent Lyn­don Baines Johnson.

McConnell had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to play statesman.

An insti­tu­tion­al­ist, he was vis­i­bly out­raged and shak­en at the Trump-incit­ed Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion. The senator’s wife, Elaine Chao, quit her job as U.S. Sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion in wake of the insurrection.

McConnell took to the Sen­ate floor, and for once was not dron­ing and bor­ing. “There is no ques­tion, none, that Pres­i­dent Trump is prac­ti­cal­ly, and moral­ly, respon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing the events of that day,” he told col­leagues and the coun­try. He added lat­er: “I feel exhil­a­rat­ed by the fact that this fel­low (Trump) final­ly, total­ly dis­cred­it­ed him­self… He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.”

But McConnell stayed his trig­ger fin­ger. The House vot­ed to impeach the depart­ing Pres­i­dent. The Sen­ate vot­ed 57–43 to con­vict: Sev­en GOP sen­a­tors vot­ed Yeah. McConnell could have fur­nished the addi­tion­al ten votes.

The result: The chance to rid Amer­i­can pol­i­tics of Trump was lost. Trump can run again, and once more endan­ger the Republic.

What is more, McConnell has endorsed him… this a man who accu­rate­ly described the events of Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021 as a “failed insurrection.”

A part of it is par­ti­san. McConnell vot­ed to con­vict Pres­i­dent Clin­ton. He played the role of chief obstruc­tion­ist dur­ing most of Barack Oba­ma’s two terms om tje White House, telling Repub­li­can col­leagues: “The sin­gle most impor­tant thing we want to achieve is for Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to be a one-term president.”

All the while, Trump has kept bang­ing away. He has gone over the bound­aries of racism, mock­ing McConnel­l’s Asian Amer­i­can wife as “Coco Chao.” “I hired his wife,” Trump said of her Cab­i­net appoint­ment, “Did he ever say, ‘Thank you?’”

Lat­er this year, like­ly, col­leagues will line up on the Sen­ate floor to deliv­er McConnell trib­utes. It’s an old boy rit­u­al. It will, how­ev­er, ring hol­low. When it comes to defend­ing our Con­sti­tu­tion, and pre­serv­ing gov­ern­ment by the peo­ple, Mitch McConnell has shown he is a man who could hide in a field of stubble.

Saturday, March 9th, 2024

Book Review: Democracy Awakening explores how elites have subverted American ideals

How, author and his­to­ri­an Heather Cox Richard­son asks, did we get where we are now, with mil­lions of Amer­i­cans fear­ing democ­ra­cy and social­ism as fun­da­men­tal threats to the world’s biggest repub­lic, and an equal if not larg­er num­ber con­vinced the dan­ger lies in the appeal of authoritarianism?

The answer, Richard­son writes in Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing: Notes on the State of Amer­i­ca, is to be found in what Amer­i­cans have been taught about this nation’s his­to­ry. Accord­ing to Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing, there are two prin­ci­pal under­stand­ings of our nation’s ori­gins and sub­se­quent devel­op­ment: the “author­i­tar­i­an” and the “demo­c­ra­t­ic.” Which of these we accept as true large­ly deter­mines our reac­tions to cur­rent events today.

Richard­son approach­es her sub­ject from a pro­gres­sive per­spec­tive. The key to the rise of author­i­tar­i­an­ism in the Unit­ed States, she writes, lies in the “use of lan­guage and false his­to­ry”; a “strong­man warps his­to­ry to gal­va­nize his base.” “This is a book,” Richard­son con­tin­ues, “about how a small group of peo­ple have tried to make us believe our fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples aren’t true.”

She states that the fall of democ­ra­cy and the rise of author­i­tar­i­an­ism in the Unit­ed States today rests on a mis­tak­en his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States. Accord­ing to Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing, his­tor­i­cal ideas play a major causative role in explain­ing the rise of Don­ald Trump and all his move­ment represents.

These two com­pet­ing ori­gin his­to­ries of the Unit­ed States, accord­ing to Richard­son, derive their fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples from dif­fer­ent found­ing documents.

The “demo­c­ra­t­ic” view of Amer­i­can his­to­ry rests on the prin­ci­ples stat­ed in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence. This nation was cre­at­ed, the Dec­la­ra­tion pro­claims, to “dis­solve polit­i­cal bands” with the King of England’s tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment, a gov­ern­ment that taxed the colonists with­out allow­ing them representation.

Richard­son empha­sizes, as well, the Declaration’s inclu­sive lan­guage: the “self-evi­dent truths” that “…all men are cre­at­ed equal, they are endowed by their Cre­ator with cer­tain unalien­able Rights, that among these are Life, Lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness ….” This, accord­ing to the “demo­c­ra­t­ic” ori­gin his­to­ry, has always been the fun­da­men­tal nature and pur­pose of the Unit­ed States, no mat­ter how imper­fect­ly car­ried out over the centuries.

Accord­ing to the “demo­c­ra­t­ic” ori­gin his­to­ry, then, the prin­ci­pal rea­sons for the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War and the cre­ation of the Unit­ed States as a nation were, first, to secure the rights of indi­vid­u­als, and sec­ond, to pro­tect them from tyran­ny. The government’s author­i­ty is derived from the con­sent of the governed.

In con­trast, the “author­i­tar­i­an” expla­na­tion for why the Unit­ed States was cre­at­ed rests not the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, but the Unit­ed States Constitution.
This argu­ment begins with an expla­na­tion of why the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion of 1787 was called. The first nation­al gov­ern­ment for the new Unit­ed States was the Arti­cles of Con­fed­er­a­tion (1781). React­ing to the “tyran­ny” of the British gov­ern­ment, the nation­al gov­ern­ment under the Arti­cles was pur­pose­ly grant­ed lim­it­ed pow­ers. It proved too weak, how­ev­er, to be effective.

Shays’ Rebel­lion (1786), an armed, vio­lent upris­ing of out­raged farm­ers in Mass­a­chu­setts, raised con­cerns among pow­er­ful and wealthy patri­ot lead­ers through­out the new­ly inde­pen­dent Unit­ed States.

They feared anar­chy and the break-down of pub­lic order; the weak cen­tral gov­ern­ment under the Arti­cles was unable to cope with this danger.

Democracy Awakening book cover

Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing: Notes on the State of Amer­i­ca, by Heather Cox Richard­son (Hard­cov­er, Viking)

Cit­ing this his­to­ry, Richard­son sees the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion as an “author­i­tar­i­an” doc­u­ment. It was cre­at­ed out of fear of riots, rebel­lion, mobs, and mass­es by those in posi­tions of pow­er. This “ori­gin sto­ry” under­stands the orig­i­nal pur­pose of gov­ern­ment in the Unit­ed States to be pro­tec­tion from the mass will – from the “mass” of peo­ple in general.

Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing dis­cuss­es in some detail pro­vi­sions of the orig­i­nal Con­sti­tu­tion designed to ensure pow­er remained with elites, rather than the major­i­ty of the people.

For exam­ple, the Framers gave the Elec­toral Col­lege the respon­si­bil­i­ty of choos­ing the Pres­i­dent, instead of hav­ing the posi­tion cho­sen by pop­u­lar vote.

For the upper cham­ber of Con­gress (the Sen­ate), each state, what­ev­er its pop­u­la­tion of phys­i­cal size, was grant­ed two Senators.

For the low­er House, dis­tricts for each House mem­ber were to be of rough­ly equal size. This lim­it­ed the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of cities, with their larg­er, more con­cen­trat­ed pop­u­la­tions. Richard­son also empha­sizes that the Con­sti­tu­tion rec­og­nized and cod­i­fied slav­ery, and the “infe­ri­or­i­ty” of Blacks (espe­cial­ly after the infa­mous Dred Scott Supreme Court deci­sion of 1857).

The “author­i­tar­i­an” view of the ori­gins of the Unit­ed Sates (accord­ing to Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing) is that the Unit­ed States always has been author­i­tar­i­an, elit­ist, clas­sist, and racist. Short­ly after inde­pen­dence, a gov­ern­ment strong enough to main­tain sta­bil­i­ty and order was instituted.

Most of the text of Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing is devot­ed to a broad his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States from the Rev­o­lu­tion through the rise of Don­ald Trump and the attack on the Capi­tol in Jan­u­ary 2021. It is a read­able his­to­ry, con­sis­tent­ly ori­ent­ed to elab­o­rat­ing events, move­ments, and ideas that for­ward­ed either the “author­i­tar­i­an” or the “demo­c­ra­t­ic” sto­ry of the nation’s true pur­pose and origins.

For those famil­iar with Heather Cox Richardson’s oth­er writ­ings, or, more gen­er­al­ly, with the over­all tra­di­tion­al text­book accounts of the Unit­ed States, there is lit­tle in Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing that is new.

On the oth­er hand, if Pro­fes­sor Richardson’s per­spec­tives are nov­el to you, read­ing Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing could be reveal­ing. Her well-devel­oped his­tor­i­cal gen­er­al­iza­tions offer strik­ing per­spec­tives on the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States.

His­tor­i­cal gen­er­al­iza­tions may open our eyes to new ways of view­ing our past. This, in turn, may clar­i­fy what is hap­pen­ing in our own lives.

That is the pri­ma­ry inten­tion of Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing.

In the final analy­sis, how­ev­er, the val­ue of his­tor­i­cal gen­er­al­iza­tions must rest on the extent to which they are accu­rate historically.

All large-scale gen­er­al­iza­tions have excep­tions; the world is too com­plex (as are each of us) to expect oth­er­wise. The ques­tion is: Are the excep­tions suf­fi­cient to inval­i­date the use­ful­ness of the generalizations?

The excep­tions to the over­all the­sis of Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing are numerous.

For exam­ple, the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence does declare “all men” are cre­at­ed equal and there­fore enjoy cer­tain inalien­able rights. In the late eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, how­ev­er, those words car­ried a dif­fer­ent mean­ing than they do today.

The authors of the Dec­la­ra­tion assumed as obvi­ous that most of the pop­u­la­tion was not includ­ed under the rubric “all men.”

The most promi­nent author of the Dec­la­ra­tion, Thomas Jef­fer­son, was a slave­hold­er who believed firm­ly that Blacks were inher­ent­ly inferior.

In addi­tion, women — all women, poor and wealthy, white or Black — Native Amer­i­cans, trades­peo­ple, and cer­tain reli­gious groups were all exclud­ed in the authors’ minds. (Richard­son is cer­tain­ly aware of this real­i­ty; in lat­er chap­ters of Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing, she dis­cuss­es it in some detail.)

