The Doug Fir is a fine flag

Most of Idaho and Eastern Oregon is federal land. There's no tax base there. Even if you factor in eastern WA and throw Spokane in there, there's no real economic center. But more to the point, the Puget Sound region needs the peninsula and eastern WA, and vice-versa.

Of course I want Washington to secede. Most of America sucks, and thanks to the structure of the federal legislature and the electoral college the parts that suck make our decisions for us. The most obnoxious commenter on this site is infinitely more reasonable and normal than the average voter somewhere like Mississippi

@3 sorry you hate our form of government but it is doing exactly what it was designed to do which is prevent the tyranny of the majority. Ironically what you are describing is exactly what progressives have been doomsaying will happen if Trump is re-elected.

@4 no it just substitutes majority of states for majority of people

@5 those two things are not analogous. States don't make decisions, only people do.

@6,

You're arguing that tyranny from the minority (which we're obviously experiencing) is somehow preferable to that of the majority. I'm pretty sure you'd rethink that position right quick if you were a woman seeking an abortion in central Texas or wherever.

To borrow the favored analogy from the most obnoxious commenter on this site that @3 references, we're allowing for 2 wolves and 3 sheep to decide what's for dinner and it just completely defies any sort of logic for rational governance.

It’s easy enough to check a survey response in “support” of doing anything, but that’s pretty shallow backing IMO. Who’s willing to be killed over this or see their children die? Who’s willing to suffer the same fate as the Palestinians or Ukrainians? My guess is very few. But good clickbait reading!

In other news "I'm taking my ball and going home" remains a perennial favorite in every sport that has winners, losers, and a ball.

@8 well to follow your analogy through if we let only the sheeps decide they’ll choose something that they prefer (grass) and the wolves will starve to death so not sure that is a better solution. I do appreciate that you think the majority are sheep’s though lol.

@11,

Ha ha, I only referenced that dumb analogy because the dumb commenter ahab is obsessed with it and always thinks he's being insightful and clever by invoking it whenever the dysfunction of our current political system is raised as a point of discussion. But you're definitely right in that us libs are the faggy omnivores in this dumb eco-political analogy, fwtw.

Why not encourage Texas to leave? Naturally they will be offended if asked, so we would have to jujitsu them into it. Whats the downside? Allow immigration of the educated and watch them become a texas twang speaking El Salvador.

yes, about 25% of washingtonians are mouth breathers. what's the breaking news here.

Texas won't ever leave because who's going to write the social security checks if they do?

Rearranging political geography is a tough question for me. It's tempting to want to see eastern Washington (as well as southwest Washington) go their own way, as the resulting (north)western Washington state would be the most progressive in the country, with durable Democratic super-majorities in state government. Think of all the great stuff we could finally do. Progressive income tax! Rent control! Zoning reform! Mass-scale affordable housing! Union-friendly labor laws! Maybe even (and I know I'm stretching here) an Oregon-style returnable container law!

But as the article suggests, this would entail hundreds of thousands of poor and working people, largely people of color, who can't afford to move (or can't easily up and leave their communities) being abandoned to a vicious red-state regime that would be at least as bad as Texas, probably worse. I have no ready answer for that counter-argument. (Btw, the Cascadia flag is admittedly an elegant design but it was long ago co-opted by the crunchier white supremacists. I would oppose adopting either the flag or the name.)

@16 -- Excellent ideas.

"... this would entail hundreds of thousands of poor and working people, largely people of color, who can't afford to move (or can't easily up and leave their communities) being abandoned to a vicious red-state regime that would be at least as bad as Texas, probably worse."

why not then let's
jujitsu Them into
Paying US to
take them
Off their
hands?

and let 'em Prosper
sans the Yoke of a
reich wing Utopia
strip-mining their
Souls till there's
Nothing left.

M4A here
we Come!

CKathes dear, as and eastern Washington land owner I think a big part of the east/west divide in the state is the near complete abandonment of the state by the Democratic Party. The farmers, ranchers, federal workers, and tribal members should be natural constituents of the Democrats, yet the party puts all of its resources toward the Puget Sound region, for they’re a sure bet.

maybe there
could be a State
in the Middle twixt
Snoqualmie Pass and
Idaho/Montana/Wyoming

hell
make it a Country
or three. We'll take
western British Colum-
bia & AK of course & may-
be some CanadianSocialism
[oh the humanity]'d do us some
Good. then there's The Nukes. hmmmm

@Vivian Garland didn't direct 28 Days Later, Danny Boyle did. Garland wrote the screenplay.

@18 I expect you'd really enjoy living in Liberty.

@19 I agree in principle, but the Democratic Party doesn't really exist in this state. We don't assign ballot lines based on party (except for president) and parties here don't command significant amounts of money or precinct organizers. Almost everything happens at the level of individual candidacies, who make their own resource allocation decisions independently of a party structure or each other. It's perhaps unfortunate but not surprising they generally choose to focus their efforts on where the largest concentrations of voters are (which might be another reason to consider letting Eastern WA go its own way).