The People's Party is doomed to fail if they concentrate on Seattle, because that boat has left the pier and is disappearing over the horizon line.
They need to organize on a regional level: Whatcom, Skagit, Snohomish, King, Pierce, Thurston, Mason, Kitsap and Jefferson counties, for their natural constituencies are dispersed throughout those counties. But that means that they might have to bump up against some folks that don't understand them and might be unkind, which will doubtless cause some hard feelings.
But the future of poor folks in Seattle is, barring some huge economic disruption, the institutional poor who are lucky enough to get a place in public housing, where they will doubtless be treated as pet causes by wealthy patrons.
This is interesting. So, if Oliver had been elected mayor, she would have called a meeting of the steering group of her party, or a Party Assembly itself, before each statement, decision, or action in order to receive their instructions?
And they aren't going to make formal statement of who they think it would be better to vote for?
I don't get the idea the politicians have to be held accountable to the organization that endorses them. What type of mechnism do they want to inforce this? Politicians are held accountable at the next election cycle, where the organization can chose to noy endorse them or actively campaign against them.
The idea that there should be some mechanism other than elections to hold politicians accountable seems kind of frightening. Say the an organization that wants to bring a basketball team to Seattle endorses a politician and the politician later breaks this promise, should that pro sports organization the be able to sue or what?
That sounds like it gives even more power to special interests groups
To say "if elected I'm accountable to this in group of party elites and the organizations that supported me" does seem like a recipe for corruption and, ironic, loss of accountability.
What is the Stranger's agenda in continuing to promote her, when everything she says, in her very own words, presumably unedited, demonstrate that she hasn't a clue, and is making it up off the top of her head as she goes along?
@11 her whole bit on endorsements and being held accountable shows that she very little knowledge of how politics & voting works. Not surprising considering she doesn't vote very often.
11: Agreed. For me the "accountability" issue for elected officials is even more problematic; who defines accountability, who says when accountability is achieved, and your point of the mechanism.
This whole interview (with all due respect) sounded a bit like the "Constitutional Peasant" scene from Monty Python.
I'm sure glad I'm not the only one who finds this "queer black woman of color" (or whatever she's identifying as today) a world class narcissist, demagogue, hypocrite and knucklehead. She's punching way above her weight class. She's 'fought' as far as she has on the race and orientation ticket; I hope the ref calls a TKO.
From the article: "There was a moment during our Candidate Survivor forum when Jenny Durkan dressed up as Melissa McCarthy playing Sean Spicer and she was roasting all the different candidates, and when she got to you, she said, "too cool, to cool" and then made a rather unfortunate remark about black dolls. "
It's amazing she was able to even get up out of bed considering how difficult operating in the world seems to be to her. Yes, as a new candidate you are going to be questioned and tested. That has nothing to do with you being a white appearing POC, rather, that has to do with being new on the scene and running. Everyone goes through it. There's nothing special about that sort of experience.
Still struggling to acknowledge white people are struggling economically as well. She still doesn't get why she lost.
A side note though, could you imagine have a complainer-in-chief for Mayor. Thank goodness she took a good principled ideas, and rendered them ineffective with shit messaging, and complaining.
Does not deserve to be mayor. Why. Because she represents the Democratic platform of backroom dealing. To them the public process is only a dog and pony show for what has already been decided in private among the Blue shaded elite on the bureaucratic side .
If you vote for Durkan that is what you vote for. You just put your trust in the big blue D and let them decide what is right for you among the bureaucratic elite.
What she did regarding medical marijuana was unforgivable and should disqualify her outright. She allowed the MMJ peddlers buying lobbyists to openly sell MMJ because they were killing MMJ in Olympia. Those special pot dealers were "tenable" ..because they did it right??. Meanwhile, if you were just selling MMJ because the Hemfest rock stars were you were in the "untenable" "wild west"..
Durkan was right in the mix with all of that meeting with the Governor's office and making sure the world new that MMJ sales was"Untenable'.. while the "untenable" industry was used to pay for lobbyists like Lonnie Johns Brown, Phil Wyatt, Ezra Eikemeyer, Vicky Christopherson.. All eating lunch at the Spar in Olympia dining with legislators paid for by "untenable" MMJ money...
Does not deserve to to be mayor. Why?. Because she represents the developer elite. If she had her way she would have 19 more cranes building 19 more residential high rises for us all to be frustrated into so we could generate more retail sales and sales taxes...if we could afford to live like Uncle Bill and hire Mr. French to take care of Buffy and Jodie. The search will continue for the affordable housing Santa but my guess is Lovie and Thurston are going to be willing to pay more for that waterfront view than Sanford and Son.
As long as the Seattle cranes are not building farms and other goods manufacturers, Seattle's goods and services will be stuck out on the roads trying to reach the populous driving through road diet and traffic calming hindrances.
Her policy is great for filling residential high rises but soon the need for farming and manufacturing is going to be a reality and that doesn't make much money for the developer elite. Expect more street cars and sluts to improve property values for Developers that will be housing Lovie ,Thurston,Uncle Bill and Mr. French. The rest of Seattle will be eating Soylent green from whatever property they can manage to find that doesn't have a million dollar view of Elliott Bay or one of the lakes...probably somewhere in the mass transit corridor..
A major US city cannot be governed strictly by those who cannot see past the billfolds of the developer elite.. Their vision uses the environmental mantra to create the sophist jargon for their needs not for the needs of the environment and their governing of the people will create a privileged Seattle... and a former resident of Seattle now residing in Lakewood.
Considering the source is an interviewer totally sympathetic to Oliver's failed campaign, I strongly suggest you take anything written here about the victors of the primary election with a rather large grain of salt.
Just once I wish a Seattle centrist would admit that their candidates suck.
You have Bureaucratic suck up wearing cop clothing... and
A developer elite suck up wearing greeny clothing.
The bureaucracy will get fatter and fatter... and Durkan will throw the developer elite a bone the size of the Steinbrueck center.
To the new Seattle mayor..Jenny "backroom" Durkan.
Thanks Nakita. We have a third place consolation prize for the "non-eligible" candidate....
Bob.... ITS A soylent green dinner for two under the Dearborn overpass with the rest of the people's party.