In the 20th cen­tu­ry, Ted­dy Roo­sevelt, and the Pro­gres­sive Move­ment, and Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt, and the New Deal, are described as prime exam­ples of the expan­sion of the nation­al government’s demo­c­ra­t­ic respon­si­bil­i­ties. Antitrust leg­is­la­tion under Ted­dy, Social Secu­ri­ty, and sup­port for Labor in the New Deal. are includ­ed as examples.

How­ev­er, it’s also impor­tant to note — and his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate — that both Pres­i­dents Ted­dy Roo­sevelt and Franklin D. Roo­sevelt held racist view. The New Deal often exclud­ed Blacks from its pro­grams; FDR’s admin­is­tra­tion also refused entry to the Unit­ed States to Jew­ish refugees dur­ing World War II. (The Unit­ed States armed forces were not deseg­re­gat­ed until after World War II.)

Anoth­er note­wor­thy exam­ple of our nation’s nuanced his­to­ry is the right wing Repub­li­can Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon. Nixon and his staff were pio­neers in devel­op­ing a racist “south­ern strat­e­gy” to per­suade Demo­c­ra­t­ic, white vot­ers to vote Repub­li­can. His cam­paign uti­lized racist tropes extensively.

How­ev­er, Nixon, this exem­plar of the “author­i­tar­i­an,” elit­ist, racist view of our country’s iden­ti­ty, went fur­ther than any oth­er pres­i­dent, before or since, in his advo­ca­cy for a gov­ern­ment run nation­al med­ical ser­vice – a hat­ed sys­tem often described as “social­ism” by its con­ser­v­a­tive oppo­nents today.

Heather Cox Richard­son is cer­tain­ly aware of these (and many oth­er) com­plex­i­ties and con­tra­dic­tions in our nation’s his­to­ry. How­ev­er, Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing does not deem them suf­fi­cient to inval­i­date its his­tor­i­cal generalizations.

Broad gen­er­al­iza­tions may open our eyes to new ways of view­ing the nation’s past. This, in turn, may clar­i­fy what is hap­pen­ing in our own lives. That is the pri­ma­ry inten­tion of Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing. In the final analy­sis, how­ev­er, as not­ed above, the use­ful­ness of his­tor­i­cal gen­er­al­iza­tions must rest on the extent to which they are accu­rate his­tor­i­cal­ly. I encour­age read­ers of Democ­ra­cy Awak­en­ing to note its sub­ti­tle, Notes on the State of Amer­i­ca.

Friday, March 8th, 2024

Initiative reform takes a leap forward in Washington thanks to Secretary Steve Hobbs

Effec­tive tomor­row, new mea­sures will begin rolling out to com­bat abuse of the ini­tia­tive and ref­er­en­dum process in Wash­ing­ton State, includ­ing the long­stand­ing prac­tice of bal­lot title shop­ping, Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs’ office announced today. The long over­due reforms, which our team at NPI urged the office to adopt through its rule­mak­ing process, con­sist of an increase in the fil­ing fee from five dol­lars to $156, the index­ing of the fil­ing fee to infla­tion going for­ward, and the use of a part­ly ran­dom­ized string of num­bers to clas­si­fy initiatives.

NPI has for years called for the ini­tia­tive fil­ing fee to be increased to ensure that those who want to go shop­ping for a bal­lot title they like are required to pay more of the costs borne by the Sec­re­tary of State, Code Revis­er, and Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s offices in pro­cess­ing the fil­ings. Now that’s final­ly happening.

“The fee has remained sta­t­ic for more than a cen­tu­ry, despite infla­tion,” not­ed a news release issued by Hobbs’ com­mu­ni­ca­tions team. “In 1912, vot­ers approved Amend­ment 7 of the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion to cre­ate the abil­i­ty to file ini­tia­tives and ref­er­en­da, start­ing in 1913. That year, the fil­ing fee was set at $5 to mir­ror con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous state fil­ing costs. At that time, aver­aged $3,500, a gal­lon of milk was around 35 cents, and movie tick­ets were 7 cents. The change index­es the fil­ing fees for ini­tia­tives and ref­er­en­da to the mod­ern equiv­a­lent of $5 in 1913, using U.S. Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics val­u­a­tion, and ensures that annu­al review and adjust­ment will keep the rel­a­tive val­ue current.”

In Jan­u­ary of 2013, we made an almost iden­ti­cal point in a state­ment released through our Per­ma­nent Defense project. Here’s an excerpt:

In those days, five dol­lars went a lot fur­ther than it does now. In fact, in 1914, the first year that ini­tia­tives appeared on Washington’s bal­lot, it cost about $117.23 to file an ini­tia­tive… in 2013 dol­lars.

So why does it only cost $5 today? The fil­ing fee hasn’t been updat­ed to keep up with infla­tion, let alone cov­er the true costs of fil­ing an ini­tia­tive or a referendum.

Ten years lat­er, Sec­re­tary Steve Hobbs answered the call and insti­gat­ed work on new rules to mod­ern­ize the fil­ing fee. Sum­ma­riz­ing that work today, Hobbs said:  “This over­due adjust­ment rec­og­nizes the real­i­ty of infla­tion on cost struc­tures uni­ver­sal­ly. The expens­es gen­er­at­ed in mul­ti­ple state agen­cies for pro­cess­ing each and every fil­ing of a poten­tial bal­lot mea­sure are not what they used to be in 1913, and our fee struc­ture must reflect that.”

The old fee of $5 will remain in place for ini­tia­tives to the peo­ple and for ref­er­en­da for a lit­tle while longer instead of sud­den­ly going up mid­way through fil­ing sea­son. But for ini­tia­tives to the 2025 Leg­is­la­ture, the fee will be $156, effec­tive tomor­row. That’s when fil­ing for those mea­sures begins this year.

So, if Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair Jim Walsh wants to go bal­lot title shop­ping for anoth­er slate of ini­tia­tives, he can — but it’ll cost him and his megadonor Bri­an Hey­wood a tidy sum. For con­text, Walsh filed six­ty-nine ini­tia­tives to the Leg­is­la­ture last year, which cost him a mere $345 for the lot.

Most of the six­ty-nine Walsh ini­tia­tives were var­i­ous iter­a­tions of each of the “Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton” mea­sures that Hey­wood sub­se­quent­ly ponied up fund­ing to qual­i­fy to the 2024 Leg­is­la­ture. Hey­wood and Walsh picked six of the six­ty-nine to run sig­na­ture dri­ves for. The oth­er six­ty-three ini­tia­tives were not pursued.

If Walsh wants to go bal­lot title shop­ping again this year, he’d have to pay $10,764 in fil­ing fees to cov­er the costs for pro­cess­ing six­ty-nine initiatives.

Walsh did not pio­neer the bal­lot title shop­ping game… it’s an oldie. Its chief prac­ti­tion­er for years was his bud­dy Tim Eyman, who used to be in the busi­ness of qual­i­fy­ing destruc­tive, decep­tive­ly word­ed ini­tia­tives to the bal­lot every year. For well over a decade, Eyman would waste our tax dol­lars by fil­ing zil­lions of drafts of ini­tia­tives that he had no inten­tion of actu­al­ly cir­cu­lat­ing sig­na­tures for to try to coax bal­lot titles of his lik­ing out of the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office.

Hobbs’ office did not men­tion Eyman by name in today’s announce­ment, but did allude to him when describ­ing the waste that his activ­i­ties result­ed in.

“From 1912 to 2024, the Office of the Sec­re­tary of State received 1,825 fil­ings for Ini­tia­tives to the Peo­ple or Ini­tia­tives to the Leg­is­la­ture. More than 60% of those fil­ings were since the year 2000. In 2022, 121 ini­tia­tives were filed; two peo­ple sub­mit­ted 61% of that total. Each sub­mit­ted ini­tia­tive and ref­er­en­dum must be reviewed and processed by elec­tions staff of the Office of the Sec­re­tary of State, as well as the Attor­ney General’s office and the state Code Reviser.”

“The par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy of fil­ing bal­lot mea­sures is an impor­tant facet of our state government’s struc­ture, but keep­ing the fee arti­fi­cial­ly low has prob­lem­at­ic rip­ple effects,” Hobbs observed. “Many more bal­lot mea­sures are filed now and nev­er seri­ous­ly pur­sued. The out­dat­ed fee struc­ture may have made that a low-cost exer­cise for the fil­ers. At the same time, receiv­ing hun­dreds of fil­ings that don’t cov­er their own costs has dri­ven gov­ern­ment expens­es upward.”

Hobbs’ office is also insti­tut­ing a new num­ber­ing scheme for ini­tia­tives. With the new rules, ini­tia­tives will have a cal­en­dar-based pre­fix, fol­lowed by a ran­dom string of num­bers. That will make it impos­si­ble to file a batch of ini­tia­tives with the hope of get­ting a par­tic­u­lar num­ber assigned to one of the batch — anoth­er game that Eyman used to play back when his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry was active.

For ref­er­en­da, sequen­tial num­ber­ing will con­tin­ue to be used.

The new sys­tem is as follows:

  • The series for ini­tia­tives to the leg­is­la­ture shall be eight char­ac­ters in length, com­menc­ing with the let­ters IL, fol­lowed by the last two dig­its of the cal­en­dar year in which the ini­tia­tive to the leg­is­la­ture will be heard by the leg­is­la­ture and/or vot­ed upon by the peo­ple, a hyphen after the last two dig­its of the cal­en­dar year, fol­lowed by a unique, ran­dom­ly-select­ed three-dig­it number.
  • The series for ini­tia­tives to the peo­ple shall be eight char­ac­ters in length, com­menc­ing with the let­ters IP, fol­lowed by the last two dig­its of the cal­en­dar year in which the ini­tia­tive to the peo­ple will be vot­ed upon by the peo­ple, a hyphen after the last two dig­its of the cal­en­dar year, fol­lowed by a unique, ran­dom­ly-select­ed three-dig­it number.
  • The series for ref­er­en­dum mea­sures shall com­mence with the let­ters RM, fol­lowed by a unique num­ber which is the next on the list of ref­er­en­dum mea­sure num­bers sequentially.
  • The series for ref­er­en­dum bills shall com­mence with the let­ters RB, fol­lowed by a unique num­ber which is the next on the list of ref­er­en­dum bill num­bers sequentially.

