The editors of the Seattle Times urge us to go slow on the $15 an hour minimum wage:

Voters in the city of SeaTac appear to have volunteered for an experiment with a $15 an hour minimum wage. Before Seattle leaders act quickly to follow suit, they should watch what happens in SeaTac.

Sounds like reasonable advice, right? We should wait to see how things play out in SeaTac before attempting to pass a $15 an hour minimum wage here. "That means limiting the $15 minimum wage to SeaTac for the next year or two," advises the editors. You know, until after the $15 minimum wage momentum has blown over.

And that's really what this editorial is arguing for: Slowing down the process long enough to kill it. That's the best political strategy available to the chamber of commerce crowd. They want to slowly entangle the living wage in the sticky strands of "the Seattle way," and then suck the life from it. And Frank Blethen's gang is only too happy to start spinning the web.

Don't fall for it. Ed Murray ran on the promise of pushing a $15 minimum wage through the council; indeed, he won some major union endorsements just because of it. And Kshama Sawant's election was as close to a proxy vote on the minimum wage as we could get. The moment is now for Seattle to lead the nation forward on the living wage issue, and any argument to delay the $15 wage is a naked effort to defeat it.

One way or another we are going to pass a $15 minimum wage in Seattle in 2014. And then it will be up to the rest of the nation whether to ride our wave or watch and wait.