Elephants in Donkey Costumes?
How Two Men Elected as Democrats Could Hand Washington State to the Republicans
Sam Washburn
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On November 6, after a grueling two-year campaign between competing political visions, Washington State voters went to the polls and overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Democrats. President Barack Obama won by 15 points; US senator Maria Cantwell by 20. Democrats won 9 of 10 partisan statewide races, including Governor-elect Jay Inslee, who carved out a three-point win against Rob McKenna, the two-term Republican attorney general and one-time odds-on favorite.
In Olympia, Republicans had boldly vowed to retake control of the state senate and to make a serious play for the state house. They did neither. As much as our wiser-than-thou editorial boards lament the Democrats' ongoing one-party control, that was the will of the people as expressed at the polls.
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And yet, when the legislature convenes for a new session this January, any chance of enacting a Democratic agenda could teeter on the whim of a single state senator.
That's because Senator Rodney Tom, who was first elected as a Republican in 2002 and then switched parties to run as a Democrat in 2006, is now threatening to caucus with the Republicans again. "I think you can lead the senate in a more nonpartisan manner," says Senator Tom (?-Medina). By caucusing with the GOP, Tom could hand GOPers the very senate majority they couldn't win at the polls, while landing Tom in the agenda-setting role of majority leader.
"There's a million ways that this scenario plays out," says Tom.
Maybe. But the most obvious one is all too familiar: a repeat of last session, when Tom defected from Democrats in the eleventh hour to help Republicans seize control of key budget votes.
But Tom's about-face would bring much more far-reaching consequences in 2013: Starting in January, the legislature will consider a revenue package necessary to provide the billions more for K–12 education that was mandated under the state supreme court's McCleary decision. Also on the agenda: the Reproductive Parity Act that died when the Republicans and their "Roadkill Caucus" collaborators seized control of the senate last spring, and the Obamacare-sanctioned Medicaid expansion that proved a defining issue in the governor's race, which would extend health insurance to some 330,000 low-income Washingtonians. All this and more could languish under the divided government that Tom is proposing.
With a razor-close race in Vancouver's 17th Legislative District edging Republican as uncounted ballots run out—leaving Democrats with a bare 26–23 advantage—all that stands between Republicans and their obstructionist agenda is a mere two-vote swing in the senate. One of those votes is Tom's. The other belongs to conservative Democratic senator Tim Sheldon of Potlatch, an old-timey throwback to the days when political pork mattered more than political party.
It was Tom and Sheldon who joined Democratic senator Jim Kastama (who is now retiring) in a rarely used parliamentary procedure during the closing days of the last legislative session, dramatically seizing control of the senate and handing it to the Republicans. The goal was to impose a more austere state budget (Tom prefers the words "responsible" and "sustainable"), but with the Democrat-controlled house standing firm, this self-proclaimed "bipartisan" majority succeeded in fostering more bitterness than bipartisanship.
A monthlong special session ended with a budget that was not much different from the one the Democrats had originally proposed, save for a few face-saving concessions and an all-new bag of accounting tricks.
"When the house is controlled by the Democrats and there's a Democrat in the governor's mansion," asks political consultant Dean Nielsen, "what is Tom really accomplishing? Nothing."
And that's the most likely scenario should Tom carry through on his threat: a divided government that mires Olympia in partisan gridlock. But here's the bigger risk: The party that controls the senate controls who gets to chair the committees, and those chairs determine which legislation gets to the floor for a vote. A Republican majority could block any bill it wanted.
"We've been talking about this long before the election," says Tom, "that we would like to see the senate run a little more moderate." But the voters didn't cooperate. Tom acknowledges that Seattle's Ed Murray (D-43) is the undisputed leader of the Democratic caucus, having been elected majority leader by acclamation on November 13. So what makes Tom think that he knows better than both the caucus that elected Murray and the voters who put these Democratic senators in control?
"Ed is from a very liberal district [and] is quite possibly running for mayor of Seattle," worries Tom, "and I don't know if that is in the best interest of the state."
If Tom does decide to caucus with the Republicans, he may well be empowered as one of the most powerful lawmakers—or obstructionists—in Olympia. But there is a downside for Tom. In blue Washington, his suburban district is growing more and more Democratic every election.
"If they vote me in, great; if they vote me out, I'm fine with that, too," says Tom. We'll see if he's still singing that tune after Election Day 2014. 
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Socialism, hmm...how's that working fer yeh in Europe?
People can spell.
Now, who is paranoid and who is plain naive?
Choosing between Republican and Democrat polluticians is like choosing between syphilis and gonorrhea.
Still, it's comical to read the arguments on blogs, forums, and chat rooms that are tantamount to, "My venereal disease is better than your venereal disease."
I'll pencil you in for syphilis.
Or to put it more succinctly, the 2 parties are nought but 2 sides of the same coin.
As for the two Democrats, they've looked at how Seattle does things and they want to be paid off. I can't blame them.
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What you REALY mean is An Elephant in a Donkey Costume: History of the G.W. BUSH Presidency.
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And the elephants had nothing to do with Obama's kill list. That's entirely his own invention. And it's Obama, not anyone in the GOP, whose drone war in Pakistan constitutes a war crime.
Seriously, griz, get a clue.