To give you an idea of how much the vol­ume of fil­ings has increased, here’s a run­down of which num­bers were in use for ini­tia­tives to the peo­ple at the begin­ning of each annu­al fil­ing peri­od, in four year incre­ments going back to 1996:

  • 1996: Ini­tia­tive 655
  • 2000: Ini­tia­tive 710
  • 2004: Ini­tia­tive 860
  • 2008: Ini­tia­tive 984
  • 2012: Ini­tia­tive 1185
  • 2016: Ini­tia­tive 1405
  • 2020: Ini­tia­tive 1671
  • 2024: Ini­tia­tive 2017

From 1996–2000, the num­ber of mea­sures that got an assigned num­ber was in the fifties. From 2020–2024, the num­ber of mea­sures that got an assigned num­ber was near­ly three hun­dred and fifty. And of those near­ly three hun­dred and fifty mea­sures, zero qual­i­fied for the bal­lot. That’s right: Zero. Vot­ers did not con­sid­er any statewide ini­tia­tives at all in 2020, 2021, 2022, or 2023.

Our team con­grat­u­lates Sec­re­tary Hobbs on this impor­tant mile­stone for ini­tia­tive reform. These new rules are a great sequel to the law that we cham­pi­oned two years ago requir­ing fis­cal impact dis­clo­sures for mea­sures that raise or low­er state rev­enue — a law that is wild­ly pop­u­lar with Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers — and last year’s law per­ma­nent­ly abol­ish­ing Tim Eyman’s waste­ful push polls.

In part­ner­ship with our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, NPI is secur­ing an end to the waste, fraud, and abuse that took place dur­ing the Eyman error. The peo­ple’s ini­tia­tive, ref­er­en­dum, and recall pow­ers are sacred, and must be respect­ed. The laws and rules we’ve been work­ing to get adopt­ed will help ensure that they are. And we’re not done: there are more wor­thy changes in our pipeline of ini­tia­tive reforms that we’ll be work­ing to bring to fruition in the 2025 ses­sion and beyond.

Friday, March 8th, 2024

The best lines from President Biden’s incredible 2024 State of the Union address

Last night, as NPI con­trib­u­tor Joel Con­nel­ly report­ed here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden gave an incred­i­ble State of the Union address to a joint ses­sion of Con­gress, mak­ing the case that Amer­i­ca needs pro­gres­sive ideas and stal­wart lead­er­ship in the face of Don­ald Trump’s assault on our democracy.

Biden’s speech was one of his best, pos­si­bly the best he’s ever deliv­ered, despite the occa­sion­al man­gling of a word and a few coughs. The Pres­i­dent spoke with deep con­vic­tion and from the heart. He fierce­ly and pas­sion­ate­ly defend­ed the val­ues that most Amer­i­cans hold dear. He laid out his accom­plish­ments, vision, and pro­posed pol­i­cy direc­tions very effec­tive­ly. He refresh­ing­ly did not both­er to try to pan­der to Don­ald Trump’s enablers. Instead, he chal­lenged them, over and over again, to drop their alle­giance to Trump and ful­fill their oaths of office.

Most Repub­li­cans sat in stony silence through­out the speech. Cam­eras showed them not even both­er­ing to applaud for lines that in the past would have gen­er­at­ed a bipar­ti­san roar of approval. Such is Trump’s hold over the fac­tion that used to be the par­ty of Lin­coln, Ted­dy Roo­sevelt, and Eisen­how­er. Some appeared stunned by Biden’s pas­sion and will­ing­ness to call out the ele­phants in the room.

Over and over again, the Pres­i­dent invoked the log­ic of pro­gres­sive val­ues to pitch an effec­tive agen­da for the coun­try’s future, bring­ing con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats to their feet and smiles to the faces of count­less vot­ers and activists watch­ing at home. Let’s look at some of his best lines and why they worked so well.

BIDEN: [M]y pur­pose tonight is to wake up the Con­gress and alert the Amer­i­can peo­ple that this is no ordi­nary moment either. Not since Pres­i­dent Lin­coln and the Civ­il War have free­dom and democ­ra­cy been under assault at home as they are today.

Analy­sis: Biden opened his speech by look­ing back to two key moments in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. He first men­tioned the chal­lenge FDR faced in the 1930s when fas­cism was ris­ing around the world and war was immi­nent. Then, in the excerpt above, he drew a par­al­lel with the fraught days lead­ing up to the Con­fed­er­ate insur­rec­tion of the 1860s. He blunt­ly told the joint ses­sion right at the out­set of his speech that his pur­pose in com­ing to the cham­ber was to wake up Con­gress and alert the peo­ple of the dan­ger that the Unit­ed States is fac­ing from the Con­sti­tu­tion’s domes­tic ene­mies. This gave the speech valu­able context.

BIDEN: If the Unit­ed States walks away, it will put Ukraine at risk. Europe is at risk. The free world will be at risk, embold­en­ing oth­ers to do what they wish to do us harm. My mes­sage to Pres­i­dent Putin, who I’ve known for a long time, is sim­ple: We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down.

Analy­sis: We will not bow down was a great line. It pow­er­ful­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed Biden’s com­mit­ment to sol­i­dar­i­ty and friend­ship with our allies, espe­cial­ly our fel­low NATO mem­bers. It rebuked the mur­der­ous dic­ta­tor Vladimir Putin and the evil he rep­re­sents. And it pro­vid­ed a con­trast with Don­ald Trump, who would serve Putin’s inter­ests and agen­da if he were returned to the White House.

BIDEN: My pre­de­ces­sor and some of you here seek to bury the truth about Jan­u­ary 6th. I will not do that. This is a moment to speak the truth and to bury the lies. Here’s the sim­ple truth: You can’t love your coun­try only when you win. As I’ve done ever since being elect­ed to office, I ask all of you, with­out regard to par­ty, to join togeth­er and defend democ­ra­cy. Remem­ber your oath of office to defend against all threats for­eign and domestic.

Analy­sis: Lead­ing by exam­ple, Pres­i­dent Biden blunt­ly called out the dis­gust­ing attempts to white­wash what hap­pened on Jan­u­ary 6th by many Trump enablers who’ve tried to pre­tend that it was akin to a “nor­mal tourist vis­it” or that the vio­lent mob of insur­rec­tion­ists were engag­ing in “legit­i­mate polit­i­cal dis­course.” Biden not­ed, cor­rect­ly, that “some of you here seek to bury the truth about Jan­u­ary 6th.” He did not name names, but he did­n’t need to. The likes of Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene knew he was speak­ing direct­ly to them. The “remem­ber your oath of office” bit was absolute­ly fan­tas­tic and deeply sat­is­fy­ing to hear.

BIDEN: Look, its deci­sion to over­turn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court major­i­ty wrote the fol­low­ing — and with all due respect, Jus­tices — “Women are not with­out elec­toral — elec­toral pow­er” — excuse me — “elec­toral or polit­i­cal pow­er.” You’re about to real­ize just how much you were right about that.

Analy­sis: This line got the atten­tion of a great many observers and speech­watch­ers, as it was unprece­dent­ed for a State of the Union address. But extra­or­di­nary times call for extra­or­di­nary lines. Address­ing the Supreme Court jus­tices sit­ting in front of him — who tried their very best to remain expres­sion­less — Biden deliv­ered a sting­ing admon­ish­ment of the hor­rif­ic Dobbs deci­sion. He expressed his view that in the com­ing elec­tion, a large per­cent­age of women vot­ers will take a strong stand for can­di­dates and bal­lot mea­sures that uphold repro­duc­tive rights, defy­ing Samuel Ali­to and the major­i­ty who threw out Roe.

In adja­cent parts of the speech, Biden spoke of “repro­duc­tive free­dom”, sen­si­bly invok­ing pro­gres­sive val­ues and avoid­ing prob­lem­at­ic life ver­sus choice framing.

BIDEN: Folks, I inher­it­ed an econ­o­my that was on the brink. Now, our econ­o­my is lit­er­al­ly the envy of the world. Fif­teen mil­lion new jobs in just three years. A record. A record. Unem­ploy­ment at 50-year lows. A record 16 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are start­ing small busi­ness­es, and each one is a lit­er­al act of hope, with his­toric job growth and small-busi­ness growth for Black and His­pan­ics and Asian Amer­i­cans. Eight hun­dred thou­sand new man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs in Amer­i­ca and counting.

Analy­sis: Although income inequal­i­ty remains a prob­lem, there is good news to report and cel­e­brate, and Pres­i­dent Biden shared it. The coun­try has so far defied the pre­dic­tions of pes­simistic econ­o­mists who fore­saw con­trac­tions. Instead, more jobs have been cre­at­ed and more Amer­i­cans are start­ing small busi­ness­es. Pres­i­dent Biden right­ful­ly called out this progress and point­ed out that it does­n’t always make or lead the news, but it’s impor­tant and should be get­ting discussed.

BIDEN: And thanks — and thanks to our Bipar­ti­san Infra­struc­ture Law, 46,000 new projects have been announced all across your com­mu­ni­ties. And, by the way, I noticed some of you who’ve strong­ly vot­ed against it are there cheer­ing on that mon­ey com­ing in. And I like it. I’m with you. I’m with you. And if any of you don’t want that mon­ey in your dis­trict, just let me know.

Analy­sis: Moments of lev­i­ty can real­ly help a speech, and here, Biden scored real points by mak­ing a joke at Repub­li­cans’ expense. Obvi­ous­ly, they want the mon­ey that the Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act is bring­ing into their dis­tricts, even though they refused to help pass the bill. Point­ing out their hypocrisy is impor­tant — the mass media can’t be expect­ed to hold these folks accountable.

BIDEN: I grew up in a home where trick­le-down eco­nom­ics did­n’t put much on my dad’s kitchen table. That’s why I’m deter­mined to turn things around so the mid­dle class does well. When they do well, the poor have a way up and the wealthy still do very well. We all do well.

Analy­sis: We’re always down for a swipe at trick­le-down eco­nom­ics, and Pres­i­dent Biden deliv­ered a great one in his speech. He made it per­son­al by empha­siz­ing that trick­le-down did­n’t get results for his fam­i­ly and mil­lions of oth­er Amer­i­can fam­i­lies — but inclu­sive eco­nom­ic poli­cies like rais­ing the min­i­mum wage and pro­vid­ing paid fam­i­ly and med­ical leave and child­care can help a lot.