I did not say you had. I was merely noting that if you crank about something as obviously beneficial as SDOT road diets, you might as well just tell us durned kids to stay offa your lawn.
What people are really pissed at Nikkita about(other than her daring to run at all for a job they thought should be reserved for a passionless, technocratic white millionaire) is that she didn't instantly, unconditionally issue an immediate People's Party endorsement to Cary Moon when the first round of results were released on primary night. What they don't get is that if she had done that:
A) It would have immediately and permanently destroyed the People's Party, a party we desperately need;
B) It would have meant she no longer had any strong personal convictions or any continuing respect for her own supporters.
And it's arrogant to assume that if Nikkita hadn't run, her votes would gone to Moon as a bloc. The fact is, while Moon is minutely to the left of Durkan on a handful of issues, there was nothing in Moon's proposals or in her self-presentation that addressed any of the issues Nikkita's campaign centered. Without Nikkita's presence in the race, the overwhelming majority of her voters would simply have stayed away from the polls. No one else in the race had any proposals anywhere close to what Nikkita's voters want. The rest of the major candidates ran on virtually identical status quo programs. None of them addressed poverty, none addressed race or class, none challenged the power of the landlords or the financial sector. None of them was anywhere close to simply being entitled to the votes that ended up going to Nikkita.
After the primaries, Seattle ended up with two wealthy, smug, contented members of the elite making it onto the general election ballot. Neither is a monster, but neither has anything special to offer or any passionate commitment to responsiveness, to justice, or to change. It's entirely legitimate for Nikkita and her supporters to ask tough questions of those two and to expect real commitments to transformative change in exchange for their votes. And it's arrogant for anyone here to act as if Nikkita's supporters should have(or WOULD have) just voted for Moon in the primary, or should have just "fallen in line" with Moon on primary night once the first results were in. It's not as if there's anything significant at stake in the choice Seattle voters ended up with for November.
Rather than sneering at Nikkita over trivialities-why are people still attacking her for not always voting? In past campaigns where the candidates were all bland centrists, why SHOULD she have voted?-rather than continuing to act as though she had no business even entering the race, why not actually listen to the message her campaign presented. Why not acknowledge that the issues she raised. Why not be open to direct democracy and the idea of power-from-below? Why not...wait for it...actually treat Nikkita Oliver and those who support her with at least a tiny bit of respect? What have you got to lose?
Sorry, a sentence in that last paragraph should have read "why not acknowledged that the issues she raised matter and are resonant with a large part of the electorate?"
Beneficial?? Have you driven a commercial vehicle? If you did you would not be in favor of turning turn lanes into flower pot strips.
Requisitioning already paid for general lanes for flower pot lanes is theft. The tax payers already paid for those lanes. Because the city has signed vision 2020 down at the Puget Sound Regional Council, and wants to move more people into the city, they have a conflict of interest and have no business deciding transportation policy. Especially policy that feeds said policy to increase populations in Seattle by a certain date. Agenda 21 notwithstanding.
I could live with said policy if commercial traffic was immune from such awful policy. However, that is not the case.
So, you're going to assume what you need to show. (I have to admit, it's much easier for you that way.)
...other than her daring to run at all for a job they thought should be reserved for a passionless, technocratic white millionaire...
And you assumed we, your fellow citizens, were all racists! Your generosity of spirit just can't be beat.
The fact is, while Moon is minutely to the left of Durkan on a handful of issues...
... there are no other candidates in the general election, so the citizens who voted for Oliver can either vote for Moon, not vote, or vote for Durkan. Two of those three choices benefit the candidate whom (you say) they like least. During the election count, Oliver could have made a virtue out of necessity, and cut a deal with Moon to endorse her in exchange for Moon's agreement to give priority to several ideas the People's Party especially want.
But Oliver did nothing, and so the citizens who supported her will get nothing, because Moon owes them nothing.
It's entirely legitimate for Nikkita and her supporters to ask tough questions of those two and to expect real commitments to transformative change in exchange for their votes.
It was entirely legitimate. Now, Moon has campaign activities which do not involve trying to get the endorsement of a former candidate who has been very, very clear she will not endorse anyone.
It's not as if there's anything significant at stake in the choice Seattle voters ended up with for November.
So, we have no need to listen to Oliver on the topic of our Mayoral election. Good to know even you agree on that.
Rather than sneering at Nikkita over trivialities-why are people still attacking her for not always voting?
Oh, you mean the candidate who, right here in this very post, talked about "...we want to help our communities who have already faced many systemic barriers to voting."? You need to ask why voting is important? Really?
...addressed any of the issues Nikkita's campaign centered.
Ah yes, the incredibly beneficial effect her mere presence in the primary campaign had on our civic dialog. Where have we heard that before?
The conversation around housing and homelessness, around what economics looks like in our city, the gap between the rich and the poor, what does racial justice and equity actually look likeāthose conversations have been substantively pushed to a place that they would not have been pushed to if the Peopleās Party and myself had not joined in the race.
What were those conversations, and what policy had already resulted from them?
ECB: Did you support the housing levy?
NO: Which levy?
ECB: The one that passed last year, that will bring in $290 million to build affordable housing.
NO: Honestly I donāt remember.
She didn't even know that we had voted, let alone how we had voted. Because she just didn't care.
In past campaigns where the candidates were all bland centrists, why SHOULD she have voted?
Well, because don't vote just for candidates, but also sometimes for policy. In this case, the policy of which she knew absolutely nothing, while lecturing us on how much her mere presence had improved our dialog concerning said policy. That's some world-class smug arrogance, that is.
Why not...wait for it...actually treat Nikkita Oliver and those who support her with at least a tiny bit of respect?
Because she didn't even know that I'd already voted on "...the issues she raised." Because you assumed, right here in this very conversation, that my motivation in voting was racist.
That's why I had no respect for her candidacy, or for her supporters.
#42 I didn't assume your motivation was racist. I assumed it was classist, that you're basically an economic royalist.
It's simply fact that Moon and Durkan are wealthy and white, and thus likely to essentially agree on the idea that what the rich want should matter more than what everyone else wants. Being wealthy, neither is truly capable of caring about the powerless. They can only be forced to do progressive things through pressure from below.
Why are you so bitter about Nikkita even entering the mayor's race? There was no one close to her on the issues and there was never any possibility that her voters would have simply backed Moon in the primary if she herself hadn't run. What did Moon even have to offer them.
