Washington State Democratic Presidential Caucuses

The Democratic presidential precinct-level caucuses take place in Washington State this Saturday. Bernie Sanders is expected to win by 30 percent.

The weekly newspapers appear each Wednesday. We still have two in Seattle, the Seattle Weekly and its longtime rival The Stranger. Starting in the 1990s, I used to read both, probably up until 2004, when I severed my relationship to the local Green Party. The Stranger, founded the same month that Nirvana's Nevermind was released, is 15 years the junior of the Seattle Weekly. The Stranger has always been the more self-referential, satirical, brittle, pompous and interesting of the two.

Walking back from a lunchtime coffee, I spied the cover (see above) of the new issue of The Stranger. At first I thought it was a gag, a ploy to make readers pick up the paper. But it is real. The paper is calling on voters to caucus for Hillary this week. The staff explains their reasons why in "Support the Real Progressive: The Stranger Election Control Board's Endorsement for the 2016 Democratic Caucuses."

It reads like talking points distributed by the Hillary campaign. We shouldn't caucus for Bernie because:

1) Trump is really, really scary and we should be very, very afraid. (Get ready for a steady diet of this one. It is basically all we're going to get from June until November. In fact, It has already started.)

2) Bernie has been rejected by black voters. (This should be familiar to all old Naderite Greens whose organization was dismissed as insufficiently progressive because it failed to attract significant numbers of African Americans.) How much attention do you think Hillary is going to shower on Alabama and Georgia blacks this summer? Do you think she is going to be spending a lot of time campaigning with the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner?

3) Sanders is a disingenuous peddler of pie-in-the-sky, a craven pol who suckles at the teat of the NRA. (See any of the Democratic presidential debates for Hillary's version of this line of attack.)

4) Hillary is actually a practical progressive -- imperfect, albeit -- who gets things done. Hillarycare is touted as a precursor to Obamacare (as if we all agree that Obamacare has been a complete success), and Clinton is praised for her championing of women's rights when she was first lady. Not a word about any legislative success she achieved while representing New York in the U.S. Senate, nor any accomplishment as Obama's Secretary of State. What are Hillary's accomplishments? That is going to be my question to any Clintonista  who tries to lobby me at the Saturday caucus.

While it is too much to say that The Stranger's endorsement of Hillary would be like The Phoenix endorsing Hubert Humphrey in 1968, it does seem to me another sign of the world gone wrong. At least the Seattle Weekly has fulsomely endorsed Bernie.

Kingdome Before Demolition

Fourteen-years ago next month the Kingdome -- major flash point in state politics -- came down in a spectacular demolition. A buddy and I were there that chilly, clear Sunday morning in March, along with a lot (thousands) of other people. When he took this photo he must have been standing in the middle of Second Avenue directly across from the front entrance to the Seattle Fire Department. Note the explosive charges visible on the arches of the dome.

The hardball politics played by the owners and management of the Mariners and Seahawks in getting out of their Kingdome leases, and then finagling to have new, separate facilities built at tax-payer expense (all the while aided and abetted by captive politicians) offered the citizenry an excellent education in our flawed money-driven system of electoral politics.

King County is monolithic in the politics of Washington State. You can't win a statewide election if you lose King County by a significant margin; conversely, you can carry the state if you win big in King County. King County was the epicenter of stadium politics, and at the epicenter of stadium politics was the Kingdome.

From the rubble of the Kingdome rose not only a new stadium for the Seahawks, but sophisticated, tough, engaged voters, the kind who would elect a socialist over a corporate democrat.

The Hinge is 1975

If you missed Obama's State of the Union address last night, as I did, today's lede unsigned editorial in the New York Times provides a synopsis. One proposal, to increase the the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour from $7.25 and to index it to inflation, is the subject of Annie Lowrey's story today:

Many state and local government set their own minimum wages above the federal floor. Currently Washington is the only state that sets a minimum wage above $9 an hour, but several states exceed the current rate of $7.25.

The White House said that the $1.75 increase in the minimum wage would be enough to offset roughly 10 to 20 percent of the increase in income inequality since 1980. According to data compiled by the economists Thomas Piketty, at the Paris School of Economics, and Emmanuel Saez, at the University of California, Berkeley, inequality has worsened considerably during that time, and many metrics show that wages have stagnated or declined for millions of working families. The income share of the top 1 percent of earners has doubled, to 20 percent in 2011 from 10 percent in 1980. Between 1980 and 2008, according to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the top 10 percent of earners captured 98 percent of all income gains. 

The proposal is one of several that the White House has put forward to tackle that inequality. In the speech, Mr. Obama also proposed expanding early childhood education programs — another path that experts say can tackle inequality by leveling the playing field and increasing mobility among children from low-income families. “Every dollar we invest in high-quality early education can save more than $7 later on by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, even reducing violent crime,” Mr. Obama said. “Let’s do what works, and make sure none of our children start the race of life already behind. Let’s give our kids that chance.” 

In his 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama proposed lifting the minimum wage yet higher, to $9.50. Under the current proposal, the White House said that a family earning $20,000 to $30,000 would see an additional $3,500 of income a year. 

“This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families,” said Mr. Obama on Tuesday night. “It could mean the difference between groceries or the food bank, rent or eviction, scraping by or finally getting ahead. For businesses across the country, it would mean customers with more money in their pockets. In fact, working folks shouldn’t have to wait year after year for the minimum wage to go up while C.E.O. pay has never been higher.”

Anytime the research of Piketty and Saez finds its way into the mainstream press it's a good day. Piketty and Saez have captured the Zeitgeist -- the "unprecedented surge in top wage incomes starting in the 1970s and accelerating in the 1990s." The 1%. I track it to 1975; that's the hinge. The critical presidential administration is Gerald Ford's, although Carter's has to be included in the mix. By the time Reagan assumes power the flight path of the Zeitgeist has already been established.

There are currently ten states that peg their minimum wage to cost-of-living increases. Washington State has the highest minimum wage because we established our inflation peg (by means of a ballot initiative for which I helped gather signatures) sooner than others. Seemingly each legislative session in Olympia the restaurant lobby tries to repeal it.

The Emerging Republican Majority

The days begins at 5 a.m. when I plod downstairs to pick up the paper.  Steam rises from the radiator as I open the front door of the apartment building and step out on the stoop.  Then it's back upstairs for a cup of cold coffee.

In today's news, or what catches my eye, are stories about the approaching fiscal cliff and the certification of results from Washington State's gubernatorial race.

Inslee beat McKenna by winning only eight of 39 counties.  But the counties he won included King, The Big Kahuna.  You win King County big and you win the state.  Part of what influences voting in the eastern and southern counties is a resentment of Seattle's demographic dominance.

One of the things I learned from reading Kevin Phillips' first book, The Emerging Republican Majority, is that a person votes not so much based on his own beliefs but on how the person he despises votes: you know who you dislike; you identify who he is voting for; and you vote for the other guy on the ballot.  This is how much of electoral politics works in a two-party system.  It is an exercise in negation.

With a month to go there are too many moving pieces to predict an outcome on the fiscal cliff.  One thing that is clear is that the GOP got its clock cleaned in the election.  I don't know whether the Birchers in the party think they have enough clout to repeat the Mad Mullah debt ceiling performance from the summer of 2011.  One of the items in today's story by Jonathan Weisman is that there is consensus among Democrats and Obama that any deal to avert going off the cliff must include a long-term agreement on the debt ceiling.  Will the Mad Mullah bargain away his billao?  It's hard to imagine.