I'm curious if any Stranger writers who were eligible to vote in 2016 didn't vote for Hillary. Probably a few I'd wager.

King County
had room for
Protest Votes

53% Hillary vs
37% el trumpfster

if you voted for
tfg djt then we
Know where
your Values
prolly Lie

but feel Free
to Expound
Candidate.

we're
all Ears \o/

those %s're
for WA St!

apologies

And so it begins. The regular posting of gotcha hit pieces TS will be rolling out up until the primary in Aug to discredit candidates who pose a threat to their preferred choices. My takeaways from this are:

She prob did vote for Trump but a lot of people did in 2016 because they bought into his bullshit. The fact she disavows him now is more pertinent that a vote she made 7 years ago.

TS clearly sees her as the biggest threat in D7. Looking for some insinuations next that she is in Amazon’s back pocket, is some sort of closet racist or is somehow a bad person for complaining about all the vagrants outside her store

Lewis really screwed himself with that vote. The timing of this hit piece is not a coincidence and is designed to pull some attention away from his idiocy.

Olga is inexpericed politically as she admits. Anyone who pays attention would have known TS would never cover her objectively. She should have told them to take a hike.

I honestly don’t know if she is going to good since she clearly is still learning a lot but I do know that Lewis has continually been pushed around and overly influenced by activists. Sawant even gloated about it Tues during her closing remarks. Hoping the residents of D7 can find someone who will actually fight for them this year.

Hahaha. It’s a “hit piece” and “gotcha” to merely ask someone running for office if they voted for the most divisive, dishonest (and twice impeached, twice indicted) president in history?

The first president in American history to not concede an election they lost and who attempted a coup to overthrow a free and fair election?

This is some trap in the opinion of the Slog MAGA dipshits? I guess when a MAGA dipshit has to answer this basic question they suddenly start admitting to fucking dead babies or something. They get so flustered!

Such a “gotcha.” Almost as much a “gotcha” as asking what magazines she’s read.

@11: In 2016, CM Sawant stumped for Bernie and then Stein, knowing the latter could never possibly win the election, that a vote for Stein was effectively a vote for Trump.

When the Stranger takes CM Sawant to task for supporting Stein, and thus Trump, thus costing poor women the right to reproductive freedom, then the Stranger can ask about how anyone else voted in 2016. Until then, we’ll just laugh at the Stranger, mocking the Stranger’s hurtful hypocrisy, and you can do nothing but hurl your same old schoolyard names.

Why are people talking about 2016?

The first sentence of the article is that Olga won’t say who she voted for in 2020 (3 years ago).

I think that’s very pertinent since we had already had 4 years of Trump and were in the middle of a pandemic partially caused by his ignorance.

If this candidate for Seattle city council did not support the Democratic candidate for president in 2016 or 2020, that’s bad! Donald Trump is the worst president in the history of the country, and it’s certainly worth questioning the judgment of someone who did not vote for either Clinton or Biden and instead voted for Trump. But why doesn’t The Stranger hold Kshama Sawant to the same standard? When can we expect articles by The Stranger offering similar criticism of Sawant? Why the double standard?

Let's review the "evidence" this article presents to make the case the candidate voted for Trump:

"First and foremost, Sagan is a business owner and Trump thinks he’s THE business owner. " Really? THIS is your best evidence? The "reporter" must not know any business owners.

"She’s a friend to real estate interests–ICE landlord and developer Martin Selig gave her campaign the maximum donation." Gosh, he gave her a whole $300. Jordan Selig gave Andrew Lewis $300.

"Sagan also said she would not support any new taxes and would make cuts to funding for housing since she thinks Seattle only needs about 12,000 additional units." This is an interesting policy proposal and should be debated, but it has zero to do with Trump.

"Plus, Sagan touts herself as anti-establishment, a sentiment that helped Trump rise to popularity." Those well-known Trump clones Jimmy Carter and Bernie Sanders both ran as anti-establishment candidates.

Seattleites might note zero progress has been made on any of the city's problems in their lifetimes, but can still be safely scared back to their holes by the prospect of voting for someone who doesn't align with Democrats 100% of the time - you'd sure think things would be a lot better if voting for Biden was some kind of predictor of a councilmember's competence. A council is (or at least should be) in charge of & focused on things like garbage collection rather than being involved on decisions of what country gets invaded - let's evaluate candidates on "will they do what they say they're going to do" as opposed to "perfect ideological conformity with the majority party".