BIDEN: And there’s more to do to make sure you’re feel­ing the ben­e­fits of all we’re doing. Amer­i­cans pay more for pre­scrip­tion drugs than any­where in the world. It’s wrong, and I’m end­ing it.  With a law that I pro­posed and signed — and not one of your Repub­li­can bud­dies work- — vot­ed for it — we final­ly beat Big Pharma.

Analy­sis: More account­abil­i­ty! Biden seemed to be speak­ing to con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats here when he said “not one of your Repub­li­can bud­dies… vot­ed for it.” That’s a ref­er­ence to Repub­li­cans’ refusal to help pass the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act back in 2022, when Democ­rats had con­trol of the U.S. House. On their own, Democ­rats were able to empow­er Medicare to nego­ti­ate low­er prices for drugs.

BIDEN: Folks, the Afford­able Care Act — the old “Oba­macare” — is still a very big deal. Over 100 mil­lion of you can no longer be denied health insur­ance because of a pre­ex­ist­ing con­di­tion. But my pre­de­ces­sor and many in this cham­ber want to take the — that pre­scrip­tion drug away by repeal­ing Afford­able Care Act. I’m not going to let that hap­pen. We stopped you fifty times before, and we’ll stop you again.

Analy­sis: Anoth­er instance where Biden spoke direct­ly to Repub­li­cans, remind­ing them “we stopped you fifty times before” and vow­ing that “we’ll stop you again.” That’s exact­ly the defi­ant deter­mi­na­tion that mil­lions of Amer­i­cans want to see from their Pres­i­dent. They want a fight­er who’s look­ing out for them. Biden made it abun­dant­ly clear: as long as he’s around, he will pre­vent Repub­li­cans from repeal­ing the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act and erad­i­cat­ing Amer­i­cans’ healthcare.

BIDEN: I know the cost of hous­ing is so impor­tant to you. Infla­tion keeps com­ing down. Mort­gage rates will come down as well, and the Fed acknowl­edges that. But I’m not wait­ing. I want to pro­vide an annu­al tax cred­it that will give Amer­i­cans $400 a month for the next two years as mort­gage rates come down to put toward their mort­gages when they buy their first home or trade up for a lit­tle more space. That’s for two years.

Analy­sis: Oh, look — a seri­ous, cred­i­ble pro­pos­al to help low­er costs for mil­lions of Amer­i­cans that is guar­an­teed not to get a sin­gle Repub­li­can vote! But it’s essen­tial to put good ideas on the table, and Pres­i­dent Biden did that in this moment by propos­ing this tax cred­it which he knows John­son and McConnell won’t support.

BIDEN: I want to give pub­lic school teach­ers a raise.

Analy­sis: This came at the tail end of a set of com­ments about mak­ing col­lege more afford­able, increas­ing access to ear­ly learn­ing, and invest­ing more fund­ing in edu­ca­tion. But it was an impor­tant aside. It got a big reac­tion at the watch par­ty I was at, and it res­onat­ed deeply with me, because my par­ents are edu­ca­tors. Proud edu­ca­tors who’ve spent most of their lives teaching.

BIDEN: [T]he Child Tax Cred­it I passed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic cut tax­es for mil­lions of work­ing fam­i­lies and cut child pover­ty in half. Restore that Child Tax Cred­it. No child should go hun­gry in this coun­try. The way to make the tax code fair is to make big cor­po­ra­tions and the very wealthy begin to pay their share. Remem­ber in 2020, 55 of the biggest com­pa­nies in Amer­i­ca made $40 bil­lion and paid zero in fed­er­al income tax. Zero.

Analy­sis: No child should go hun­gry in this coun­try. Amen! I have no doubt that the Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for NPI’s home con­gres­sion­al dis­trict, Suzan Del­Bene, clapped fierce­ly for this line. Restor­ing the Child Tax Cred­it is a huge pri­or­i­ty for her, as it should be for every mem­ber of Con­gress. It’s absolute­ly ridicu­lous that Repub­li­cans don’t sup­port this, but do sup­port giv­ing giant cor­po­ra­tions more tax cuts. Biden did a great job point­ing out that our nation’s largest enter­pris­es don’t need to be show­ered with more mon­ey from Congress.

BIDEN: No bil­lion­aire should pay a low­er fed­er­al tax rate than a teacher, a san­i­ta­tion work­er, or a nurse. I pro­posed a min­i­mum tax for bil­lion­aires of 25 per­cent — just 25 per­cent. You know what that would raise? That would raise $500 bil­lion over the next 10 years.  And imag­ine what that could do for Amer­i­ca. Imag­ine a future with afford­able child­care, mil­lions of fam­i­lies can get what they need to go to work to help grow the econ­o­my. Imag­ine a future with paid leave, because no one should have to choose between work­ing and tak­ing care of their sick fam­i­ly mem­ber. Imag­ine — imag­ine a future with home care and elder­care, and peo­ple liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ties so they can stay in their homes and fam­i­ly care­givers can final­ly get the pay they deserve.

Analy­sis: Sim­ply out­stand­ing fram­ing here. In sim­ple, direct terms, and again invok­ing the log­ic of pro­gres­sive val­ues, Pres­i­dent Biden laid out an inclu­sive vision of eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty for Amer­i­ca’s future. A future in which the wealthy begin to pay more of their fair share. A future in which we strength­en our pub­lic ser­vices instead of weak­en­ing them. His exhor­ta­tions to imag­ine a future where we all do bet­ter were pre­cise­ly what mem­bers of Con­gress need­ed to hear.

BIDEN: Tonight, let’s all agree once again to stand up for seniors. Many of my friends on the oth­er side of the aisle want to put Social Secu­ri­ty on the chop­ping block. If any­one here tries to cut Social Secu­ri­ty or Medicare or raise the retire­ment age, I will stop you.

Analy­sis: In vow­ing to defend Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare from right wing cuts, Pres­i­dent Biden again drew a strong con­trast between his plat­form and the oppo­si­tion’s plans for 2025 if they regain pow­er. Repub­li­cans like Rick Scott are eager to slash Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare — Biden told them off.

BIDEN: Look, too many cor­po­ra­tions raise prices to pad their prof­its, charg­ing more and more for less and less. That’s why we’re crack­ing down on cor­po­ra­tions that engage in price goug­ing and decep­tive pric­ing, from food to health­care to hous­ing. In fact, the snack com­pa­nies think you won’t notice if they change the size of the bag and put a hell of a lot few­er — same — same size bag — put few­er chips in it. No, I’m not jok­ing. It’s called “shrink-fla­tion.” Pass Bob­by Casey’s bill and stop this.

Analy­sis: Great call­out to Bob Casey, and won­der­ful affir­ma­tion of the work that for­mer Sec­re­tary of Labor Robert Reich has been doing to edu­cate Amer­i­cans about cor­po­rate greed. Reich’s pieces on shrink­fla­tion are essen­tial view­ing. Biden nat­u­ral­ly segued into a bit about erad­i­cat­ing junk fees right after this.

BIDEN: I’m told my pre­de­ces­sor called mem­bers of Con­gress in the Sen­ate to demand they block the bill. He feels polit­i­cal win — he viewed it as a — it would be a polit­i­cal win for me and a polit­i­cal los­er for him. It’s not about him. It’s not about me.

Analy­sis: These remarks came dur­ing the mid­dle of Biden’s com­ments about the doomed bor­der deal that Repub­li­cans demand­ed and then tor­pe­doed. This was the one part of the speech where Biden did some Clin­ton-style tri­an­gu­lat­ing. Biden smart­ly point­ed out that Repub­li­cans don’t want to fix the prob­lem, they want to cam­paign on the prob­lem so they can seize more pow­er. (Biden added lat­er: “We can fight about fix­ing the bor­der or we can fix it. I’m ready to fix it.”)

BIDEN: I will not demo­nize immi­grants, say­ing they are “poi­son in the blood of our coun­try.” I will not sep­a­rate fam­i­lies. I will not ban peo­ple because of their faith. Unlike my pre­de­ces­sor, on my first day in office, I intro­duced a com­pre­hen­sive bill to fix our immi­gra­tion sys­tem. Take a look at it. It has all these and more: secure the bor­der, pro­vide a path­way to cit­i­zen­ship for DREAM­ers, and so much more.

Analy­sis: This bit could have been longer, and the Pres­i­dent could deployed pro­gres­sive fram­ing to explain that immi­grants are real­ly new Amer­i­cans who have come to this coun­try in pur­suit of the Amer­i­can dream, and deserve to be wel­comed and giv­en oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­tribute to our soci­ety, not hunt­ed down and thrown into deten­tion cen­ters run by for-prof­it companies.

BIDEN: We’re also mak­ing his­to­ry by con­fronting the cli­mate cri­sis, not deny­ing it. I don’t think any of you think there’s no longer a cli­mate cri­sis. At least, I hope you don’t. I’m tak­ing the most sig­nif­i­cant action ever on cli­mate in the his­to­ry of the world. I’m cut­ting our car­bon emis­sions in half by 2030; cre­at­ing tens of thou­sands of clean ener­gy jobs, like the IBEW work­ers build­ing and installing 500,000 elec­tric vehi­cle charg­ing sta­tions — con­serv­ing 30 per­cent of America’s lands and waters by 2030; and tak­ing action on envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice — fence-line com­mu­ni­ties smoth­ered by the lega­cy of pol­lu­tion. And pat­terned after the Peace Corps and Amer­i­ca­Corps [Ameri­Corps], I launched the Cli­mate Corps — (applause) — to put 20,000 young peo­ple to work in the fore­front of our clean ener­gy future. I’ll triple that num­ber in a decade.

Analy­sis: These were the extent of Pres­i­dent Biden’s cli­mate-focused com­ments dur­ing the speech. He could have said more, but what he did say was mean­ing­ful, and pro­gres­sive lead­ers were of course delight­ed that he men­tioned the Cli­mate Corps. (TV cam­eras showed Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez jump­ing up and cheering.)

BIDEN: I’m proud we beat the NRA when I signed the most sig­nif­i­cant gun safe­ty law in near­ly 30 years because of this Con­gress. We now must beat the NRA again. I’m demand­ing a ban on assault weapons and high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zines.  Pass uni­ver­sal back­ground checks.