She's fully qualified in the bland, technocratic Hillary way, but so what? Without a social and economic justice agenda, without any grassroots base(Moon's campaign was money and nothing else) without any real connection to any of the social movements, why would you have thought Moon was more entitled to Nikkita's voters than Nikkita was?
If you're going to say Nikkita should just have stayed out and endorsed Moon from the start, don't you think you owe everybody some sort of case for believing Moon was the better choice for progressives. You've simply never made that case. And you also haven't made any coherent case for the idea that Nikkita should she have negotiated with Moon prior to the primary when you haven't said any of the other candidates should have done so, and when nobody in any previous mayor's race has done anything remotely similar to that.
If you didn't support Nikkita, fine. But you sound absurdly vindictive and dismissive towards her. She did nothing to you to deserve that.
And I didn't say voting isn't important. What I said was that there's no reason to obsess about the fact that Nikkita didn't always vote. If not always voting is a deal-breaker in and of itself, the majority of Seattle residents would be disqualified from ever seeking elective office.
The only way Moon can win is to win over Nikkita's supporters as a bloc. Knowing that, you should realize you are harming Moon's chances by perpetually dissing Nikkita. Just get Moon to embrace most of the People's Party program. If Moon had just done THAT in the primaries(rather than standing for essentially nothing)she'd clearly have done much better. She just needs to learn from that now, especially since every other defeated primary candidate was at least somewhat to her left.
#42 I didn't assume your motivation was racist. I assumed it was classist, that you're basically an economic royalist.
Well, that makes it all better! You're only assuming other bad things about me, based upon what, exactly?
But wait -- here's what you actually wrote:
...they thought should be reserved for a passionless, technocratic white millionaire...
See, using skin color as a criterion is the very definition of racism, which makes it the very definition of what you were accusing "most people" of being. So no, your attempt to weasel out of it didn't work. Especially when you follow up with this:
It's simply fact that Moon and Durkan are wealthy and white,
That depends on how you define "wealthy". Moon grew up with money, but chose engineering for a career -- a doubly odd choice for a woman of means. Perhaps this unusual behavior on her part might suggest she does not hold the other beliefs you assumed she holds, when your assumptions about her beliefs were based upon nothing but the circumstances of her birth?
Nah, that would be thinking, whereas you prefer the laziest of stereotyping based upon race and class, as the rest of your paragraph screams.
Why are you so bitter about Nikkita even entering the mayor's race?
Where did you get the idea that I was (a) bitter, and (b) about her entering the race? I didn't even know who she was until she declared her candidacy. Once I did some research and found her own words, which I have here quoted, I wrote her off as unqualified, and that was that.
There was no one close to her on the issues...
You just can't un-drink that Kool-Aid, can you?
Nikita Oliver, 2017:
The conversation around housing and homelessness, around what economics looks like in our city, the gap between the rich and the poor,
āI really do think this is a city defining what you do with economic inequality,ā Mayor Ed Murray said of the results. āIām a little amazed,ā he added, at both the lead and voters approving the fifth special tax levy the mayor has campaigned for in two years.
We, the voters, did not wait until 2017 to *talk* about these issues. We were *doing* something about them for years. Too bad nobody thought to tell Nikkita Oliver that before she told us we were talking it all wrong.
If you're going to say Nikkita should just have stayed out and endorsed Moon from the start,
I've said nothing of the kind. What I have said is that *after* she ran and got plenty of votes, but not enough to win, she should have done what real leaders in real diverse democracies do: cut a tough deal with her former rival, and sold it to her skeptical constituency.
But that would be real leadership at a time of real opportunity, so it didn't happen.
And you also haven't made any coherent case for the idea that Nikkita should she have negotiated with Moon prior to the primary...
I never made that case because I never stated that idea.
But you sound absurdly vindictive and dismissive towards her. She did nothing to you to deserve that.
She asked me for my vote, after not bothering to learn how I had voted -- or even if I had. She lectured me on how she'd improved a conversation she herself had completely missed. She told me she was qualified to implement a policy she did not even care to learn existed.
(You know, it's healthy to feel insulted when someone talks down to you that way. Trust me on this.)
If not always voting is a deal-breaker in and of itself, the majority of Seattle residents would be disqualified from ever seeking elective office.
The vast majority of Seattle residents will never seek elective office. What has that to do with one who has?
Knowing that, you should realize you are harming Moon's chances by perpetually dissing Nikkita.
Oliver's refusal to act like a real leader, after voters graciously gave her the opportunity to demonstrate such leadership, has harmed Moon's chances far more than I ever could have.
Besides, I'm voting for Durkan. (If you get the chance, please thank Ms. Oliver for helping to bring Mayor Durkan closer to reality.)
My experience with Durkan at events is that she shows up late which is odd for a candidate who might want to work the room. And, she leaves about as fast as she can. She did this at a Washington Paramount Duty event where all the women candidates showed up (it was a coincidence that only the women candidates came). There was Jessyn Farrell at her table, ditto Cary Moon and Nikkita Oliver. Durkan? A no-show until the last minute.
And, just like at the Candidate Survivor forum, she did something to call a great deal of attention to herself. She danced down the aisle with one of many great drag queens. The dancing was fine but almost immediately after that particular performance, she went AWOL. I had been chasing an interview with her for weeks - one that her handlers repeatedly told me she wanted - and yet, she's gone. I asked one of them if she had left and was told, "No, she's around someplace." She was not.
I write a public education blog and had wanted to ask her about disparaging remarks she made to the 36th Dems about the Seattle School Board. Still no answer. Beware.
#44:
1) It's hard to tell that you were voting for Durkan when you spent so much time telling off Nikkita for not immediately backing Moon. If you were always backing Durkan, the most conservative major candidate, anyway, why do you even CARE how Nikkita relates to Moon?
2) What you don't seem to get is that Oliver is part of a political party. She isn't authorized to negotiate on behalf of that party and to simply announce that it's endorsement is going to another candidate after the primary. Her organization is democratically-run and those who are part of it need to be consulted. The whole point of the Oliver campaign was that it was a different way of doing politics. And I didn't hear you insisting that any of the other defeated candidates negotiate with Moon or Durkan, only Nikkita. You didn't even insist that of the candidate who finished just a couple of points behind Nikkita.