@24: We’re having fun with the Stranger’s bald hypocrisy in hammering one immigrant woman on this point, whilst forever giving another a free pass on exactly the same topic.

Even if Sagan did vote for Trump (and, as @20 recounts, there’s no evidence to support this), it had no effect, as Washington state’s electoral votes never went to Trump. By contrast, Sawant’s stumping for Stein may well have helped elect Trump president.

She's a fucking terror and a tyrant at Piroshky who burns the credibility her ex-husband and his parents built there, so...

@1 Voting for Jill Stein in 2016 because someone could not hold their nose to vote for Hillary was foolish, but not the sign of complete moral depravity that ever voting for Trump is.

@28; Stumping for Stein in swing states did more to elect Trump than any single vote in Washington state ever could. And the Stranger never, ever calls Sawant on it.

Here's the important quote: "At the same time, she claimed her past voting decisions were usually uneducated. She called elections a “popularity contest” because she would typically vote for the name she had heard more from her friends in the business community because she was a self-described “horrible person who did not care about elections.”

Regardless of whether she's enough of an asshole to have voted for Trump AFTER seeing what he did in the first four years, this shows that she's kind of an idiot who makes decisions for bad reasons. Do we really want her running the City?

Also, as to your comment about "real estate interests," I'm pretty sure that the landlords I know all voted for Biden. Just because people have a little money doesn't automatically make them MAGAt assholes.

@12 yep

@28 -- maybe. But actively campaigning for Stein by explicitly campaigning against Clinton was in fact actively campaigning for Trump. And then doing it again against Biden in 2020 after 4 years of Trump? That's definitely -- to use your words -- an act of moral depravity. That's what Sawant did. And The Stranger will never, ever criticize her for it.

“The SECB is not as dumb as we look.”

Just like the rest of this piece, an opinion unsupported by facts.

What an informative article. I know so much about the candidate now. [sarcasm]

But seriously, I am finding the Stranger's repeated tautologies on candidates such a waste of space. Why I don't pay much attention to their endorsements anymore unless there is an occassionally useful piece of information about candidates - and that I can extract from their deep, deep, deep forests of political circular reasoning.

Why is Biden considered a "normie" (normal person?) - or voting for him, a prerequisite for supporting a candidate? Even aside from his gross personal traits and obvious dementia (not to mention where his son got his values), and "even aside" is major, I think he's one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. Maybe the Stranger hasn't noticed, but he's heading us into a nuclear war while pumping billions of our tax money into the most corrupt country in Europe, while supporting Nazis (the real kind, not your imaginery ones), in Ukraine, and as the standard of living in the U.S. continues to sink. And I know Harris would not be any better.

I question voting for anyone who has endorsed him or his war (which excludes Williamsom too - who is a joke supporting a domestic progressive platform while loving Biden's war).

I would never vote for Biden, and every time I read about him, I am grateful that I didn't vote for him. Have fun losing in 2024, Democrats. You deserve it.

@36 Also, Stranger, 750,000 Americans have died under Biden's disgraceful administration of the pandemic when he could have opened Medicare with a signature - research showing that alone wold have prevented 30% of U.S. covid deaths. On top of that, he's throwing up to 23 million people off their public insurance while the pandemic "still" isn't over, and where the hell are the waste water figures on covid for King County? Why are they hiding that information? In NYC, look at where covid is currently heading based on their figures, qne while the Stranger has nothing but "fashionable" Democratic Party tautologies to serve up to the public. Not to mention Biden's broken promise on student debt relief - like the banker's man from Delaware didn't know this was going to be another derailed train the way he handled it? Stop blaming the Republicans, Democrats. You are all batting for the same team.

@37 Look at the bright side: when Trump wins, at least he'll immediately end the war.

@29, you are incorrect. Hillary not campaigning for herself in the swing states did more to elect Trump than anything else. She ran a lackluster group-think campaign where they locked Bill Clinton in a backroom closet because he was such an embarassment every time he opened his mouth. But guess what, even Bill knew their campaign sucked. Hillary and Bill even had a big fight about it one infamous weekend - because Bill thought the campaign was wrong - that she needed to pound the pavement in the swing states on the economy. The statistics did lie. But Madam Inevitable had become above such menial stuff like going out to meet the American working class and talking with them about their grievances. Her ego was greater than the reality of the Electoral College math.

