I feel as if I’ve been to this pancake house before. A familiar
American flag hangs over the entryway. The same elderly couples arrive
in grumpy silence. The same half-and-half waits in tiny plastic
containers.
I sit at a table near the door and order the Ladies’ Plate (one egg,
two strips of fat-bubbled bacon, a small portion of soggy hash browns,
one slice of toast) and a cup of coffee.
The coffee arrives. I take a sip. Yep. I’m awake. Not a nightmare.
I’m actually, unhappily, back.
Back in the 8th Congressional District. Back on the breakfast beat.
How many times can I cross Lake Washington and drive down Bellevue Way
Southeast and sit in some artery-hardening diner or other because I
need a backdrop, some “color”? How many times can I write the same
fucking story about the Democrats’ flailing efforts to win an Eastside
congressional seat that they should own by now but have never, ever
won?
The last time I was here at Chace’s Pancake Corral, I’d ordered a
waffle and sat in a back corner as Darcy Burner, the former Microsoft
manager turned Democratic politician, ate the Eggs Cashew and explained
to me why she’d lost—twice—to the 8th District’s
now-entrenched Republican incumbent, Congressman Dave Reichert. Four
years previous, I could’ve sat in the same booth and had the same
conversation with Dave Ross, the liberal KIRO radio talk-show host who
in 2004 tried to win the same congressional seat but lost to Reichert,
who at the time was a newcomer to national politics.
Burner’s loss was heartbreaking, since she came closer to victory
than any Democrat ever has, but it was a brand of heartbreak with a
long history. The 8th Congressional District was drawn up after the
1980 census, and in all the years since, no Democrat has ever won it.
Mercer Island mayor Beth Bland kicked off the Democratic losing streak
in 1982 by failing to beat former TV newscaster Rod Chandler. In 1992,
lawyer and history professor George Tamblyn lost to former state
Republican Party chair Jennifer Dunn—launching Dunn into six
straight terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, matriarch status
within the Republican Party, and, after her death in 2007,
beatification in local conservative circles. Beginning in 1998, Heidi
Behrens-Benedict, an interior designer, was defeated three elections in
a row by Dunn. Then, when Dunn retired from Congress in 2004, Reichert
arrived to take her place—and Ross and Burner added their names
to the long list of Democratic losers.
Now Reichert, the former King County sheriff, is riding a three-term
stint in the House, where some of his recent votes include no on
President Obama’s economic-stimulus plan, no on ending gender-based pay
discrimination, and no on preventing taxpayer money from being used for
paying outrageous bonuses to executives at bailed-out banks.
And here’s the crazy part: The same Eastside voters who sent
Reichert back to Congress to vote against Barack Obama’s agenda
voted for Obama, giving him 57 percent of their vote last
November. That’s more than the 51 percent they gave to John Kerry in
2004, more than the 49 percent they gave to Al Gore in 2000, and more
than they’ve ever given to Reichert.
Excuse me, Eastside voters, but that doesn’t make any sense.
And believe me, I’ve tried to make sense of it. I’ve tried to take
you seriously. Because you’re serious suburban and rural people, right?
You’re not the senile Mercer Island blue hairs and shallow Bellevue
richie-riches and horse-fucking Enumclaw hicksters that some snotty-ass
urbanites think you are, right? Except that any serious reading of your
collective voting record shows you to be, well, either senile or
shallow or too busy with your horses to think much about what your
votes really mean. You’re all over the place. Which, I know, is typical
of “swing districts.” But still. Get it together. Grow up. As a
district, you’re almost 30 years old now. Your messy, swinging ways
were a lot cuter when you were younger. Now you’re just trying
everyone’s patience. Anyway, I’m over it—and you should be
too.
* * *
I ask my waitress, Deneen Carlson, whether she’s heard of Suzan
DelBene.
DelBene is the former Microsoft executive turned Democratic
politician (sound familiar?) who announced her candidacy in February,
dropped $200,000 of her own money into her campaign war chest, and was
promptly hit by the revelation—revealed on Slog (sorry about
that, DelBene)—that she’d failed to cast a ballot in nine
elections over the last four years. Among the elections DelBene missed:
the 2006 general election, when the congressional seat she now wants
was being voted on.
“Never heard of her,” Carlson, my waitress, said.
She will. We’re still more than a year and a half from the next 8th
District congressional election, in November of 2010. And Burner,
despite her losses, is proof that a newcomer can gain name recognition
and political traction pretty quickly; in 2006, Burner’s first time
out, she won a higher share of the district’s vote than any Democrat
has ever received: 48.5 percent.