Analy­sis: Great call to action. Wash­ing­ton State has done all of these things and Amer­i­ca can too — if we get enough pro­gres­sive leg­is­la­tors elect­ed to Con­gress and elim­i­nate the fil­i­buster so Mitch McConnell and his cau­cus can’t stand in the way of the gun respon­si­bil­i­ty leg­is­la­tion that Amer­i­cans want and deserve.

BIDEN: The Unit­ed States has been lead­ing inter­na­tion­al efforts to get more human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance into Gaza. Tonight, I’m direct­ing the U.S. mil­i­tary to lead an emer­gency mis­sion to estab­lish a tem­po­rary pier in the Mediter­ranean on the coast of Gaza that can receive large ship­ments car­ry­ing food, water, med­i­cine, and tem­po­rary shel­ters. No U.S. boots will be on the ground. A tem­po­rary pier will enable a mas­sive increase in the amount of human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance get­ting into Gaza every day.

Analy­sis: This was anoth­er newsy part of the speech. Relief for Gaza is long over­due, and while we wish this move had been made soon­er, it is very wel­come. The extreme Netanyahu gov­ern­ment opposed by most Israelis can­not be relied upon to pro­vide the aid that suf­fer­ing, besieged Pales­tini­ans need. That’s why it is crit­i­cal that the world com­mu­ni­ty step up. Amer­i­can lead­er­ship can facil­i­tate that.

BIDEN: I’ve revi­tal­ized our part­ner­ship and alliance in the Pacif­ic: India, Aus­tralia, Japan, South Korea, the Pacif­ic Islands. I’ve made sure that the most advanced Amer­i­can tech­nolo­gies can’t be used in Chi­na — not allow­ing to trade them there. Frankly, for all his tough talk on Chi­na, it nev­er occurred to my pre­de­ces­sor to do any of that.

Analy­sis: Biden made the most of every oppor­tu­ni­ty in the speech to get in digs at Trump and draw a con­trast, and was able to do so effec­tive­ly again here. These com­ments remind­ed me of the report­ing from 2016 in which peo­ple went to check out Trump’s mer­chan­dise and found that it was made in Chi­na. Trump does not prac­tice what he preach­es and it’s good for the media to be remind­ed of that.

BIDEN: Let me close with this. I know you don’t want to hear any more, Lind­sey, but I got to say a few more things. I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while. When you get to be my age, cer­tain things become clear­er than ever. I know the Amer­i­can story.

Analy­sis: As we’ll see in a moment, Biden had some­thing very seri­ous to say right after this, but he was able to work in anoth­er moment of lev­i­ty with a self-dep­re­cat­ing joke. Unlike Don­ald Trump, Joe Biden can laugh at him­self, and hope­ful­ly peo­ple watch­ing took notice of that distinction.

BIDEN: Again and again, I’ve seen the con­test between com­pet­ing forces in the bat­tle for the soul of our nation, between those who want to pull Amer­i­ca back to the past and those who want to move Amer­i­ca into the future. My life­time has taught me to embrace free­dom and democ­ra­cy, a future based on core val­ues that have defined Amer­i­ca — hon­esty, decen­cy, dig­ni­ty, and equal­i­ty — to respect every­one; to give every­one a fair shot; to give hate no safe har­bor. Now, oth­er peo­ple my age see it dif­fer­ent­ly. The Amer­i­can sto­ry of resent­ment, revenge, and ret­ri­bu­tion. That’s not me.

Analy­sis: Here, Biden spelled out what his val­ues and prin­ci­ples are, and con­trast­ed them with Trump’s tox­ic pol­i­tics of destruc­tion (“resent­ment, revenge, and ret­ri­bu­tion”.) The “oth­er peo­ple my age see it dif­fer­ent­ly” was a great barb.

BIDEN: In my career, I’ve been told I was too young. By the way, they did­n’t let me on the Sen­ate ele­va­tors for votes some­times. They — not a joke. And I’ve been told I am too old. Whether young or old, I’ve always been known — I’ve always known what endures. I’ve known our North Star. The very idea of Amer­i­ca is that we’re all cre­at­ed equal, deserves to be treat­ed equal­ly through­out our lives. We’ve nev­er ful­ly lived up to that idea, but we’ve nev­er walked away from it either. And I won’t walk away from it now.

Analy­sis: The “they did­n’t let me on Sen­ate ele­va­tors for votes some­times” was a great lit­tle anec­dote that hope­ful­ly remind­ed reporters and oth­ers watch­ing that there real­ly was once a time when the rap on Biden was that he was too young. And now, as he acknowl­edged, peo­ple are say­ing he’s too old. Delib­er­ate­ly con­fronting this crit­i­cism head-on was the right choice.

BIDEN: My fel­low Amer­i­cans, the issue fac­ing our nation isn’t how old we are; it’s how old are our ideas. Hate, anger, revenge, ret­ri­bu­tion are the old­est of ideas. But you can’t lead Amer­i­ca with ancient ideas that only take us back. To lead Amer­i­ca, the land of pos­si­bil­i­ties, you need a vision for the future and what can and should be done. Tonight, you’ve heard mine.

Analy­sis: More beau­ti­ful fram­ing here. Pro­gres­sives iden­ti­fy as such because we want to make progress — we want to go for­ward, not back­ward. We know we can’t return to the past, but we can learn from it and do bet­ter in the future. That is what Pres­i­dent Biden believes, and he point­ed out last night that real lead­er­ship entails lead­ing peo­ple to new posi­tions and embrac­ing new ideas. Bravo!

BIDEN: I see a future where [we’re] defend­ing democ­ra­cy, you don’t dimin­ish it. I see a future where we restore the right to choose and pro­tect our free­doms, not take them away. I see a future where the mid­dle class has — final­ly has a fair shot and the wealthy have to pay their fair share in tax­es. I see a future where we save the plan­et from the cli­mate cri­sis and our coun­try from gun vio­lence. Above all, I see a future for all Amer­i­cans. I see a coun­try for all Amer­i­cans. And I will always be Pres­i­dent for all Amer­i­cans because I believe in Amer­i­ca. I believe in you, the Amer­i­can people.

Analy­sis: Com­ing at the end of this speech, these com­ments nice­ly sum­ma­rized Biden’s plat­form and vision as he pre­pared to step away from the podi­um and begin shak­ing hands again. The Pres­i­dent makes no apolo­gies for being an opti­mist, nor should he. Real lead­ers work to bring peo­ple togeth­er for progress, cheer­ful­ly and con­fi­dent­ly. Joe Biden sees pos­si­bil­i­ties when he thinks about the future, and so should we all. The days ahead need­n’t be bleak and ter­ri­ble. A bet­ter future is with­in reach. We’re more like­ly to secure it if we believe in it.

In decades past, Amer­i­ca has sur­vived insur­rec­tions, depres­sions, world wars, and (so far) the threat of nuclear anni­hi­la­tion. And we can pre­vail over the forces of dark­ness again. But we’ll have to come togeth­er to make it hap­pen. Unit­ed, we’ll keep this repub­lic stand­ing. Divid­ed, we’re more like­ly to fall — and fail.

This is a time when courage and good judg­ment are need­ed. Kudos to Pres­i­dent Biden for lay­ing out the choice fac­ing this coun­try so powerfully.

Thursday, March 7th, 2024

President Biden throws down the gauntlet in impassioned 2024 State of the Union speech

Repub­li­cans have sought to hang the label “Sleepy Joe” on Pres­i­dent Biden, as a way of exploit­ing pub­lic con­cern over age and gait of Amer­i­ca’s 46th President.

The ques­tion can now be put: “Sleepy Who?” Biden addressed the nation tonight in a feisty, ener­getic cam­paign-style State of the Union speech. He decried the poli­cies of “my pre­de­ces­sor” — not once speak­ing the name of Don­ald Trump — and open­ly, enjoy­ably sparred with Repub­li­can lawmakers.

“The issue fac­ing our nation is not how old we are, it’s how old our ideas are?” said Biden, first elect­ed to the U.S. Sen­ate in 1972 at the age of twenty-nine.

The speech began with pas­sion­ate advo­ca­cy for U.S. mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine and turn­ing back Russia’s inva­sion. “I say this to Con­gress: We have to stand up to Putin… We will not walk away; we will not bow down. I will not bow down”.

He flagged Sweden’s Prime Min­is­ter Ulf Kris­ters­son, seat­ed beside Jill Biden in the House gallery: “Wel­come to NATO.” Swe­den just joined the alliance today, rein­vig­o­rat­ed fol­low­ing Putin’s esca­la­tion of Rus­si­a’s war on Ukraine.

But Biden went fur­ther, evok­ing Ronald Reagan’s famous words in a Berlin speech: “Mr. Gor­bachev, tear down this wall.”

In con­trast, Biden cit­ed a recent, reck­less speech by Trump, in which the Repub­li­cans leader told lis­ten­ers, If NATO mem­bers fall back on their mil­i­tary con­tri­bu­tions to the alliance, he would tell Putin, “Do what­ev­er the hell you want.”

The reac­tion to Biden’s speech on Twit­ter was of sar­casm dis­guis­ing shock by Repub­li­cans. “Why is Biden snarling and shout­ing?” asked FNC host Lau­ra Ingra­ham. Repub­li­can strate­gist and poll­ster Frank Luntz added: “Let’s see whether unde­cid­ed vot­ers like being yelled at.”

Recent­ly mint­ed House Speak­er Mike John­son, seat­ed behind Biden, was the most uncom­fort­able fig­ure of the night. He stayed put as Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris jumped to her feet for repeat­ed stand­ing ova­tions by Democ­rats, and remained silent at Biden took on ultra MAGA Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene.

“As Pres­i­dent speaks to Con­gress, this House Speak­er smirks and scowls from behind” wrote his­to­ri­an Michael Beschloss. Ex-Oba­ma White House aide Stephanie Cut­ter chimed in: “Michael John­son should have prac­ticed his non-expres­sion face in front of a mir­ror. He doesn’t know what the hell to do right now.”

The Biden speech dealt with great glob­al and domes­tic issues — “Democ­ra­cy is under attack” — but also Amer­i­cans’ every­day annoy­ances over junk fees attached to air­plane tick­ets, cred­it card late fees and the mys­te­ri­ous shrink­ing size of a Snick­ers can­dy bar (shrink­fla­tion, which Robert Reich has been highlighting).

Biden assailed Repub­li­cans’ 2017 tax cut for show­er­ing mon­ey on the already-rich and said he will ask Con­gress to impose a tax on the country’s thou­sand or so bil­lion­aires. “Does any­body believe our tax code is fair?” he asked.