Besides which, what makes you Democrats so arrogant to think that other political parties owe you anything? Why shouldn't Green campaign for themselves, including swing states? They're not Democrats. Hillary herself told Bernie supporters to get out of the Democratic Party. So sick of Democratic Party treating the left like dirt. Not you, personally, but GFYs.

On top of that, thank GOD Hillary didn't win. If Hillary had won, the WWIII Joe Biden is driving us into -- would be over by now. Along with all life on this planet. It's called nuclear winter.

Everything, everything with the Democrats boils down to foreign policy. And that's why voters will never get anywhere on a domestic platform with these criminals.

I don't care about your weapons industry. Go change into another industry. Find the cure for cancer or something.

@39 - typo - "The statistics [didn't] lie."

The statistics said she needed to bring her numbers up in the swing states. But apart from Bill Clinton being her own husband, and I'm not into Bill Clinton but he knows a thing or two about winning elections. And she wouldn't even listen to him.

She was done in by her own Democratic Party sense of entitlement and arrogance.

@37, @38, @39: Well, that was a lot of words to miss the point.

Of course the Greens can campaign for their candidates, and no one here has said otherwise. The point here is the Stranger running a speculative article on whether or not one specific candidate for Council voted for Trump — while continuing not to criticize a Council Member (not a member of the Green Party, BTW) who repeatedly campaigned so as to elect Trump.

@41 I didn't miss a thing, and the fact that it's an effort for you to read over one paragraph says more about yourself.

Also, Clinton/the DNC along with their corrupt friends in the corporate media deliberately elevated Trump into the GOP nomination. The infamous "Pied Piper" strategy. From the beginning, Russiagate was bullshit, and still is, in order to lay the groundwork for their war, and to keep it going.

Apart from whoever you're discussing- and because you don't discuss facts either - there are candidates who voted for Trump who I'd vote for instead of some of these run-of-the-mill Democrats because they have more integrity and backbone on this war, what is our tax money, not theirs, and basic constitutional issues - a document your candidate is regularly flushing down the toilet, and along with politicians like Hillary Clinton - who is a sickening war monger. Maybe you don't remember what they did in Libya?

The day of reckoning is closing in on the Democrats - who don't do a thing for the American people, and who are hell-bent on destroying all life on earth. And many of you are too asleep at the wheel, and filled with your faux sense of superiority, to see a thing.

Joe Biden is disgusting and corrupt and you won't be getting my vote. And if I'm voting on nuclear war, I will indeed be considering Trump. And if you can't figure out why, you're literally a moron.

@42: Nobody here cares about your bitterly crackpot whining against the Democrats. What we do care about is the Stranger’s bald hypocrisy in slagging some local candidates, whilst leaving others without so much as a hint of criticism.

Please do feel free to keep us updated on how that nuclear war is going, though.

'Democratic' apologists
gonna be the Death
of the USofA

but Let's
Blame Bernie
and Kshama and Ralph
but NEVER 'Centrists' who'll
sell Workers (railroad & otherwise)
down the River to keep Wall Street HAPPY.

@45: Actually, it was every last person who spread the bald-faced lie about Democrats being no better than Republicans who are to blame for W. instead of Gore, and for Trump instead of Clinton. And CM Sawant worked harder than she ever did on the Council to earn her good share of blame for the latter. So go on apologizing for the loss of abortion rights; it’s a great look for any guy, you’ll just have to take my word for it. Purity Trolls (heart) coat hangers!

@32: ‘Why would someone need to “hold their nose” to vote for Hillary?

‘She was one of the candidates most qualified to be president in at least a half-century.’

The incredible sense of entitled privilege
required to sneer at Clinton tells us everything we need to know about CM Sawant, kristofarian, and all of the left’s other Purity Trolls, doesn’t it? One need only recall Our Very Own Dear Divine Madame Vel-DuRay’s dictum to understand the folly of voting for any non-viable third-party candidate (as most of them are).

This paper has become exactly what its name implies. For Christ's sake, I'll vote for whomever they don't endorse. The last thing this city needs is more activists to fuck things up even more.