Inslee and his wife, Trudi, were in Seattle on Sunday evening, November 10, to attend a dinner on behalf of slain gun-control activist Tom Wales. They graciously set aside an hour to talk with the Glee Club about last Tuesday's national disaster.
What went wrong?
JAY: Well, look at the bright side. The people in the 1st District again demonstrated their genius. So there's the good news.
I guess [the Republican victories] were a combination of things. One, I think people under-appreciated the war on terrorism. A very powerful "rally around the flag" psychology is in play during war. There was a very powerful force driving toward the president.
Number two, some of our Democratic leadership did not create a clear dividing line between us and the Republicans.
You supported Nancy Pelosi over Marin Frost to be minority leader. Does she represent a new liberal direction for the party?
JAY: I think she does have a difference from Frost [D-TX] in that she is more eager to demonstrate differences [with the Republicans] than to demonstrate similarities. Her view is that we do best when those differences are clearly defined. I think that's a strategic decision, and I think she's right on.
The Republicans are going to play the "San Francisco liberal" image, saying she's out of step with America. Your voting record is similar to hers. Are you out of step with the mainstream? Is she?
JAY: No. I believe her position--that ordinary working people should have more tax relief than Ken Lay and Enron--is where Middle America is. I think her position that seniors should have a Medicare prescription drug benefit is where Middle America is. I think her position that women should not lose the right of choice is where Middle America is.
What's the strategy to fight Bush's agenda: drilling in Alaska, the $1.35 trillion tax cut, the judicial appointments, privatizing social security, his faith-based initiative?
JAY: Be vocal so people know what's going on. The president has misjudged where America is on environmental issues. He tries to clear-cut the forests in order to save them. He tries to drive home an energy policy that gives 90 percent of the subsidies to the oil and gas industry. Anytime he tries these, he's going to be losing politically. So the strategy is to be vocal.
One of the things that drives me crazy: We're back there screaming our heads off every day, trying to fight these issues. For six months, every day, I was giving speeches about corporate governance. That's an overstatement, but....
TRUDI: No it's not.
JAY: The Republicans were selling out to the special interests. If America heard what was going on for six months, they would have been outraged. They didn't hear it.
Are there other issues that the Republicans are going to put on the table now that they've got the majority?
JAY: They will continue to go backwards on corporate governance. They're trying to defund the Securities and Exchange Commission right now. What you're going to see a lot of in the next two years is this: Instead of trying to repeal our stringent rules for corporate governance, they'll just try to defund the enforcement agency so there's no cop on the beat. The president came in and said we're going to arrest these guys, we're going to throw them in shackles. Well, he just came back and he's trying to gut the funding to the SEC by 33 percent.
How should the Democrats be spinning the tax cut?
JAY: Would you rather have a balanced budget and a Medicare prescription drug benefit--or would you rather have this tax cut that went disproportionately to people earning over $200,000? If people understand those are the choices, they're with us. You need a tax break more than Ken Lay and Enron. You go to work, you're living month by month, and the tax break should have gone to you. Number two, one of the reasons we're having a bad economy right now is the tax cut created a deficit again. The world knows--Wall Street knows--that the deficit's going to explode in the year 2005, if that tax cut doesn't change.
We've got to revisit the tax break we gave to the top one percent. We gave 47 percent of all the money away in the tax break to people earning over $200,000 a year. That's not the people who need the tax cut.
Can you give advice to other Democrats running for office?
JAY: Be the incumbent with $1.4 million.
What I would say is listen to the people instead of the pundits. When it came to the Iraq war, I listened to the people. The pundits were saying you've got to vote with the president, otherwise you'll be seen as non-patriotic; they'll question your manhood. I said no. The people were saying that a unilateral war determined by the president without allies, without the United Nations, is a bad decision.
Is there a Democratic vision on dealing with al Qaeda?
JAY: President Bush has totally dropped the ball on trying to rein in loose fissionable material in the former Soviet Union. Probably the most dangerous situation in the war on terror right now is fissionable material, potentially on the black market.
Number two, Bush dropped the ball in Afghanistan. We haven't committed the resources it'll take to rebuild that nation. This isn't the Marshall Plan. This is no plan.
We've only got a Democratic state within four miles of Kabul. So we've got to make a commitment to have a nation rather than one city. The president has not ensured that Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations won't come back into Afghanistan. Also, we ought to be more focused on al Qaeda right now--rather than Iraq.