“No!” bel­lowed Democ­rats in the chamber.

A sur­pris­ing chunk of the speech was aimed at younger vot­ers, whose votes have fueled Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ries over Trump-backed can­di­dates. Biden called for an end to crim­i­nal penal­ties against recre­ation­al users of mar­i­jua­na. He called out a sur­vivor of the Uvalde, Texas, school mas­sacre, pledg­ing: “I see a future where we save the plan­et from the cli­mate cri­sis and our coun­try from gun violence.”

The Pres­i­dent called for a nation­wide ban on assault weapons with high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zines, used in mass killings from Uvalde to Buf­fa­lo to El Paso.

Biden had to nav­i­gate two fraught and high­ly emo­tion­al issues. The Pres­i­dent reit­er­at­ed his long­stand­ing sup­port of Israel — and revul­sion at Hamas’ slaugh­ter of 1,200 Israelis last Octo­ber — but stat­ed: “As we look to the future, the only real solu­tion is a two-state solu­tion over time”. With star­va­tion threat­en­ing thou­sands of Pales­tin­ian chil­dren in Gaza, he announced the U.S. will install a tem­po­rary pier on the Gaza coast to fun­nel in emer­gency supplies.

Biden mocked House Repub­li­cans for scut­tling a Sen­ate-nego­ti­at­ed bor­der plan — at Trump’s direc­tion— but reit­er­at­ed America’s his­to­ry as a nation built by immi­grants. He sin­gled out a par­tic­u­lar­ly ugly Trump remark, say­ing, “I will not demo­nize immi­grants say­ing they poi­son the blood of our country.”

The Democ­rats deserve to be ener­gized at Biden’s speech.

An instant CNN poll gave him high marks. “He gave a mas­ter class in how to defend America’s future and the future of our democ­ra­cy,” said long­time Demo­c­ra­t­ic strate­gist and pun­dit Don­na Brazile.

The Pres­i­dent was feel­ing good as well. Speak­er John­son turned down the lights, but Biden hap­pi­ly lin­gered for an hour glad hand­ing on the House floor. One law­mak­er he talked to was Seattle’s Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jayapal.

Thursday, March 7th, 2024

DONE! Governor Inslee signs legislation ending child marriage in Washington

Prov­ing once again that progress is pos­si­ble even in an era of intense polar­iza­tion, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee today signed into law a bill sup­port­ed by one hun­dred and forty-six of Wash­ing­ton’s one hun­dred and forty-sev­en state leg­is­la­tors that ends child mar­riage in the Ever­green State, abol­ish­ing a prac­tice that the U.S. Depart­ment of State has right­ful­ly called a human rights violation.

House Bill 1455, prime spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mon­i­ca Stonier (D‑49th Dis­trict: Clark Coun­ty) and cham­pi­oned on the oth­er side of the rotun­da by Sen­a­tor Derek Stan­ford (D‑1st Dis­trict: King and Sno­homish coun­ties) requires that both par­ties in a civ­il mar­riage be at least eigh­teen years old, the cur­rent age of major­i­ty. Under exist­ing law, there is no min­i­mum age to get mar­ried, which means it’s per­fect­ly legal for a young girl to be forced into a mar­riage to a much-old­er man by her par­ents, leav­ing her trapped in an abu­sive relationship.

But in nine­ty days, the law will change, thanks to the suc­cess of House Bill 1455.

I joined Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Stonier, Sen­a­tor Stan­ford, Sen­a­tor Yas­min Trudeau, Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Zon­ta, and sur­vivors of forced mar­riage to watch as Gov­er­nor Inslee added his sig­na­ture to HB 1455 in a brief but very mov­ing cer­e­mo­ny short­ly after 11 AM at the gov­er­nor’s office.

HB 1455 will go into effect nine­ty days from today, on June 6th, 2024.

“Child mar­riage has a long his­to­ry of abuse and coer­cion, and it con­tributes to the human traf­fick­ing chal­lenge,” House non­par­ti­san staff wrote in their 2023 report sum­ma­riz­ing the tes­ti­mo­ny sup­port­ing the bill. (No one spoke against it at its ini­tial hear­ing in the House Civ­il Rights & Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee on Jan­u­ary 31st.)

“This straight­for­ward bill pro­tects young peo­ple under the age of 18 years from poten­tial exploita­tion, traf­fick­ing, and oth­er harms fre­quent­ly per­pe­trat­ed by peo­ple much old­er than the minors. Most peo­ple can­not believe that child mar­riage is legal in Wash­ing­ton, but child mar­riages do hap­pen, and they are not rare. Between 2000 and 2018, more than 4,800 minors between the ages of 15 and 17 years were mar­ried in Wash­ing­ton. Eighty per­cent of these were girls who were mar­ried to adult men who were on aver­age four years older.”

The pas­sage of HB 1455 was one of NPI’s top leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties for 2024.

The House vot­ed on the very first day of ses­sion to unan­i­mous­ly send it back over to the Sen­ate, where it had got­ten stuck in a log­jam of bills. This time, how­ev­er, it was pri­or­i­tized for action by the Sen­ate Law & Jus­tice Com­mit­tee, chaired by Sen­a­tor Dhin­gra, a North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion boardmember.

At the bil­l’s Sen­ate hear­ing in late Jan­u­ary, I pre­sent­ed NPI’s research find­ing that eight in ten Wash­ing­ton vot­ers sup­port end­ing child mar­riage, with over six in ten strong­ly sup­port­ive. The Sen­ate heed­ed that data and the incred­i­bly pow­er­ful sto­ries shared by sev­er­al sur­vivors of forced mar­riage, vot­ing less than a month lat­er to send the bill to Gov­er­nor Inslee, with the only dis­sent­ing vote com­ing from Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Jeff Holy (6th Dis­trict: Spokane County).

HB 1455 is the lat­est in a series of human rights advances that have been secured dur­ing Gov­er­nor Inslee’s tenure. Thanks to the lead­er­ship of Gov­er­nor Inslee and Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors, Wash­ing­ton has abol­ished the death penal­ty and pro­tect­ed LGBTQ+ youth from “con­ver­sion ther­a­py.” Now we’ve end­ed child mar­riage, some­thing no oth­er state in the west­ern Unit­ed States has yet done.

Ore­gon, you’re next!

Our thanks to every­one who worked to pass House Bill 1455, espe­cial­ly our friends at Unchained At Last, the nation­al non­prof­it found­ed by a forced mar­riage sur­vivor that has been work­ing state-by-state to get child mar­riage abol­ished. Cheers also to Zon­ta, Indi­vis­i­ble, the King Coun­ty Sex­u­al Assault Resource Cen­ter, the Wash­ing­ton Chap­ter of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics, the AHA Foun­da­tion, and the Lati­no Civic Alliance, which lob­bied for the bill.

And final­ly, here’s to our sur­vivors who spoke up and brave­ly shared their sto­ries in pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly Sara Tas­neem, Stephanie War­ren, and Kate Yang. Your courage and resilience are inspir­ing, and we are hon­ored to have been able to sup­port you in secur­ing this long over­due breakthrough.

Tuesday, March 5th, 2024

Super Tuesday results: Biden and Trump cruise; Haley projected to take Vermont

Good evening and wel­come to our cov­er­age of Super Tues­day 2024!

For those unfa­mil­iar with the moniker, Super Tues­day is a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant occa­sion on the pres­i­den­tial elec­toral cal­en­dar. It is the day when the most simul­ta­ne­ous pri­maries and cau­cus­es are held out of the whole elec­tion cycle. These clus­tered nom­i­nat­ing events serve as a crit­i­cal lit­mus test in years when one or both par­ties’ nom­i­na­tions are being close­ly contested.

2024 is not one of those years, but Super Tues­day nev­er­the­less remains impor­tant, because the results of today’s nom­i­nat­ing events will deter­mine the allo­ca­tions of a plu­ral­i­ty of nation­al con­ven­tion delegates.

So far, as expect­ed, Pres­i­dent Biden and his defeat­ed pre­de­ces­sor Don­ald Trump are both cruis­ing along. Biden is fac­ing just one active oppo­nent, Dean Phillips, whose cam­paign has failed to gain any trac­tion despite the mass medi­a’s hys­te­ria over Pres­i­dent Biden’s age, which Phillips — a Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress­man — has unsuc­cess­ful­ly tried to cap­i­tal­ize on. Trump’s one remain­ing rival, Nik­ki Haley, is nowhere close to him but did man­age to win the Dis­trict of Colum­bia pri­ma­ry this past week­end, and did sur­pass 30% of the vote in two ear­ly pri­ma­ry states.

In Ver­mont, Haley is win­ning. It’s anoth­er rare bright spot for her:

Can­di­datePar­tyVotesPer­cent
Nik­ki HaleyRepub­li­can34,53949.41%
Don­ald J. TrumpRepub­li­can31,56145.15%

Tonight’s ini­tial results are the best indi­ca­tion yet that the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion will once again go to Trump — for the third time in eight years. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden is already con­sid­ered to have the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion locked up despite some fret­ting about his age and via­bil­i­ty against Trump in a rematch.

Both can­di­dates are already look­ing ahead to the gen­er­al elec­tion. Trump trashed Biden in a ram­bling speech car­ried live on sev­er­al cable chan­nels, while Biden released a state­ment strong­ly denounc­ing Trump by name.

“Tonight’s results leave the Amer­i­can peo­ple with a clear choice: Are we going to keep mov­ing for­ward or will we allow Don­ald Trump to drag us back­wards into the chaos, divi­sion, and dark­ness that defined his term in office?” said Biden.

“Four years ago, I ran because of the exis­ten­tial threat Don­ald Trump posed to the Amer­i­ca we all believe in. Since then, we’ve made enor­mous progress: 15 mil­lion jobs, wages ris­ing faster than infla­tion, tak­ing on Big Phar­ma and the gun lob­by — and win­ning. But we have more to do.”

“If Don­ald Trump returns to the White House, all of this progress is at risk. He is dri­ven by griev­ance and grift, focused on his own revenge and ret­ri­bu­tion, not the Amer­i­can peo­ple. He is deter­mined to destroy our democ­ra­cy, rip away fun­da­men­tal free­doms like the abil­i­ty for women to make their own health care deci­sions, and pass anoth­er round of bil­lions of dol­lars in tax cuts for the wealthy — and he’ll do or say any­thing to put him­self in power.