I'd probably end up supporting Moon myself in the fall. It's just that it was never realistic to expect Nikkita to just deliver her votes to Moon as a bloc-as if NIkkita was some sort of young, left-wing queer POC ward heeler or something.
And white people cannot be victims of racism in this. Racism is not simply prejudice on the basis of melanin. It's about having power OVER other people and having the capacity to make their lives worse. It's prejudice to say rude things to people not like you. It's racism to keep them from living in your neighborhood, to deny credit and insurance in people in OTHER neighborhoods, and to have a police department that harasses and kills those people in ANY neighborhood.
If you were always backing Durkan, the most conservative major candidate, anyway, why do you even CARE how Nikkita relates to Moon?
Because I figured the voters who chose Oliver might not stay engaged without her endorsement of Moon. I believe in democracy, in more votes and voices rather than fewer.
I also believe the race is currently heavily in Durkan's favor, which will tend to reduce our civic dialog during the election season. Again, more debate and conversation is better than less.
Finally, I believe the citizens who voted for Oliver should get something for it. Right now, thanks to her inaction, they will get nothing.
You didn't even insist that of the candidate who finished just a couple of points behind Nikkita.
If you're referring to Jessyn Farrell, who finished 4.5% (not "a couple of points") behind Ms. Oliver, she has already said she will not endorse anyone until after Labor Day. Are you faulting me for not demanding she answer a question she has already answered?
(Also, Mike McGinn has endorsed someone. Nobody cares, because everyone except Mike McGinn knows Mike McGinn is irrelevant to Seattle's future.)
What you don't seem to get is that Oliver is part of a political party.
So is Jessyn Farrell, who is apparently free to endorse as she likes. Perhaps the Democrats empower women more than do the People's Party?
She isn't authorized to negotiate on behalf of that party and to simply announce that it's endorsement is going to another candidate after the primary.
Which is hilarious, considering she spends much of this headline post speaking for the People's Party on the topic of endorsements.
(Here's a hint: if you have to keep manufacturing excuses for why your leader hasn't acted like a leader, then you probably haven't a very good leader.)
Just get Moon to embrace most of the People's Party program.
Why should a *winner* of an election adopt the program of someone who lost? If the voters had wanted "most of the People's Party program," they would have sent Oliver, not Moon, to the general election.
Then there's the bait-and-switch of Moon telling voters she had her own ideas before the primary, then adopting ideas they'd rejected *after* they'd rejected those ideas. Why should Moon so sacrifice her integrity?
Now, there might have been a few ideas she already had in common with the People's Party, and she could have promised to put those ideas first, in exchange for an endorsement from Oliver and a pledge of support in getting out the vote. Oliver never budged, so none of that happened. Now, if any of the voters who chose Oliver in the primary choose Moon in the general, it will be because they have no other choice; Moon will owe them nothing.
And white people cannot be victims of racism in this. Racism is not simply prejudice on the basis of melanin.
Oh, quit whining. You got caught throwing around a frivolous charge of racism, and you threw that frivolous charge because you were not willing to confront the actual reasons real voters rejected your preferred candidate in the election. Making yourself look more foolish by doubling down on your contra-factual claims does nothing to address the serious problems which actual racism still causes our country; in fact, your false claims here cheapen the charge of racism, making it more difficult for us to address real racism where it really hurts real people.
If you're interest was just in keeping Oliver voters engaged(which happens to be Nikkita's own objective and reflects why she has made her post-primary choices)why would you think just having her cut an old politics "deal" with Moon would do anything at all to achieve that goal? None of Nikkita's voters want her to cut unilateral deals on their behalf and she has no authority to do so, and none would be impressed by such a cynical, "old politics" way of doing things. A deal with Moon as soon as the votes were in would have done more to drive those people away from the voting booth than anything else.
And yes, Moon beat Nikkita, but JUST BARELY. It was essentially a dead heat. Had it not been for Moon's massive financial advantage she could well have finished third. The only reason The Stranger endorsed Moon(an endorsement that probably made the difference in this case is that they believed her longer professional experience somehow better suited her for the job. They took no issue whatsoever with what Nikkita proposed, and it's likely that most of Moon's supporters would have backed her if she ran on Nikkita's exact platform. Moon's wafer-thin edge was not a preference in ideology, a Moon vote was not a "Nikkita is wrong about everything" vote, and Moon has nothing to lose by engaging Nikkita's proposals and her supporters.
And I made no accusations of racism. I simply pointed out that identity and class matter-that rich people, most of whom happen to be white due to the inherent white supremacism in capitalism, seldom disagree much anymore-there are virtually no rich people with values anywhere close to those of FDR or Bobby Kennedy-there are some who support safe, innocuous "lifestyle liberal" values that are decent and necessary but which can't change anything or liberate anyone if achieved in isolation. They don't care about poverty. They don't care about extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. They don't see anything wrong in corporations controlling the major decisions of live.
And I didn't accuse anyone OF racism. I wasn't saying Durkan and Moon won because the voters could only accept white people on the general election ballot. You, in fact, made a frivolous accusation or racism towards me-news flash, I am white and therefore I can't be prejudiced against white people on the basis on melanin. My point was simply that identity and class matter and frequently, though not always, define.
In any case, your mask slipped when you revealed that your sneering disdain of Nikkita is down solely to her giving her one answer to one question that you happened not to like on one day. Given that she's no longer on the ballot, what's the point of continuing to "go negative" on her, OR of taking a "shut up and listen to your elders" attitude towards her supporters? The people who voted or campaigned for her did nothing to merit your contempt. And it's not as though there was any good reason for those voters to done what you wanted and chosen Durkan in the primary.
You explicitly asserted Oliver's critics were really motivated by racism:
What people are really pissed at Nikkita about(other than her daring to run at all for a job they thought should be reserved for a passionless, technocratic white millionaire)...
Believing the Mayor's Office should be "reserved for" someone who is "white" is the very definition of racism. You were trying to de-legitimize criticism of a "black woman of color" (!) by tarring her toughest critics as racists.
None of Nikkita's voters want her to cut unilateral deals on their behalf...
Surveyed all 31,365 other of them, have you?
