Gosh, it would be really petty to celebrate a good progressive candidate’s win by focusing only on how rightwing media outlets are acting all butthurt over it. That’s why we’ll simply start with righties’ freakout over Katie Wilson’s win in the Seattle mayor’s race, and then move on from there.
On Thursday, with only a tiny number of votes remaining to be counted, incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell conceded to Wilson in what he described as a “delightful” phone call. He said, “I feel very good about the future of this country and this city still.” Harrell added that his administration is looking forward to working with Wilson on the transition. As of Friday morning, Wilson had a 2,018 vote lead over Harrell, well over the half-percentage-point threshold that would trigger an automatic recount.
Fox News took it super well, with a headline and subhed calculated to push all the fear buttons of viewers who know that progressives love communism, hypocrisy, and crime.
Fox’s Murdoch-owned stepsibling, the New York Post, put even more emphasis on the claim that Wilson is a Marxist bum who basically lives in her parents’ basement, but in a shocking failure to stoke panic, didn’t even mention the specter of an army of homeless people rising up to invade all the city’s coffee shops and tech firms.
Golly, why did Seattleites elect basically a vagrant to be mayor? Would you be surprised to learn that both of the Murdoch outlets were exaggerating, in an attempt to turn “affordability” in Seattle, one of Wilson’s top campaign issues, against her?
Wilson ran on tackling the high cost of living for working folks in Seattle, pointing out that she and her husband pay about $2,000 a month for daycare three days a week for their toddler daughter. In October, she acknowledged that before she ran for office, she and her husband managed to juggle their work schedules to allow one of them to always be at home, but that they decided they’d need daycare while she ran. She said that to make that possible, her parents, both professors who live in New York state, “send me a check periodically to help with the child care expenses” every couple of months, but declining to go into the specific amounts, because she didn’t keep track.
So hey, a story about how expensive Seattle is, even for well-educated people with a little kid, became a rightwing fable about a coddled commie hipster layabout who has no idea how other people get by. Like, as long as you ignore the part about how up until she ran for mayor, she and her husband couldn’t even think of having part-time daycare.
Hey, is this a good spot to mention that a new poll released today shows that 70 percent of Americans believe raising children is too expensive, a huge jump from last year? And for the first time in the 11 years that the American Family Survey has been conducted, respondents listed “finances” as the top reason they’d decided to cap the number of kids they’ll have, or expect to have? That’s nationwide, not just in Seattle.
In a victory speech yesterday at Seattle’s Labor Temple, Wilson thanked her supporters and said “No one saw us coming,” but also reached out to those who opposed her — though maybe that doesn’t include Murdoch outlets. “I say this is your city, too. I am a coalition builder. I know that we are in this together and we cannot tackle the major challenges facing our city unless we do it together.”
Wilson, who isn’t shy about describing herself as a democratic socialist, listed a number of terrifying goals for her administration, without even admitting that they will inevitably lead to Soviet-style slavery and oppression, at least in the imaginations of Fox News viewers:
“I want everyone in this great city of ours to have a roof over their head. I want universal childcare, pre-K through 8 summer care. I want world class mass transit. I want great, safe public spaces where kids can run around with abandon. I want stable affordable housing for renters. I want social housing. I want much more land and wealth to be owned and stewarded by communities instead of corporations. I want a robust economy, with thriving small businesses, great living wage jobs, and strong rights for workers. I want a city where everyone has the basics and a dignified life, including healthy food, access to health care, and supportive communities. I want a city where your health and your life expectancy and your children’s future doesn’t depend on your zip code or your race.”
Okay, but doesn’t she know that such things are simply not possible unless you’re a Scandinavian social democracy? You can’t just go around taxing the wealthy, as Wilson has called for, because they will all close their businesses and move to Galt’s Gulch, and please ignore that Massachusetts’s millionaire tax has brought in lots of revenue without any such exodus happening. Didn’t Wilson notice that after Seattle raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2014, every last restaurant has closed? OK, so that never happened, and the minimum wage in the city is now at $20.76 without bringing about Armageddon. But you just wait, any minute now all the corporations in Seattle will pick up and move, for sure. Total ghost town!
In addition to electing Wilson, who has not yet declared the dictatorship of the proletariat but would like more parks and better schools, Seattle also elected progressive Democrat Erika Evans as city attorney, replacing Republican incumbent Ann Davison, who like Harrell pushed tough on crime rhetoric and punitive measures against homeless people without actually making homeless people vanish into a cornfield. Voters also elected progressives to all three open seats on the nine-member City Council, although neither Fox nor the New York Post bothered to suggest any of them were out of touch nepo babies.
As of blogtime this morning, Donald Trump has not yet threatened to send the military to take over Seattle, oust its elected leaders, and maybe install an oligarch to manage the city, but he might be a little distracted at the moment, the end.
Seattle Has Its Own Zohran Mamdani Only It’s A LADY!
Massachusetts’s Millionaire Tax Still Going Very Well, Thank You!
[Bolts / Fox News / Nation / KUOW / WaPo (gift link) / KUOW]
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