My waitress knew Burner’s name.
So did Stan Nelson, the mailman who came in while we were talking.
So did Marsha, a woman who only wanted to be identified by her first
name and was eating breakfast with her husband, Allen.
“Frankly, I was surprised he made it last time,” Marsha said of
Reichert’s 2008 victory. But for someone who felt so surprised, Marsha
has a pretty good grasp of why Burner suffered her second loss last
year.
“First of all, Reichert was the incumbent,” she said.
That’s one part of the Democrats’ problem in the district.
Republicans get in, and then they gain the aura of incumbency and set
about cultivating reputations as moderates who are in sync with their
politically mixed-up swing district. Dunn was pro-choice in a party
that couldn’t get enough of its own anti-choice rhetoric. Reichert
voted for the Iraq war but against the Terry Schiavo intervention, and
he’s set about greening himself with talk of protecting local
wilderness areas and combating climate change (even though, as recently
as 2006, Reichert said climate change was a mere “possibility” about
whose urgency “I’ve not been conclusively convinced”). Once these types
of Republicans convince Eastsiders that they’re really idiosyncratic
moderates, they’re pretty much unstoppable.
“I think there was a bit of a smear campaign at the end against
Darcy Burner,” Marsha said, continuing the explanation of why she
thinks Reichert won last year. True enough—although Burner,
through sloppy campaigning, set herself up for the smear. Last fall,
when the current economic crisis exploded into the public
consciousness, Democratic candidates everywhere began talking less
about their plans to end the Iraq war and more about their plans to fix
the economy, and Burner took to reminding people on the stump: “I loved
economics so much I got a degree in it, from Harvard.”
Which was not technically true.
Burner’s Harvard degree is in computer science with a “special
field” in economics. In terms of her economic smarts, this may be a
distinction without much difference. But it allowed Republicans to
twist Burner’s rhetorical carelessness into television commercials that
claimed she’d lied about her résumé—and on the very
topic voters were now most concerned about, the economy. On my previous
trip to the pancake corral, over my waffle and her Eggs Cashew, Burner
had told me that her campaign’s internal polling showed her falling off
a cliff after the Harvard-degree contretemps erupted. “A significant
percentage of the electorate became convinced that I didn’t have a
degree from Harvard and that I lied about it,” she said, still clearly
upset.
On this trip to the corral, when I asked Marsha what kind of
Democrat could win in the 8th District, her husband, Allen, replied
without missing a beat: “An honest one.”
* * *
I’m sure DelBene is a nice, capable individual. She has a stronger
business background than Burner and clearly has some money to throw
around. But politics doesn’t turn on niceties or business
résumés (or even, for the most part, personal wealth),
and unfortunately DelBene arrives tailor-made for the strategy
Republicans have been successfully running in the 8th District for the
last several cycles: Find a Democrat’s weakness, turn it into an
all-encompassing caricature, and then hammer it, hammer it, hammer it
until everyone believes that the Democrat is a lying, bratty,
know-it-all climber (in the case of Burner) or an entitled, rich
former-executive who couldn’t be bothered with little things like
voting in local and national elections on the way to running for
Congress (which will be the case with DelBene).
Listen, Democrats: Every time I think about DelBene as your
candidate, I see myself back in this pancake corral two years from now,
preparing to write about how you blew it again, talking to elderly
voters, and ordering the Ladies’ Plate in another hopeless attempt to
make it all kill me a little bit less. So do me a favor. Or, better, do
yourselves a favor. Listen to what Allen is saying about an “honest”
candidate. Don’t listen to the literal content. The literal content, of
course, makes no sense. Burner didn’t tell any great, big disqualifying
lie; she just spoke carelessly and was turned into a liar—which
she’s not, at least not any more than every politician is—by the
Republicans. Listen, instead, to the emotional content. The man is
saying: Give us a personality we can get behind, and we’ll give you
the congressional seat.
DelBene is already toast. Too similar to Burner. Too many holes in
her voting record. Too unknown (Reichert was King County sheriff when
the Green River Killer was caught) and damaged already (she’s going to
be branded long before she can brand herself). Plus, she has no
political experience. Give ’em somebody else.