...she has no authority to do so,
She had as much authority as each of the 31,366 of you individually said she did. For all you really know, tens of thousands of citizens who voted for her might have vocally supported Moon, had Oliver gotten a deal with Moon to advance some of the People's Party agenda in return.
A deal with Moon as soon as the votes were in would have done more to drive those people away from the voting booth than anything else.
Well, I hope nothing was really what you wanted, because that's what Oliver has so far delivered for you.
And yes, Moon beat Nikkita,
You should have put a full stop there, not a comma. Nothing you typed in the remainder of the paragraph has the slightest relevance, even if true.
Moon has nothing to lose by engaging Nikkita's proposals and her supporters.
Sure she does. Economists call it "opportunity cost." There are now two months until our general election, and every attempt by Moon to sway voters whom you yourself keep describing as totally dedicated to Oliver (!) is another bit of time, money, and effort not spent on reaching that much larger number of voters who are as yet undecided (and far more centrist) than you who already chose Oliver.
In any case, your mask slipped when you revealed that your sneering disdain of Nikkita is down solely to her giving her one answer to one question that you happened not to like on one day.
Nice try. When a candidate talks big about "[t]he conversation around housing and homelessness, around what economics looks like in our city, the gap between the rich and the poor," and then reveals she didn't even care enough about that conversation to recall the most important recent thing about it, at the very least she's saying she simply does not care about the very issue she claims to care about.
The people who voted or campaigned for her did nothing to merit your contempt.
She obviously was not part of that conversation last year, and so her claim to have changed it was as false as her claim to have cared about the issues addressed in it. The kindest possible thing to say about such a candidate is to describe her as obviously unqualified for the office she sought.
They need to organize on a regional level: Whatcom, Skagit, Snohomish, King, Pierce, Thurston, Mason, Kitsap and Jefferson counties, for their natural constituencies are dispersed throughout those counties. But that means that they might have to bump up against some folks that don't understand them and might be unkind, which will doubtless cause some hard feelings.
But the future of poor folks in Seattle is, barring some huge economic disruption, the institutional poor who are lucky enough to get a place in public housing, where they will doubtless be treated as pet causes by wealthy patrons.
This would be Comedy Christmas if it weren't such a huge disservice to the people these, um, General Assemblists have declared they're speaking for.
And they aren't going to make formal statement of who they think it would be better to vote for?
Durkan's prospects are improving.
(I honestly don't think I have been this embarrassed for someone else since watching Steve Poole attempt to "rap.")
The idea that there should be some mechanism other than elections to hold politicians accountable seems kind of frightening. Say the an organization that wants to bring a basketball team to Seattle endorses a politician and the politician later breaks this promise, should that pro sports organization the be able to sue or what?
That sounds like it gives even more power to special interests groups
If Hillary had said that....
This whole interview (with all due respect) sounded a bit like the "Constitutional Peasant" scene from Monty Python.
That actually happened? My god.
The voters did that.
Still struggling to acknowledge white people are struggling economically as well. She still doesn't get why she lost.
A side note though, could you imagine have a complainer-in-chief for Mayor. Thank goodness she took a good principled ideas, and rendered them ineffective with shit messaging, and complaining.
Does not deserve to be mayor. Why. Because she represents the Democratic platform of backroom dealing. To them the public process is only a dog and pony show for what has already been decided in private among the Blue shaded elite on the bureaucratic side .
If you vote for Durkan that is what you vote for. You just put your trust in the big blue D and let them decide what is right for you among the bureaucratic elite.
What she did regarding medical marijuana was unforgivable and should disqualify her outright. She allowed the MMJ peddlers buying lobbyists to openly sell MMJ because they were killing MMJ in Olympia. Those special pot dealers were "tenable" ..because they did it right??. Meanwhile, if you were just selling MMJ because the Hemfest rock stars were you were in the "untenable" "wild west"..
Durkan was right in the mix with all of that meeting with the Governor's office and making sure the world new that MMJ sales was"Untenable'.. while the "untenable" industry was used to pay for lobbyists like Lonnie Johns Brown, Phil Wyatt, Ezra Eikemeyer, Vicky Christopherson.. All eating lunch at the Spar in Olympia dining with legislators paid for by "untenable" MMJ money...
Does not deserve to to be mayor. Why?. Because she represents the developer elite. If she had her way she would have 19 more cranes building 19 more residential high rises for us all to be frustrated into so we could generate more retail sales and sales taxes...if we could afford to live like Uncle Bill and hire Mr. French to take care of Buffy and Jodie. The search will continue for the affordable housing Santa but my guess is Lovie and Thurston are going to be willing to pay more for that waterfront view than Sanford and Son.
As long as the Seattle cranes are not building farms and other goods manufacturers, Seattle's goods and services will be stuck out on the roads trying to reach the populous driving through road diet and traffic calming hindrances.
Her policy is great for filling residential high rises but soon the need for farming and manufacturing is going to be a reality and that doesn't make much money for the developer elite. Expect more street cars and sluts to improve property values for Developers that will be housing Lovie ,Thurston,Uncle Bill and Mr. French. The rest of Seattle will be eating Soylent green from whatever property they can manage to find that doesn't have a million dollar view of Elliott Bay or one of the lakes...probably somewhere in the mass transit corridor..
A major US city cannot be governed strictly by those who cannot see past the billfolds of the developer elite.. Their vision uses the environmental mantra to create the sophist jargon for their needs not for the needs of the environment and their governing of the people will create a privileged Seattle... and a former resident of Seattle now residing in Lakewood.
So, you'll be writing in Ed Murray, then? Because you know Nikkita Oliver is not eligible to be a mayoral candidate in the general election, right?
(Oh, and you might not want to crank about road diets -- that's called "a tell.")
Considering the source is an interviewer totally sympathetic to Oliver's failed campaign, I strongly suggest you take anything written here about the victors of the primary election with a rather large grain of salt.
You have Bureaucratic suck up wearing cop clothing... and
A developer elite suck up wearing greeny clothing.
The bureaucracy will get fatter and fatter... and Durkan will throw the developer elite a bone the size of the Steinbrueck center.
To the new Seattle mayor..Jenny "backroom" Durkan.
Thanks Nakita. We have a third place consolation prize for the "non-eligible" candidate....