You're just another pissed off blindly faithful Romney-backing tea bagger trolling about the 2008 and 2012 elections. Who put more money into lies, hatred, war spending, and fear mongering? The REPUBLICANS!
Well, you can always sign the petition in Texas and leave the U.S.
if you want. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
You seriously need to get a clue. I don't rely on FOX TV for my information sources.
I think we are going to hear...blah blah Bush's fault blah blah...well into the 23rd century.
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Apologize. Apologize for spamming your shitty fucking garbage all over the place for months on end because you're too stupid to see what's plainly in front of you.
Nothing to see here, just move along.
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Never mind the countless posts where you told people they were drinking the KOOLAID whenever they disagreed with you or implied that Obama had a good shot at winning. Never mind all of the countless posts where you claimed Paul Constant and Nate Silver were not looking at the evidence, but were instead just telling liberals what they want to hear.
Also, never mind this quote of yours from October 16:
Like the worst wingnuts, the one thing you people can never do is admit a mistake.
My point all along about Silver was never to say it was wrong, but only to say that his track record was one election deep, and that his forecasts for 2012 conflicted with the evidence from 15 of the past 16 presidential elections.
In the thread I linked, I even offered a possible resolution for the conflict between Silver and past experience. I never pissed on Silver's work, nor did I call anyone "stupid for thinking Obama had anything but the slimmest chance of winning."
What I did do was dump on the Kool-Aid drinking Obama fan girls here, including Paul Constant, who relied on nothing more than Silver's predictions and their own hysteria as an argument for Obama's inevitable re-election.
I'm genuinely surprised that Obama won. I'm pleasantly shocked by the margin of his victory. I'm very happy that Silver was right. But I've got nothing to "apologize" for, you bootlicking little "progressive" bitch.
The fact that Obama won does not confer talent or smarts on those who thought he'd win. Silver has every right to do a victory dance. He was vindicated, and if I were to meet him I'd be standing in line to congratulate him. But Paul Constant? He's a joke, and so are you.
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No, despite your backpedaling, you were still insistent that you were the one with the experience, the one with decades of knowledge, but decades of being wrong and stupid doesn't actually make you wise unless you learn from your mistakes. You're still insistent now that what wasn't is, and what isn't was.
You clearly lack even the most basic observational skills. Nate Silver was not 1 for 1. You obviously knew nothing about him until he was mentioned for the fifth time on Slog, since you had no idea what he had done other than predict the 2008 election rather closely. In fact, Silver had three elections under his belt before this one, and one of them was a total flop. But even if you were only counting 2008, that is not 1 for 1, but 49 for 50, and Indiana was such a close race that one(you) would have to be a gibbering tit to hold it against him. All of that work refining his methodology, and it didn't hold a candle to your years of accumulated wrongness in your mind. Your analysis was no different than any other idiotic pundit, relying upon urban legends and political fairy tales to predict the winner, however dressed up it was in "economic conditions". You would have been as well served to make your claim using only the Washington Redskins as evidence.
You were wrong. You were very loudly wrong. No amount of mincing around claiming how happy you are that you were wrong will excuse how much of an obnoxious twat you were the entire fucking time that everyone else (who was right, I will remind you again) told you that Obama had a very good shot at reelection. I can perfectly well believe that you are deadwitted enough to persist in your "I was right, even though I was wrong" blathering, but I won't let you off the hook for it until you apologize for being a stupid and annoying piece of shit for two fucking months.
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What do you see of Dukakis in Obama now, you festering twerp? How many articles of the Romney camp conceding that they didn't have near the ground game that Obama had, didn't make near the effort that he did to connect to all people instead of just some? And yet you claimed that the Obama campaign was just sitting on its heels, waiting to win. What sort of person can bear the shame of being such an intellectual albatross around the neck of the nation?
Or have you decided to go a Mitt Romney? You know, tell a lie and then run away from it once you're called out?
Typical Seattle "progressive." You are no different than Sarah Palin, except that you're uglier and more boring.
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The other is that you missed that I proved that you had actually, in fewer words, accused others of being stupid for disagreeing with you. Or did you mean something else when called posters retarded, and told them they wet their bed, or that they were in elementary school? Was that meant to reflect some attribute other than low intelligence? Was it for something other than saying that you were wrong (I remind you again that you were in fact wrong. Very wrong)?
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Also this is the sixth time in as many posts that you said "bitch", presumably referring to me. Are you sure you want to keep using that word? You seem awfully fond of bitches in general from what I've gathered
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Bush's agenda was to fuck the U.S. So much for "Mission Accomplished".
That's not anything to be proud of. If for some absurd reason you are, and voted for that shameful oil soaked war profiteering piece of shit, you owe the entire United States and the rest of the world an apology.
NDAA
Agricultural Rural Council
50% more dept
more unemployment
more cronyism (he's Goldman Sach's Biaach)
more wars (oh yeah there's some like you haven't heard of like Sudan)
but,
he won the Nobel Prize because he'e black
he's sooo kewl
face it, those who voted for him did so because it makes them look, feel, and smell liberal
which is like two week old bananas, discolored, mushy, and full of stank.
Go back to your cave and stay there. You're a true idiot.
Maher use expletives for everyone he does not agree with.
Screw you back you hypocrite.
When school reopens in January, do yourself a favor---go learn something other than Video Arcade 101.
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