* * *
Give ’em a personality who can win. Sure, Darcy Burner was a
personality who a lot of voters could get behind—48.5 percent of
them got behind her in 2006 and 47 percent of them got behind her in
2008. Sure, in the long arc that runs from Beth Bland to today, Burner
was the best shot Democrats have ever had in the 8th District. Sure,
she was a big liberal brain with great liberal politics. But she had
big vulnerabilities stemming from her public persona: an ambitious tech
nerd who oversold her (already strong)
résumé, who
was too chummy with the strident voices of her party’s netroots
contingent, and who, as a result, drew 10 percent fewer 8th District
votes in 2008 than did big-brained, liberal-netroots-avoiding,
charmingly self-effacing Barack Obama—in, it’s worth repeating,
the same election year.
You can say the difference in outcomes for Burner and Obama in the
8th District is not about public persona but about sexism—the
different standards to which male and female politicians are held, the
different chinks in political armor that ensue—and some Democrats
have said this. But ultimately what it all comes back to is this
district—and it is not a district that has evinced much of a
problem with lady politicians. It elected Dunn, it voted for Patty
Murray in 2004, and in 2008 it almost chose Christine Gregoire for
governor despite being the home of her two-time challenger, Dino
Rossi.
No, what this district has a problem with is ideological
consistency, with political sense-making. Voters here don’t seem
capable of making logically coherent decisions at the polls. They want
to pick pro-choice and anti-choice candidates, pro-Iraq-war and
anti-Iraq-war candidates, pro-gun-control and anti-gun-control
candidates, sometimes all in the same election. Its fast-changing
demographics are one cause of this—the quick urbanizing and
diversifying of what used to be monochromatic conservative suburbs and
cow pastures. But also, this district is saying what the man in the
corral said to me: Give us a personality we can get behind. It
wants a likable pol who it can pretend it knows—the Matriarch,
the Sheriff, the Mom in Tennis Shoes—more than it wants a policy
platform it has to think about. That’s the reality Democrats need to
run with, rather than continually run up against.
Yeah, I know. Democrats tried personality politics by running Dave
Ross in 2004. Wrong personality. And that was a close race, and the
district is more Democratic now. “It’s not clear who our candidate is
going to be in 2010,” Dwight Pelz, chair of the Washington State
Democrats, told me the other day after I returned from the corral.
“Suzan DelBene has stepped forward. We’ll see if others join her.”
I hope that’s Pelz’s diplomatic way of saying: We’re going to
make sure others join her. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’ll be back at
the corral in 2011. And 2012. And beyond.
The other potential contenders most commonly mentioned are Rodney
Tom, the Democratic state senator from Bellevue who used to be a
Republican, and Chris Hurst, the Democratic state representative from
Auburn who used to be a police detective. Neither has yet said whether
he’s in or not. Neither is a show-stopping presence in any case. Which
leaves people like Pelz hoping for some huge Reichert gaffe or scandal,
repeating mantras like “this is the most Democratic district in the
nation held by a Republican congressman,” hoping the next election will
somehow be different than the last one, and in the meantime trying to
coax Reichert into retirement.
“Reichert knows he’ll have a tough race every two years for as long
as he wants to be in Congress,” Pelz told me. “And he knows he’s taking
six-hour flights to serve in the last row of these committees as a
permanent member in the minority. The Republican Party in D.C. is not
poised to take back the House. They don’t even know what they stand
for… Retirement beckons, and I’m sure his wife does also.”
Alternatively, Pelz has another hope: that Reichert will decide to
challenge Murray for her U.S. Senate seat in 2010 rather than run for
reelection to the House. Pelz would love that because he’s sure Murray
would win.
But consider what would happen if Reichert were to drop out of the
running in the 8th District. Jennifer Dunn’s son, now the Republican
King County councilman from Maple Valley, would probably get in.
“Everybody knows Reagan Dunn wants to be in Congress like his mama
was,” Pelz said. And who is Reagan Dunn? A familiar last name. A
personality-by-association. A political known quantity with a record to
run on. Probably a consistent voter.
Which is just what the district wants. Just what the Democrats
haven’t been good at producing. Just the man to send me back to the
fucking pancake corral in two years to ask the toast-butterers—again—why Democrats just can’t win here. 
yup! democrats would not put people like Dave on a ballot! Its why lieberman won as a independant!
Dave could be siting as a democrat and so could Lieberman!
But Democrats are the Kings and Queens so why whine?
Dave has voiced his beefs with Democrats and Republicans and one more he did not hesitate to do so very long.
Long time Sheriff Ditched and pissed on by State County and City’s VS. Long time Microsoft Manager? If she had Been an Apple manager it would have helped a lot but still not enough! Washatonians have a liberal voice not a liberal base and if Democrats in Olympia cant do simple math and read then they should never be givein the task of picking Democrat Runners! Some people are still Dumb enough to belive “all” Democrats are better than Republican Candidates.
Dave got “His” foot in the door! not the Republicans! people voted for Dave not a Republican! same as Lieberman.
Reichert voted FOR the hates crimes bill revision, the Matthew Shepard Bill, the just passed out of the House.
Maybe he is a better political animal than Dems. want to admit, and, that is the first problem.
Voters knew him as King County Sheriff and voted for him in that game BEFORE congress. Most of the Dem candidates have NO political experience. NONE. Duh….
Bruner lacked any spark, the Gregoire campaign style, just a bit younger. And she did fib/lie. Mistake.
There is no Dem that can beat Reichert – so – they should let it sit and focus on the possible, not the mirage they have created about the Eastside. Of course, liberal consultants, pollsters and misc others make tons of money … so it is a stimulus project of sorts …
Eli asks himself: “How many times can I write the same fucking story about the Democrats’ flailing efforts to win an Eastside congressional seat that they should own by now but have never, ever won?”
Answer: as any times as you want. Because, repeat after me, IT’S A REPUBLICAN DISTRICT. It nearly always has been, and probably will be for a long, long time. Medina, Beaux Arts, Clyde Hill, Old Bellevue… these are the blue-blood republican bastions of yore. Add the nouveau riche enclaves of Sammamish and Snoqualmie and the cultural conservative areas of Maple Valley, Enumclaw, Auburn, Black Diamond, etc, and you have a working Republican majority.
The district has gone for democratic presidents, senators, and governors because the better educated republicans are frequent ticket-splitters. They’ll cross over & join the 40% of dems to vote for a Kerry or a Murray or a Locke because they are pro-choice. Or pro-environment. Or understand that invading a middle eastern country for no good reason is basically a lousy idea. But they are never, ever, EVER going to give up their bird-in-the-hand republican congressman.
It was a Republican Nation with a Republican Congress and Senate when Dave took office and I still hear that yack?
Your constant carping on Suzanne is only going to reinforce her brand as a moderate and not beholden to extreme liberal groups. Whether fair or not, that image of the blogosphere warrior probably cost Darcy votes among the many moderate d’s in the eastside burbs as well as the southern part of the district. That is just one big difference between her and Darcy. Also, Suzanne was a vp at microsoft. Before the econ dustup, there was the executive dust-up re Darcy’s role at msft. If anything, Suzanne’s big contribution is one way to say; I made it in the corporate world and know a few things about building and running a company.
petty partisanship. open your minds, people!
by the way – Old Silver Dog Dave is considered moderate in his district – another Dem. problem.
His votes on the environment have bee far awy from the crap Rs in other places, ie. wilderness bills, etc.
I hear his appeal to women voters is good, hence, no play there for the lady candidates the Dems have shoved on the stage.
Face it, he has a clamp on the district.
JF, calling that a statute of limitations ruling is BS (I assume you’re talking about the Lilly Ledbetter case).
They were screwing her based on her gender for years, and to say that “it’s ok, you’re out of luck cause you didn’t catch it in time” is bullshit.
Reminds me of that rule in monopoly where people could not pay you when they landed on your hotel’d property because you didn’t notice it on your turn.
Stealing is stealing.
The moment you wrote this:
“Because you’re serious suburban and rural people, right? You’re not the senile Mercer Island blue hairs and shallow Bellevue richie-riches and horse-fucking Enumclaw hicksters that some snotty-ass urbanites think you are, right? Except that any serious reading of your collective voting record shows you to be, well, either senile or shallow or too busy with your horses to think much about what your votes really mean. You’re all over the place. Which, I know, is typical of “swing districts.” But still.”
You already have the explanation of why Democrats lose. You keep talking down to these people and treating them like shit and well, don’t be surprised they won’t support your candidate.
Arrogance is a bitch isn’t it?
Incumbency is the elephant in the living room of modern politics. Part of the reason for this is open campaign finance laws; an incumbent can legally save money from one campaign to the next, so any unspent money from a previous campaign is already in the warchest before a contender even steps up and starts fundraising. The other, one assumes, unanticipated, result of opening campaign finance books is that it’s become a horserace – the candidate who raises the most money is assumed by the media and the public to be the most legitimate, and thus the frontrunner. The frontrunner naturally gets the most press, and increases their name recognition.
Modern political campaigns are basically dialing for dollars. If you don’t raise a significant amount of money so that you can run TV and radio ads, it does not matter how many speeches you give at candidate forums, it does not matter how many doorbells you ring or how many babies you kiss. You get written off as a joke. Ergo those who can contribute the maximum are frantically pursued by those seeking office; the PACs and the wealthy individuals who can make up the majority of a budget without having to make 10,000 individual pleas for money.
It’s degrading, and leaves the candidate on shaky ethical ground (ya gotta dance with them whut brung ya, in Molly Ivins’ words) in regard to which PACs contribute. And it’ll never change until we get serious about campaign finance reform and public financing of political campaigns.
Anyone suprised by Eastsiders voting in Obama. By a wide margin and also sending Reichert back to Congress to vote against Obama’s programs, just doesn’t understand Eastsiders. These are the people who have zoned and finally, after twenty years of “after you Alphonse” developer aversion to their pedestrian corridor, have finally built a downtown that turns it’ back on it. That hardly seems odd though when you consider the lunacy of building a downtown with roughly one half of the street right of way needed to handle the traffic required to support the density they’ve planned. Eastsiders want to get on board popular trends, but they suffer permanent denial when it comes to doing things like paying for it, or condemning right of way for streets. It was cool to be for Obama. That gets a yes vote. Reichert will prevent them from paying for anything. That gets a yes vote. And that is the politics of the Eastside in a nutshell.
Ergo – sorry – bad candidates can’t get out of a paper bag – money was NOT the problem for Bruner.
You have elevated real political strategies and common sense, on the ground good sense to, to some WSU term paper. Sorry, Dems have gotten beat because of shitty candidates and shitty campaigns.
Need to own it, and whinging about money is not the first step.
Why is it so difficult to split a vote between Obama and Richert? Perhaps John McCain and Darcy Bruner were just seen as lesser choices.
As a person who has lived in the confines of the 8th District almost my entire life I see people who think about their vote and don’t vote the ‘Union Way’ or the Conservative Way’ but the thoughtful way. Why is thinking before you vote such a mysterious process to Democrats? I know the Author will say that because the 8th District voted for Richert that is proof that they don’t think but I would submit it was proof the Author doesn’t instead.
If the Democrats want to win the District they need to put up a candidate that is seen to be more trustworthy and honest than the candidate the Republicans put up. Integrity and honesty are seen as having more value than one particular viewpoint on a particular issue. Pretty simple. Evidently it has been impossible though.
I know that is not the way the other Districts always work but it is the way the 8th District works.
Interesting that the author points out Richert voted against Obama’s stimulus plan, feeling we couldn’t afford it. Today Obama told the NYT that we can’t afford the debt we now have as a Country, the same Debt that he foisted upon us. Who was right and who was wrong?
Gee I dunno Eli…..how many times *can* you write the same fucking godawful article? Apparently at least once more… Where did you learn the literary device for framing this article — Reader’s Digest??
Eli Sanders is exibit A1a why democrats lose elections. Forget about Ross and Burner and DelBene, these are merely hollow people, nothing means anything to them. Why vote for them? No, Sanders wears her hate for the common man like a democratic party badge of honor. Good luck with that, demos.
This new Fake Cutout from Microsoft does NOT support Gay Marriage, and can’t send her back to Iowa ’cause she would be too conservative …
And, as a fag, why should I send her a dime? Reichert is very matter of fact, and, I suspect he might come around before her on the issue.
Dud Lady. Eli, you and the pump machine need to ignore her. Spare yourself and your readers.
Wow lots of hostility for an article that’s pretty much spot on and that makes the same points the commenters are making — Burner lacked public office experience, personality, and fibbed — she didn’t appeal to the many ticket splitters — the Democrats need someone with personality to win.
Let me translate the point of the story. Reichert is formidable. Being sheriff, people like him. So, Democrats need a super candidate to win.
What makes a super candidate? A compelling personal story.
Someone who “outranks” Rehichert on the public service/public sacrifice scale or the morality scale.
Examples:
–A senior commander veteran coming back from Afghanistan, like Sestak in Pennsylvania (retired very high navy officer).
–A Valerie Plame (sp?) or a CIA official or ex FBI interrogator who is anti-dumb wars and anti waterboarding.
–Or, the warm and fuzzy version, someone who’s built lots of schools for girls in Afghanistan.
–a female former US attorney who cracked down on mortgage fraud and put wall street execs in jail.
some superstar like that is needed. Someone who’s done something more admirable and more praiseworthy than what Reichert has done.
If your personal story is “hey I became a successful upper middle class professional, working for Micosoft, so I’d like a seat in Congress, even though I haven’t VOTED for congress recently” — don’t even bother.
Thanks PC … I don’t think there is any anger, just sober political savy.
You have by virture of selective memory forgotten just how much the net people and prints like the Stranger hyped Bruner.
What I and many others feel is manipulated by the set up – we want a better candidate. And the resons why seems long.
Then dump off the hype, do good campaign work, go on the street and message well and win. I
And if no win, the legacy of good progressive message, and building forward.
So, we shall see. By the way – personal story time means some background in politics, community organizing and great civic record with a small c – voting in elections.
Patty Murray in her tennis shoes, could have beat him. Darcy with all her smug Microsoft/netroots/Harvard/my house burned stuff – did not.
Next, and it needs to be a very good looking younger alpha male. Or older male/female who can spend him into oblivion. Real wealth, not Micro bucks which are so common over there.
I’m not sure why you’re focusing on Bellevue, since my understanding is that the Democrats do fine in the traditional “eastside” (Kirkland, Redmond, Bellevue) but lose the rest of the district, especially the part down in Pierce County. Is this not true?
Geesh, the Dems do it just to make it look like people’s votes actually count in this state. With all of us mailing in our ballots and no oversight, the democratic machine controls all. If you people wake up, you’ll realize you’re Borgs with no choice at all.
Why, of all the people to take the ARDUOUS and SOUL-CRUSHING trip east to see us hellish, damnably stupid Bellevuites (more specifically, Enataians and Beaux Arts residents, of which I am one of the knuckle-dragging plebian rednecks), would the heroic Eli Sanders, carrier of a glorious first grader’s idea of politics, be picked? Why not someone more deserving of such a damnable quest from which they may not return with their precious Seattle integrity? Poor Eli had to sit his ass down in the same exact hellhole that happens to be probably the coolest greasy spoon in King County period. The poor man had to put up with people over thirty-five (gross!), waitresses who didn’t masturbate to democratic candidates (obscene!), and worst of all, the Bellevue crowd (hellish!). Truly he should be commended.
Boo fucking hoo, you don’t like that people don’t vote the exact same way? Oh, isn’t that a shame, it “doesn’t make sense” to you that one portion of a county has more complicated political wishes than just your clear-cut Black And White Dems-And-‘Pubs way of voting? Sorry the Eastside is so far beneath you, Eli. You’re a royal ass, you know that?
“And believe me, I’ve tried to make sense of it. I’ve tried to take you seriously. Because you’re serious suburban and rural people, right? You’re not the senile Mercer Island blue hairs and shallow Bellevue richie-riches and horse-fucking Enumclaw hicksters that some snotty-ass urbanites think you are, right? Except that any serious reading of your collective voting record shows you to be, well, either senile or shallow or too busy with your horses to think much about what your votes really mean. You’re all over the place. Which, I know, is typical of “swing districts.” But still. Get it together. Grow up. As a district, you’re almost 30 years old now. Your messy, swinging ways were a lot cuter when you were younger. Now you’re just trying everyone’s patience. Anyway, I’m over it—and you should be too.”
Yeah, fuck you too. Oh, right, I apologize, Seattle is so much better than the Eastside when it comes to, what was it? Right, just about everything. Because there aren’t any horse-fuckers or Bill Gateses or old people in Seattle, right? Wrong, dipshit. Obviously you have no idea what “real suburb people” are anyways (not that there is such a thing, any more than there’s a “real urban person.” What the fuck do you even mean? That’s like saying “Seattle is a genuine place”), and just because the county votes for various leaders:
1. Doesn’t mean the Eastside should be burned down
2. Doesn’t mean you can be a dick to everyone on the Eastside for no good reason
3. Doesn’t mean you as an obviously non-complicated, tried-and-true Seattleite democrat are automatically a fucking political genius. What’s that? You’re not just a super-hippie who gets spoon-fed his ideas without thinking about them? Doesn’t that make this entire article, oh, what’s the term? Right, hypocritical bullshit.
But why am I wasting time on you? I could be sitting around being an indecisive, semi-retarded caveman who poops in the ballot box, like the true Bellevue man I am.
Eli Sanders, rot in hell.