Bob.... ITS A soylent green dinner for two under the Dearborn overpass with the rest of the people's party.
PU.
A tell..?? I don't use a clever stage name like some chick at the Deja Voo.
I did not say you had. I was merely noting that if you crank about something as obviously beneficial as SDOT road diets, you might as well just tell us durned kids to stay offa your lawn.
A) It would have immediately and permanently destroyed the People's Party, a party we desperately need;
B) It would have meant she no longer had any strong personal convictions or any continuing respect for her own supporters.
And it's arrogant to assume that if Nikkita hadn't run, her votes would gone to Moon as a bloc. The fact is, while Moon is minutely to the left of Durkan on a handful of issues, there was nothing in Moon's proposals or in her self-presentation that addressed any of the issues Nikkita's campaign centered. Without Nikkita's presence in the race, the overwhelming majority of her voters would simply have stayed away from the polls. No one else in the race had any proposals anywhere close to what Nikkita's voters want. The rest of the major candidates ran on virtually identical status quo programs. None of them addressed poverty, none addressed race or class, none challenged the power of the landlords or the financial sector. None of them was anywhere close to simply being entitled to the votes that ended up going to Nikkita.
After the primaries, Seattle ended up with two wealthy, smug, contented members of the elite making it onto the general election ballot. Neither is a monster, but neither has anything special to offer or any passionate commitment to responsiveness, to justice, or to change. It's entirely legitimate for Nikkita and her supporters to ask tough questions of those two and to expect real commitments to transformative change in exchange for their votes. And it's arrogant for anyone here to act as if Nikkita's supporters should have(or WOULD have) just voted for Moon in the primary, or should have just "fallen in line" with Moon on primary night once the first results were in. It's not as if there's anything significant at stake in the choice Seattle voters ended up with for November.
Rather than sneering at Nikkita over trivialities-why are people still attacking her for not always voting? In past campaigns where the candidates were all bland centrists, why SHOULD she have voted?-rather than continuing to act as though she had no business even entering the race, why not actually listen to the message her campaign presented. Why not acknowledge that the issues she raised. Why not be open to direct democracy and the idea of power-from-below? Why not...wait for it...actually treat Nikkita Oliver and those who support her with at least a tiny bit of respect? What have you got to lose?
Beneficial?? Have you driven a commercial vehicle? If you did you would not be in favor of turning turn lanes into flower pot strips.
Requisitioning already paid for general lanes for flower pot lanes is theft. The tax payers already paid for those lanes. Because the city has signed vision 2020 down at the Puget Sound Regional Council, and wants to move more people into the city, they have a conflict of interest and have no business deciding transportation policy. Especially policy that feeds said policy to increase populations in Seattle by a certain date. Agenda 21 notwithstanding.
I could live with said policy if commercial traffic was immune from such awful policy. However, that is not the case.
So, you're going to assume what you need to show. (I have to admit, it's much easier for you that way.)
...other than her daring to run at all for a job they thought should be reserved for a passionless, technocratic white millionaire...
And you assumed we, your fellow citizens, were all racists! Your generosity of spirit just can't be beat.
The fact is, while Moon is minutely to the left of Durkan on a handful of issues...
... there are no other candidates in the general election, so the citizens who voted for Oliver can either vote for Moon, not vote, or vote for Durkan. Two of those three choices benefit the candidate whom (you say) they like least. During the election count, Oliver could have made a virtue out of necessity, and cut a deal with Moon to endorse her in exchange for Moon's agreement to give priority to several ideas the People's Party especially want.
But Oliver did nothing, and so the citizens who supported her will get nothing, because Moon owes them nothing.
It's entirely legitimate for Nikkita and her supporters to ask tough questions of those two and to expect real commitments to transformative change in exchange for their votes.
It was entirely legitimate. Now, Moon has campaign activities which do not involve trying to get the endorsement of a former candidate who has been very, very clear she will not endorse anyone.
It's not as if there's anything significant at stake in the choice Seattle voters ended up with for November.
So, we have no need to listen to Oliver on the topic of our Mayoral election. Good to know even you agree on that.
Rather than sneering at Nikkita over trivialities-why are people still attacking her for not always voting?
Oh, you mean the candidate who, right here in this very post, talked about "...we want to help our communities who have already faced many systemic barriers to voting."? You need to ask why voting is important? Really?
...addressed any of the issues Nikkita's campaign centered.
Ah yes, the incredibly beneficial effect her mere presence in the primary campaign had on our civic dialog. Where have we heard that before?
Oh, yes:
The conversation around housing and homelessness, around what economics looks like in our city, the gap between the rich and the poor, what does racial justice and equity actually look likeāthose conversations have been substantively pushed to a place that they would not have been pushed to if the Peopleās Party and myself had not joined in the race.
What were those conversations, and what policy had already resulted from them?
ECB: Did you support the housing levy?
NO: Which levy?
ECB: The one that passed last year, that will bring in $290 million to build affordable housing.
NO: Honestly I donāt remember.
She didn't even know that we had voted, let alone how we had voted. Because she just didn't care.
In past campaigns where the candidates were all bland centrists, why SHOULD she have voted?
Well, because don't vote just for candidates, but also sometimes for policy. In this case, the policy of which she knew absolutely nothing, while lecturing us on how much her mere presence had improved our dialog concerning said policy. That's some world-class smug arrogance, that is.
Why not...wait for it...actually treat Nikkita Oliver and those who support her with at least a tiny bit of respect?
Because she didn't even know that I'd already voted on "...the issues she raised." Because you assumed, right here in this very conversation, that my motivation in voting was racist.
That's why I had no respect for her candidacy, or for her supporters.
It's simply fact that Moon and Durkan are wealthy and white, and thus likely to essentially agree on the idea that what the rich want should matter more than what everyone else wants. Being wealthy, neither is truly capable of caring about the powerless. They can only be forced to do progressive things through pressure from below.
Why are you so bitter about Nikkita even entering the mayor's race? There was no one close to her on the issues and there was never any possibility that her voters would have simply backed Moon in the primary if she herself hadn't run. What did Moon even have to offer them.
She's fully qualified in the bland, technocratic Hillary way, but so what? Without a social and economic justice agenda, without any grassroots base(Moon's campaign was money and nothing else) without any real connection to any of the social movements, why would you have thought Moon was more entitled to Nikkita's voters than Nikkita was?