“Today, mil­lions of vot­ers across the coun­try made their voic­es heard — show­ing that they are ready to fight back against Don­ald Trump’s extreme plan to take us back­wards. My mes­sage to the coun­try is this: Every gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans will face a moment when it has to defend democ­ra­cy. Stand up for our per­son­al free­dom. Stand up for the right to vote and our civ­il rights.”

“To every Demo­c­rat, Repub­li­can, and inde­pen­dent who believes in a free and fair Amer­i­ca: This is our moment. This is our fight. Togeth­er, we will win.”

“As we con­tin­ue to watch results come in from states across the coun­try, includ­ing my home state of Cal­i­for­nia, this is an ener­giz­ing moment for our cam­paign,” said Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris. “Amer­i­cans of all back­grounds are show­ing that they sense the urgency of this elec­tion, and that they are ready to stand with Pres­i­dent Biden and me in this fight to pro­tect our fun­da­men­tal freedoms.”

“Don­ald Trump has vowed to be a dic­ta­tor on Day One. He has promised to weaponize the Depart­ment of Jus­tice. And he has bragged that he is proud of his role in rob­bing women of their repro­duc­tive free­dom. He pos­es a fun­da­men­tal threat to our democ­ra­cy, and he must be stopped.”

“Dur­ing the upcom­ing State of the Union, Pres­i­dent Biden will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to report on the tremen­dous progress we have made when it comes to cre­at­ing good-pay­ing jobs, reduc­ing costs, and help­ing Amer­i­ca’s fam­i­lies build a bet­ter life. He will also lay out our vision of what more we can accom­plish, if we work together.”

“This week’s events will serve as a spring­board for the next crit­i­cal phase of the cam­paign. In the com­ing days, I look for­ward to return­ing to three key bat­tle­grounds: Wis­con­sin, Neva­da and Arizona.”

“The pres­i­dent and I know reelec­tion must be earned, and we will con­tin­ue to put in the work to reach every pos­si­ble vot­er. Win­ning the fight to pro­tect our fun­da­men­tal free­doms will require noth­ing less.”

2024 Republican Party presidential primaries results

These juris­dic­tions are hold­ing Repub­li­can nom­i­nat­ing events, which Wikipedia edi­tors are post­ing results for:

2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries results

These juris­dic­tions are hold­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nat­ing events, which Wikipedia edi­tors are post­ing results for:

Aside from Alas­ka Repub­li­cans, no state par­ty in the greater Pacif­ic North­west is par­tic­i­pat­ing in Super Tues­day. The Wash­ing­ton State pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry is cur­rent­ly ongo­ing, how­ev­er, with bal­lots due back by March 12th. That is also when ini­tial results will become avail­able for study and discussion.

The extreme Repub­li­cans who run Ida­ho’s leg­isla­tive branch acci­den­tal­ly repealed the Gem State’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry and failed to fix their mis­take, so Ida­ho does­n’t have a pri­ma­ry this year. Repub­li­cans cau­cused this past week­end, while Democ­rats will be cau­cus­ing towards the end of the cal­en­dar in June.

Ore­gon’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry will be con­cur­rent­ly held with its state-lev­el pri­ma­ry in May, con­clud­ing on Tues­day, May 21st, 2024. The pri­ma­ry will be a vote-at-home event, just like in Wash­ing­ton State.

Tuesday, March 5th, 2024

Another big retirement: Senate President Pro Tempore Karen Keiser won’t run again

Less than twen­ty-four hours after Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Andy Bil­lig announced he’s decid­ed against seek­ing anoth­er term in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Pro Tem­pore Karen Keis­er joined him, say­ing that after near­ly three decades, she is ready to bid the state­house adieu.

“It has been my priv­i­lege to serve the peo­ple of the 33rd Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict and the peo­ple of the State of Wash­ing­ton for the last twen­ty-nine years,” said Keis­er, who revealed her deci­sion on the Sen­ate floor. “I am in awe at the amaz­ing progress we have made togeth­er in this insti­tu­tion over the last few decades.”

“Appoint­ed to fill an open seat in the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 1995, Keis­er ran and won her first elec­tion in 1996,” not­ed a news release from the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus. “She served there until 2001, when she was appoint­ed to a seat in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate, where she has been re-elect­ed six times. Since 2018, Keis­er has served as Pres­i­dent Pro Tem­pore, pre­sid­ing over the Sen­ate when the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor has been unavailable.”

“The Sen­ate won’t be the same with­out Karen Keis­er,” said Billig.

“She has been a leader in so many areas. Because of her unceas­ing per­sis­tence over many years, work­ing fam­i­lies in Wash­ing­ton are so much bet­ter off today than when she joined the Leg­is­la­ture. And her gen­er­ous men­tor­ship of new mem­bers ensures that her exper­tise will live on in this institution.”

“Sen­a­tor Karen Keis­er has been noth­ing less than a gen­er­a­tional leader on behalf of work­ing peo­ple,” added Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Den­ny Heck in a state­ment. “Lead­ers like Karen do not come around often. She will be deeply missed in the Sen­ate. I wish her well in her retirement.”

Keis­er says her work on imple­ment­ing the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act is a top accom­plish­ment of her years in the Legislature.

“Among oth­er key bills, she spon­sored the leg­is­la­tion estab­lish­ing the Wash­ing­ton Health Ben­e­fit Exchange, which has since pro­vid­ed more than 1,900,000 Wash­ing­to­ni­ans with health care cov­er­age,” not­ed the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus. “While imple­men­ta­tion of the far-reach­ing act was slowed and hin­dered by numer­ous glitch­es in oth­er states, Wash­ing­ton expe­ri­enced far few­er prob­lems and was looked to as a nation­al model.”

“The effec­tive imple­men­ta­tion of the [Patient Pro­tec­tion Act] helped dri­ve the state’s unin­sured rate down from 14.2 per­cent in 2010 to 4.7 per­cent as of 2022.”

And then there’s her hero­ic work on paid fam­i­ly and med­ical leave.

“In 2017, Keis­er capped a ten-year effort when Wash­ing­ton became only the fifth state in the coun­try to offer com­pre­hen­sive paid fam­i­ly and med­ical leave insur­ance for all work­ing peo­ple. Since the Paid Fam­i­ly and Med­ical Leave pro­gram began pay­ing out ben­e­fits in 2020, almost 470,000 Wash­ing­ton work­ers have tapped its ben­e­fits to bond with new­born babies, care for ail­ing rel­a­tives, or take time off for their own med­ical conditions.”

Kesi­er has been a stal­wart and thought­ful pro­gres­sive through­out her time in the state­house. Known for being cheer­ful and even-keeled, she recent­ly authored a book about how to serve effec­tive­ly — Get­ting Elect­ed Is The Easy Part — which our Lit­er­ary Advo­cate David Kobrin reviewed.

​We have been hon­ored to have Sen­a­tor Keis­er join us for many NPI events over the years and look for­ward to see­ing her at more. Con­grat­u­la­tions on a great run serv­ing the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State, Sen­a­tor Keis­er. You’re a treasure!

Tuesday, March 5th, 2024

Bowing to reality, Kyrsten Sinema announces she won’t seek reelection to the U.S. Senate

In less than a year, Kyrsten Sine­ma will be out of the Unit­ed States Senate.

The Green-turned-Demo­c­rat-turned-Inde­pen­dent announced today that she won’t be seek­ing a sec­ond term rep­re­sent­ing Ari­zona this year, con­firm­ing wide­spread spec­u­la­tion that she was­n’t going to be run­ning again and is eager to cash out with a nice lob­by­ing gig after more than a decade in Congress.

In a video reveal­ing her deci­sion, Sine­ma tried to chalk up her deci­sion as dri­ven by polar­iza­tion and par­ti­san­ship. In real­i­ty, it was nec­es­sary because Sine­ma made her­self polit­i­cal­ly home­less. She long ago ceased to pre­tend to be inter­est­ed in rep­re­sent­ing her con­stituents, shun­ning the pub­lic and the press in favor of a tight focus on behind-the-scenes deal­mak­ing on a host of issues.

Despite her record of mak­ing peo­ple angry by betray­ing their trust and enabling Repub­li­cans to stoke the fires of divi­sion across the coun­try, Sine­ma had the gall to blame her fel­low Amer­i­cans for choos­ing “anger and division.”

“Amer­i­cans still choose to retreat fur­ther to their par­ti­san cor­ners,” said Sine­ma. “It’s all or noth­ing. The out­come is less impor­tant than beat­ing the oth­er guy. “The only polit­i­cal vic­to­ries that mat­ter these days are sym­bol­ic… Com­pro­mise is a dirty word. We’ve arrived at that cross­road and we chose anger and division.”

“I believe in my approach, but it’s not what Amer­i­ca wants right now.”

With Sine­ma out, Ari­zon­a’s 2024 U.S. Sen­ate race is for an open seat.

Democ­rats have a strong can­di­date in Ruben Gal­lego, who has been out-rais­ing Sine­ma and has the sup­port of the par­ty’s grass­roots, includ­ing a long list of activists and local elect­ed lead­ers that Sine­ma will­ful­ly alienated.

Gal­lego has been expect­ing Sine­ma’s deci­sion. He issued a state­ment thank­ing Sine­ma for her ser­vice, hav­ing already gone on the record long ago about why he believes she needs to be replaced in the Unit­ed States Senate.

“I want to thank Sen­a­tor Sine­ma for her near­ly two decades of ser­vice to our state,” said Gal­lego. “As we look ahead, Ari­zona is at a cross­roads. Pro­tect­ing abor­tion access, tack­ling hous­ing afford­abil­i­ty, secur­ing our water sup­ply, defend­ing our democ­ra­cy — all of this and more is on the line. That’s why Democ­rats, Inde­pen­dents, and Repub­li­cans alike are com­ing togeth­er and reject­ing Kari Lake and her dan­ger­ous posi­tions. I wel­come all Ari­zo­nans, includ­ing Sen­a­tor Sine­ma, to join me in that mission.”

Lake and Mark Lamb, the two Repub­li­cans also vying to suc­ceed Sine­ma, quick­ly chimed in as well. Like Gal­lego, they sound­ed very unsurprised.

“As a Jour­nal­ist, I cov­ered Kyrsten Sine­ma for many years,” Lake said. “We may not agree on every­thing, but I know she shares my love for Arizona.”