If you're going to say Nikkita should just have stayed out and endorsed Moon from the start, don't you think you owe everybody some sort of case for believing Moon was the better choice for progressives. You've simply never made that case. And you also haven't made any coherent case for the idea that Nikkita should she have negotiated with Moon prior to the primary when you haven't said any of the other candidates should have done so, and when nobody in any previous mayor's race has done anything remotely similar to that.
If you didn't support Nikkita, fine. But you sound absurdly vindictive and dismissive towards her. She did nothing to you to deserve that.
And I didn't say voting isn't important. What I said was that there's no reason to obsess about the fact that Nikkita didn't always vote. If not always voting is a deal-breaker in and of itself, the majority of Seattle residents would be disqualified from ever seeking elective office.
The only way Moon can win is to win over Nikkita's supporters as a bloc. Knowing that, you should realize you are harming Moon's chances by perpetually dissing Nikkita. Just get Moon to embrace most of the People's Party program. If Moon had just done THAT in the primaries(rather than standing for essentially nothing)she'd clearly have done much better. She just needs to learn from that now, especially since every other defeated primary candidate was at least somewhat to her left.
Well, that makes it all better! You're only assuming other bad things about me, based upon what, exactly?
But wait -- here's what you actually wrote:
...they thought should be reserved for a passionless, technocratic white millionaire...
See, using skin color as a criterion is the very definition of racism, which makes it the very definition of what you were accusing "most people" of being. So no, your attempt to weasel out of it didn't work. Especially when you follow up with this:
It's simply fact that Moon and Durkan are wealthy and white,
That depends on how you define "wealthy". Moon grew up with money, but chose engineering for a career -- a doubly odd choice for a woman of means. Perhaps this unusual behavior on her part might suggest she does not hold the other beliefs you assumed she holds, when your assumptions about her beliefs were based upon nothing but the circumstances of her birth?
Nah, that would be thinking, whereas you prefer the laziest of stereotyping based upon race and class, as the rest of your paragraph screams.
Why are you so bitter about Nikkita even entering the mayor's race?
Where did you get the idea that I was (a) bitter, and (b) about her entering the race? I didn't even know who she was until she declared her candidacy. Once I did some research and found her own words, which I have here quoted, I wrote her off as unqualified, and that was that.
There was no one close to her on the issues...
You just can't un-drink that Kool-Aid, can you?
Nikita Oliver, 2017:
The conversation around housing and homelessness, around what economics looks like in our city, the gap between the rich and the poor,
Ed Murray, 2016:
āI really do think this is a city defining what you do with economic inequality,ā Mayor Ed Murray said of the results. āIām a little amazed,ā he added, at both the lead and voters approving the fifth special tax levy the mayor has campaigned for in two years.
We, the voters, did not wait until 2017 to *talk* about these issues. We were *doing* something about them for years. Too bad nobody thought to tell Nikkita Oliver that before she told us we were talking it all wrong.
If you're going to say Nikkita should just have stayed out and endorsed Moon from the start,
I've said nothing of the kind. What I have said is that *after* she ran and got plenty of votes, but not enough to win, she should have done what real leaders in real diverse democracies do: cut a tough deal with her former rival, and sold it to her skeptical constituency.
But that would be real leadership at a time of real opportunity, so it didn't happen.
And you also haven't made any coherent case for the idea that Nikkita should she have negotiated with Moon prior to the primary...
I never made that case because I never stated that idea.
But you sound absurdly vindictive and dismissive towards her. She did nothing to you to deserve that.
She asked me for my vote, after not bothering to learn how I had voted -- or even if I had. She lectured me on how she'd improved a conversation she herself had completely missed. She told me she was qualified to implement a policy she did not even care to learn existed.
(You know, it's healthy to feel insulted when someone talks down to you that way. Trust me on this.)
If not always voting is a deal-breaker in and of itself, the majority of Seattle residents would be disqualified from ever seeking elective office.
The vast majority of Seattle residents will never seek elective office. What has that to do with one who has?
Knowing that, you should realize you are harming Moon's chances by perpetually dissing Nikkita.
Oliver's refusal to act like a real leader, after voters graciously gave her the opportunity to demonstrate such leadership, has harmed Moon's chances far more than I ever could have.
Besides, I'm voting for Durkan. (If you get the chance, please thank Ms. Oliver for helping to bring Mayor Durkan closer to reality.)
And, just like at the Candidate Survivor forum, she did something to call a great deal of attention to herself. She danced down the aisle with one of many great drag queens. The dancing was fine but almost immediately after that particular performance, she went AWOL. I had been chasing an interview with her for weeks - one that her handlers repeatedly told me she wanted - and yet, she's gone. I asked one of them if she had left and was told, "No, she's around someplace." She was not.
I write a public education blog and had wanted to ask her about disparaging remarks she made to the 36th Dems about the Seattle School Board. Still no answer. Beware.
1) It's hard to tell that you were voting for Durkan when you spent so much time telling off Nikkita for not immediately backing Moon. If you were always backing Durkan, the most conservative major candidate, anyway, why do you even CARE how Nikkita relates to Moon?
2) What you don't seem to get is that Oliver is part of a political party. She isn't authorized to negotiate on behalf of that party and to simply announce that it's endorsement is going to another candidate after the primary. Her organization is democratically-run and those who are part of it need to be consulted. The whole point of the Oliver campaign was that it was a different way of doing politics. And I didn't hear you insisting that any of the other defeated candidates negotiate with Moon or Durkan, only Nikkita. You didn't even insist that of the candidate who finished just a couple of points behind Nikkita.
I'd probably end up supporting Moon myself in the fall. It's just that it was never realistic to expect Nikkita to just deliver her votes to Moon as a bloc-as if NIkkita was some sort of young, left-wing queer POC ward heeler or something.
Because I figured the voters who chose Oliver might not stay engaged without her endorsement of Moon. I believe in democracy, in more votes and voices rather than fewer.
I also believe the race is currently heavily in Durkan's favor, which will tend to reduce our civic dialog during the election season. Again, more debate and conversation is better than less.
Finally, I believe the citizens who voted for Oliver should get something for it. Right now, thanks to her inaction, they will get nothing.
You didn't even insist that of the candidate who finished just a couple of points behind Nikkita.
If you're referring to Jessyn Farrell, who finished 4.5% (not "a couple of points") behind Ms. Oliver, she has already said she will not endorse anyone until after Labor Day. Are you faulting me for not demanding she answer a question she has already answered?
(Also, Mike McGinn has endorsed someone. Nobody cares, because everyone except Mike McGinn knows Mike McGinn is irrelevant to Seattle's future.)
What you don't seem to get is that Oliver is part of a political party.
So is Jessyn Farrell, who is apparently free to endorse as she likes. Perhaps the Democrats empower women more than do the People's Party?
She isn't authorized to negotiate on behalf of that party and to simply announce that it's endorsement is going to another candidate after the primary.
Which is hilarious, considering she spends much of this headline post speaking for the People's Party on the topic of endorsements.
(Here's a hint: if you have to keep manufacturing excuses for why your leader hasn't acted like a leader, then you probably haven't a very good leader.)
Just get Moon to embrace most of the People's Party program.
Why should a *winner* of an election adopt the program of someone who lost? If the voters had wanted "most of the People's Party program," they would have sent Oliver, not Moon, to the general election.
Then there's the bait-and-switch of Moon telling voters she had her own ideas before the primary, then adopting ideas they'd rejected *after* they'd rejected those ideas. Why should Moon so sacrifice her integrity?
Now, there might have been a few ideas she already had in common with the People's Party, and she could have promised to put those ideas first, in exchange for an endorsement from Oliver and a pledge of support in getting out the vote. Oliver never budged, so none of that happened. Now, if any of the voters who chose Oliver in the primary choose Moon in the general, it will be because they have no other choice; Moon will owe them nothing.
And white people cannot be victims of racism in this. Racism is not simply prejudice on the basis of melanin.
Oh, quit whining. You got caught throwing around a frivolous charge of racism, and you threw that frivolous charge because you were not willing to confront the actual reasons real voters rejected your preferred candidate in the election. Making yourself look more foolish by doubling down on your contra-factual claims does nothing to address the serious problems which actual racism still causes our country; in fact, your false claims here cheapen the charge of racism, making it more difficult for us to address real racism where it really hurts real people.
And yes, Moon beat Nikkita, but JUST BARELY. It was essentially a dead heat. Had it not been for Moon's massive financial advantage she could well have finished third. The only reason The Stranger endorsed Moon(an endorsement that probably made the difference in this case is that they believed her longer professional experience somehow better suited her for the job. They took no issue whatsoever with what Nikkita proposed, and it's likely that most of Moon's supporters would have backed her if she ran on Nikkita's exact platform. Moon's wafer-thin edge was not a preference in ideology, a Moon vote was not a "Nikkita is wrong about everything" vote, and Moon has nothing to lose by engaging Nikkita's proposals and her supporters.
And I made no accusations of racism. I simply pointed out that identity and class matter-that rich people, most of whom happen to be white due to the inherent white supremacism in capitalism, seldom disagree much anymore-there are virtually no rich people with values anywhere close to those of FDR or Bobby Kennedy-there are some who support safe, innocuous "lifestyle liberal" values that are decent and necessary but which can't change anything or liberate anyone if achieved in isolation. They don't care about poverty. They don't care about extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. They don't see anything wrong in corporations controlling the major decisions of live.
And I didn't accuse anyone OF racism. I wasn't saying Durkan and Moon won because the voters could only accept white people on the general election ballot. You, in fact, made a frivolous accusation or racism towards me-news flash, I am white and therefore I can't be prejudiced against white people on the basis on melanin. My point was simply that identity and class matter and frequently, though not always, define.
In any case, your mask slipped when you revealed that your sneering disdain of Nikkita is down solely to her giving her one answer to one question that you happened not to like on one day. Given that she's no longer on the ballot, what's the point of continuing to "go negative" on her, OR of taking a "shut up and listen to your elders" attitude towards her supporters? The people who voted or campaigned for her did nothing to merit your contempt. And it's not as though there was any good reason for those voters to done what you wanted and chosen Durkan in the primary.
You explicitly asserted Oliver's critics were really motivated by racism:
What people are really pissed at Nikkita about(other than her daring to run at all for a job they thought should be reserved for a passionless, technocratic white millionaire)...
Believing the Mayor's Office should be "reserved for" someone who is "white" is the very definition of racism. You were trying to de-legitimize criticism of a "black woman of color" (!) by tarring her toughest critics as racists.
None of Nikkita's voters want her to cut unilateral deals on their behalf...
Surveyed all 31,365 other of them, have you?
...she has no authority to do so,
She had as much authority as each of the 31,366 of you individually said she did. For all you really know, tens of thousands of citizens who voted for her might have vocally supported Moon, had Oliver gotten a deal with Moon to advance some of the People's Party agenda in return.
A deal with Moon as soon as the votes were in would have done more to drive those people away from the voting booth than anything else.
Well, I hope nothing was really what you wanted, because that's what Oliver has so far delivered for you.
And yes, Moon beat Nikkita,
You should have put a full stop there, not a comma. Nothing you typed in the remainder of the paragraph has the slightest relevance, even if true.
Moon has nothing to lose by engaging Nikkita's proposals and her supporters.
Sure she does. Economists call it "opportunity cost." There are now two months until our general election, and every attempt by Moon to sway voters whom you yourself keep describing as totally dedicated to Oliver (!) is another bit of time, money, and effort not spent on reaching that much larger number of voters who are as yet undecided (and far more centrist) than you who already chose Oliver.
In any case, your mask slipped when you revealed that your sneering disdain of Nikkita is down solely to her giving her one answer to one question that you happened not to like on one day.
Nice try. When a candidate talks big about "[t]he conversation around housing and homelessness, around what economics looks like in our city, the gap between the rich and the poor," and then reveals she didn't even care enough about that conversation to recall the most important recent thing about it, at the very least she's saying she simply does not care about the very issue she claims to care about.
The people who voted or campaigned for her did nothing to merit your contempt.
She obviously was not part of that conversation last year, and so her claim to have changed it was as false as her claim to have cared about the issues addressed in it. The kindest possible thing to say about such a candidate is to describe her as obviously unqualified for the office she sought.