Mean­while, Lam­b’s camp said: “Kyrsten Sine­ma’s strength has always been in attract­ing the large num­ber of inde­pen­dent vot­ers in Ari­zona. We expect most of those inde­pen­dent vot­ers to vote for Sher­iff Mark Lamb in a gen­er­al election.”

Pub­lic opin­ion research sug­gests it’s Gal­lego who has the advan­tage, how­ev­er. Recent sur­veys con­duct­ed by Noble Pre­dic­tive Insights and Emer­son have found Gal­lego ahead in a three-way matchup with Lake and Sine­ma. Sine­ma knew that even if she ran, her per­son­al brand would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly car­ry her. Nor did she seem enthused about actu­al­ly get­ting out and campaigning.

As a Sen­a­tor, Sine­ma has been insu­lar and inac­ces­si­ble to the peo­ple, pre­fer­ring to spend time with pow­er­ful lob­by­ists and a small cir­cle of friends instead.

Local elect­ed offi­cials in Ari­zona have com­plained about not being able to get a hold of her. She has not held a sin­gle town hall event since becom­ing a Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor, leav­ing activists and con­stituents extreme­ly frustrated.

Many signed on to an effort com­mit­ted to boot­ing Sine­ma from the Sen­ate — orig­i­nal­ly known as Pri­ma­ry Sine­ma and lat­er the Replace Sine­ma Project.

“We start­ed this effort to Replace Sine­ma over two years ago to hold Sine­ma account­able for betray­ing the Ari­zo­nans who elect­ed her,” the group said.

“Sine­ma obstruct­ed Pres­i­dent Biden’s Build Back Bet­ter agen­da, got in the way of fun­da­men­tal rights like abor­tion care and vot­ing, and did the bid­ding of her wealthy donors who fund her lux­u­ry lifestyle. We suc­ceed­ed in first push­ing her out of the par­ty — by mak­ing clear she couldn’t win a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry — and now we’ve also helped push her out of the Sen­ate. Good. Ari­zo­nans deserve better.”

Sine­ma’s ally in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, mav­er­ick Sen­a­tor Joe Manchin of West Vir­ginia, has also decid­ed against seek­ing reelec­tion in 2024. He con­tem­plat­ed run­ning for Pres­i­dent but has decid­ed against that as well. With Sine­ma and Manchin gone, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus will no longer have a pro-fil­i­buster fac­tion any­more. Whether Democ­rats can hold onto the major­i­ty in the Sen­ate is anoth­er mat­ter. The par­ty has twen­ty-three seats to defend and few pick­up oppor­tu­ni­ties, while Repub­li­cans are only defend­ing eleven seats in states that Trump won.

If the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is able to run the table and the Biden-Har­ris tick­et gets a sec­ond term, Democ­rats would come into 2025 with anoth­er nar­row major­i­ty — but one with­out the pres­ence of the rene­gade duo of Sine­ma and Manchin. That would open the door to long-over­due reforms of Sen­ate rules need­ed to unlock progress on issues where Repub­li­cans have unapolo­get­i­cal­ly used the fil­i­buster to bury leg­is­la­tion that would make Amer­i­cans freer, hap­pi­er, and healthier.

Tuesday, March 5th, 2024

A majority of Washington voters support the Affordable Homes Act, despite Realtor opposition

A major­i­ty of vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton favor leg­is­la­tion that would raise rev­enue to sup­port hous­ing projects across the Ever­green State, despite stri­dent oppo­si­tion from the Real­tors and oth­er pow­er­ful busi­ness inter­ests, accord­ing to our 2024 win­ter sur­vey of Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers, which field­ed last month.

The Afford­able Homes Act (HB 2276 / SB 6191) is prime spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive April Berg (D‑44th Dis­trict: Sno­homish Coun­ty) and Sen­a­tor Noel Frame (D‑36th Dis­trict: Seat­tle). It was heard ear­li­er this ses­sion but has not yet received a floor vote in either cham­ber. The House iter­a­tion of the bill is cur­rent­ly in the Rules Com­mit­tee. The 2024 leg­isla­tive ses­sion con­cludes on Thurs­day, so law­mak­ers would have to move quick­ly to get it to Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk.

But that would be worth doing, espe­cial­ly giv­en their refusal to pass a bevy of oth­er bills that would have helped Wash­ing­to­ni­ans, par­tic­u­lar­ly rent stabilization.

54% of respon­dents sur­veyed by our poll­ster said they strong­ly or some­what sup­port­ed the Afford­able Homes Act, while 32% were opposed. 14% said they were not sure. Respon­dents were pro­vid­ed with not only a descrip­tion of what the bill does, but also argu­ments for and against it, includ­ing the Real­tors’ strongest argu­ments in oppo­si­tion, which they have been trot­ting out at every oppor­tu­ni­ty. How­ev­er, a major­i­ty of like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers found the argu­ments in favor of the leg­is­la­tion more per­sua­sive than the Real­tors’ argu­ments against.

Take a look:

QUESTION: Leg­is­la­tors are debat­ing a bill that would raise and ded­i­cate more mon­ey to afford­able hous­ing by restruc­tur­ing the real estate excise tax. The bill would exempt the first $750,000 of a prop­er­ty sale, while adding a mod­est 1% tax on high val­ue prop­er­ty sales over $3.025 mil­lion. Oppo­nents like the Real­tors say that tax increas­es on real estate, espe­cial­ly dur­ing a time of low hous­ing sup­ply and high inter­est rates, would cre­ate more mar­ket uncer­tain­ty. They also say the tax increas­es would apply to vacant land intend­ed for devel­op­ment of afford­able mul­ti­fam­i­ly and sin­gle-fam­i­ly hous­ing. Pro­po­nents counter that the bill would cut tax­es for 98% of tax­pay­ers who would pay the real estate excise tax when they sell their prop­er­ty, while rais­ing approx­i­mate­ly $396 mil­lion through 2029 for afford­able hous­ing projects that are des­per­ate­ly need­ed in Wash­ing­ton. Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose, or strong­ly oppose restruc­tur­ing the real estate excise tax to raise and ded­i­cate more mon­ey to afford­able hous­ing, while cut­ting tax­es for 98% of taxpayers?

ANSWERS:

  • Sup­port: 54% 
    • Strong­ly sup­port: 27%
    • Some­what sup­port: 27%
  • Oppose: 32%
    • Some­what oppose: 9%
    • Strong­ly oppose: 23%
  • Not sure: 14%

Our sur­vey of 789 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 13th through Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 14th, 2024.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (42%) and online answers from respon­dents recruit­ed by text (58%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.5% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

Accord­ing to House non­par­ti­san staff, HB 2276 would:

  • Increase the “ceil­ing” for the Tier 1 1.1 per­cent state real estate excise tax (REET) from $525, 000 to $750, 000 begin­ning Jan­u­ary 1, 2025.
  • Impose a new real estate trans­fer tax (RETT) of 1 per­cent on the val­ue of the sell­ing price over $3.025 million.
  • Direct the rev­enue from RETT to be divid­ed between accounts cur­rent­ly receiv­ing REET mon­eys and the Wash­ing­ton Hous­ing Trust Fund, Apple Health and Homes Account, the Afford­able Hous­ing for All Account, the new Devel­op­men­tal Dis­abil­i­ties Hous­ing and Ser­vices Account, and the new Hous­ing Sta­bil­i­ty Account.
  • Cre­ate a REET exemp­tion for cer­tain sales or trans­fers of prop­er­ties that qual­i­fy for a prop­er­ty tax exemp­tion that will be used for a com­mu­ni­ty purpose.

Here’s a fact sheet from Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Berg:

Afford­able Homes Act Primer

The Real­tors dis­like the Afford­able Homes Act so much that they’re run­ning TV spots oppos­ing the bill — a lot of them. The ads, which can be seen in between net­work pro­gram­ming on local TV sta­tions, appear to have been cre­at­ed by out of state con­sul­tants. They make it sound as though the bill will dev­as­tate access to hous­ing, even though the leg­is­la­tion would gen­er­ate fund­ing for the Home Secu­ri­ty Fund, the Apple Health & Homes Account, devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties hous­ing and ser­vices, and the Hous­ing Trust Fund, which includes sup­ports to sta­bi­lize low-income hous­ing and pro­vide farm­work­er housing.

Many indi­vid­ual real­tors dis­agree with the Real­tor line. In Jan­u­ary, two agreed to go on the record in sup­port of the leg­is­la­tion at the time that Berg unveiled it.

“This bill is good for my clients. It will mean that many prop­er­ties sold in Spokane Coun­ty – includ­ing the vast major­i­ty, if not all of the ones that my clients will sell – will receive a REET reduc­tion. Reduc­ing REETs for most prop­er­ty sell­ers while cre­at­ing a new, ded­i­cat­ed way to pay for the afford­able hous­ing that my com­mu­ni­ty needs is a win-win,” said Latrice Williams, a real­tor from Spokane.

“We have an afford­able hous­ing cri­sis through­out our com­mu­ni­ties. It is neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing small and large busi­ness­es, school dis­tricts, indi­vid­u­als, and fam­i­lies – it is indis­putable. As a real estate agent and car­ing com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber of King and Island Coun­ties, I have a mul­ti-lev­el per­spec­tive on this,” said Peter Wolf, a for­mer board mem­ber of the Seat­tle-King Coun­ty Realtors.

“We need to do some­thing about it. Adding a 1% trans­fer tax on prop­er­ties that sell for over $3.025 mil­lion is a rea­son­able and effec­tive way to help increase the sup­ply of the afford­able homes that we so des­per­ate­ly need. For the record, the REET is paid by the sell­er – not the buy­er. This will not increase the list price of prop­er­ty for sale. The list­ing price is dic­tat­ed by what the mar­ket will bear and by what the buy­er can afford. Not by tax­es and not by what prof­it the sell­er wish­es to make.”

All good points. It’s a shame that the Wash­ing­ton Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors and oth­er busi­ness inter­ests aligned with them are work­ing so fever­ish­ly to stop this leg­is­la­tion when they could be work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with sup­port­ers of the bill to pass it. Shel­ter is a basic human neces­si­ty, and we know from cen­turies of expe­ri­ence that the for-prof­it pri­vate sec­tor can­not be relied upon to ensure that every­one in our soci­ety is tak­en care of. That’s why we need pub­lic resources like Apple Health & Homes, which the Afford­able Homes Act would boost fund­ing for.

  • Thanks to our sponsors

    NPI’s research and advo­ca­cy is spon­sored by: