8 ms·

A Republican just won an election in Seattle City Government for the first time in three decades. This election has seen some big shifts in the electorate, eve

• celtain 5y ago
  To be clear though, that was a somewhat unusual race, e.g. the incumbent progressive Democrat probably would have won if he hadn't been knocked out in the primary. The ex-Democrat, Obama/Clinton/Biden-voting Republican who won benefited greatly from the fact that her opponent had some pretty radical views, too radical even for Seattle.
  • vkou 5y ago
    Seattle has always been a socially liberal, bend-over-backwards for business town. It's how it can legalize marijuana and magic mushrooms, while having 11,000 people living in tents and homeless shelters. Unsurprisingly, since nobody likes seeing tents in city parks, and by the I-5 on-ramps, the city voted for a slate of politicians that will... Maintain the status quo. There's no plan for getting ~5,500 people housed. Four years from now, we'll be exactly where we are today.
    • voz_ 5y ago
      I don't want status quo, but I also don't want them housed. I want the ones that steal, rape, squat in parks, do drugs, sell drugs, defecate in public, and litter to all be thrown in jail.
      • lalaithion 5y ago
        So you want the government to house them at taxpayer cost!
        • klyrs 5y ago
          Three squares, a roof, and jobs for all the police, judges, guards, and lawyers involved. Oh, and a criminal record to ensure that future employment will be even harder upon their eventual release. And another jail with at least 5,000 beds. Taxes gotta go somewhere, I guess...
        • jtbayly 5y ago
          Housed and punished for that vs housed and rewarded for that? I know which I’d pick.
      • SirSourdough 5y ago
        And I want people who lack compassion and consideration housed at the bottom of the ocean, but we can't all win.
        • adolph 5y ago
          https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/I-Can-Tolerate-Anything-Except-The-Outgroup https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/I-Can-Tolerate-Anythi...
        • nostromo 5y ago
          Is this a paradox? Because it sounds like you may end up there yourself.
          • SirSourdough 5y ago
            Perhaps. But I'd rather be there for lacking compassion for the inconsiderate and intolerant than for punching down at the most vulnerable people in our society. Hopefully I'll at least end up in a different house than the commenter I initially replied to...
          • BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
            “Compassion and empathy are the utmost of virtues. If you lack it, you deserve to be cast out from society. Because you lack the compassion I so freely give, you have forfeited the right to receive any from me.” /s
          • irthomasthomas 5y ago
            This must be one of them contradictory ideas which are so popular now. :D
        • animal_spirits 5y ago
          Compassion would mean to have love and hope for those who you disagree with, not the desire to throw them in the bottom of the ocean.
          • 5y ago
      • spoonjim 5y ago
        Are you signing up to pay for that personally?
      • Fauntleroy 5y ago
        The thirst for punishment over improvement ultimately keeps the problem going. Any chance you'd prefer to break the cycle rather than continue it?
      • advrs 5y ago
        Are you suggesting that jail (aka expensive housing funded by the public) is the most effective solution to these crimes/behaviors? For example, do you think the population of people who defecate in public are going to be deterred due to the threat of imprisonment?
        • beerandt 5y ago
          Either deterred or jailed, either way you end up with less shit on the street.
      • argomo 5y ago
        Is jail appropriate for litterers? Seems extreme, but I might be able to get behind it. Let's start with the folks who throw fast food wrappers out on the interstate though, not the homeless we wish to criminalize. Throwing them in jail seems like the worst of both worlds... it burns my tax dollars and does nothing to rehabilitate anyone.
        • klyrs 5y ago
          That's up to the police to decide. If they don't like a law, they don't enforce it.
          • jackorange 5y ago
            The police don't sentence people to jail.
            • deleted 5y ago
              [deleted]
            • klyrs 5y ago
              No, but they do pick who they want to pull over, and for what reason.
              • jackorange 5y ago
                That's their job?
            • namelessoracle 5y ago
              They de facto do. A police officer can arrest you for basically any reason and send you to jail. How long that jail stint lasts depends on what happens after you are arraigned, but you can easily spend a few days in a county jail before the judge shows up after the 3 day weekend to decide if what you were arrested for was legit.
          • kelnos 5y ago
            Selective enforcement is not a good outcome. Any police officer who doesn't enforce a law because they don't like it should be fired.
      • psadauskas 5y ago
        You should watch last weekend's episode of Last Week Tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liptMbjF3EE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liptMbjF3EE
        • voz_ 5y ago
          No thank you. He is the tucker carlson of the left. I try to stay away from talking heads that remove all nuance from the debate.
          • psadauskas 5y ago
            I mean, alright, you do you, but the common misconception you're echoing here he very specifically refuted with data and cited sources. One point in particular, it costs a city around $30k/yr per homeless person in emergency medical care and jail facilities, but only ~$10k/yr to give them the proper support and a place to live.
            • voz_ 5y ago
              And what happens when they refuse that support? Or turn it into a drug den? I've lived in SF, and in Seattle for a combined 22 years. I've seen what the ravaging horde of homeless due to the cities there. They turn away housing, and they won't go to shelters. Not because the shelters are degrading, but because they won't let them do drugs there. These people are mentally insane, and unfit for society. Would giving them housing stop them from raping? or defecating inside cars they broke into? It's time to stop pandering to the 0.1% and focus on the 99.9% of us that do participate in society.
          • consumer451 5y ago
            > He is the tucker carlson of the left That is quite an interesting claim. Do you mean because they are leading voices on their supposed political side, or they are equivalent in factual accuracy, or something else? My favorite factoid about Tucker Carson, the leading voice of news analysis in the USA: > Now comes the claim that you can't expect to literally believe the words that come out of Carlson's mouth. And that assertion is not coming from Carlson's critics. It's being made by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York and by Fox News's own lawyers in defending Carlson against accusations of slander. It worked, by the way. [0] I am up to this point unaware of anything clearly nonfactual presented by Oliver. If anything from Oliver exists along the lines of Carlson's extraordinary list of lies [1] I would genuinely be interested to learn about it. I wrote a lot there, but my main question is, how exactly do you see Carlson and Oliver as equivalent? [0] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-... [1] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?speaker=tucker-carlson https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?speaker=tucker-c...
      • kelnos 5y ago
        That would probably cost taxpayers more (both in the short and long term) than just housing them and getting them mental health services.
  • jterrys 5y ago
    I'm not up to date on city politics, but I had a friend that used to live in Seattle for a while. She kind of hightailed it outta there once she found a remote job because of the homelessness/drug problem. Told me people protested the museum downtown for installing architecture that made setting up homeless tents hostile, and that the city's solution to the drug problem (induced by already decriminalizing hard drugs) is to decriminalize and make drugs more available.
    • soperj 5y ago
      You say that like the war on drugs is the solution? Do you think that any of these people don't use drugs because it's a crime? It's just making their life worse.
      • iammisc 5y ago
        > It's just making their life worse. That's quite literally the point. If you talk to any ex-addict, you'll notice they all say that they quit once something that made their life worse forced them to reconsider. At some point you hit rock bottom and then can get your life together.
      • twofornone 5y ago
        As I've gotten older I've realized that there's something to be said for the discouraging effect that laws have on certain behaviors. Yes, people are still going to do drugs if they're illegal; but some proportion of the population is less likely to take the risk. Is it enough to justify the drug war? Maybe not. But I don't think it's quite as cut an dry as "legalize all drugs to end drug abuse" or "ban all drugs to end drug use". Perhaps it was only an implementation problem, and the answer lies in saner but still restrictive drug laws. There's no excuse for example for the scheduling of marijuana and mushrooms which precludes research.
        • ajmurmann 5y ago
          I recently learned that drugs have become more dangerous and more damaging not due to customer demand, but because of the war on drugs. You need to transport a lot less fentanyl than cocaine for the same effect strength. Meth also had changed to work without ingredients we have banned. This has made meth much more damaging. I wonder what things would look like if we just took the Portugal route. https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-the-least-of-us/#audio-highlights https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-t...
  • bpodgursky 5y ago
    Progressives lost a "safe" city council seat (and nearly another) and the mayor. It wasn't a normal election.
    • vkou 5y ago
      The mayor, Jenny Durkan was not progressive, either in platform, or in what she did (which was mostly sit around on the sidelines) over the past four years. So, not much changed with the mayor's office.
  • spoonjim 5y ago
    The primary system is so corrosive. If American constitutional government is to survive the primary system needs to end. You need to be rich or a wingnut to win a primary.
    • vkou 5y ago
      Seattle city primaries look nothing like federal congressional/presidential primaries. They are best described as two-round run-off elections, which, while not perfect, are generally preferable to first-past-the-post.
    • jdavis703 5y ago
      Biden is not particularly rich. Yet he ran against two billionaires and defeated them. Nor is he far left. Bernie Sanders, Elizbeth Warren and Mike Gravel were all substantially more left leaning.
• changoplatanero 5y ago
  because the other candidate was seen as an extreme left-winger
  • nostromo 5y ago
    That’s been a selling point in Seattle for a long time. Apparently she was just a bridge too far with tweets like these: https://www.twitter.com/ntkallday/status/1287215672372625410 https://www.twitter.com/ntkallday/status/1287215672372625410 https://www.twitter.com/ntkallday/status/1282015687603417089?s=21 https://www.twitter.com/ntkallday/status/1282015687603417089... Or deleted tweets like “I have not taken any of this anti bias training but i for sure hate this country” Keep in mind, 40% of votes went to this candidate. Her campaign manager’s tweets were even worse, going so far as wishing death on (her words) “kkkops.”
    • busymom0 5y ago
      > YAY! Thank you to the heroes that set the Children's Jail on fire. > This is a nice start. Lookin good Kenosha. (entire car lots burnt to the ground) And she was running to be the Attorney?
      • voz_ 5y ago
        The progressive take at the moment is that law and order is evil, better to have cities like SF where criminal thugs punch sweet old asian women in the street and rob them.
        • qqqwerty 5y ago
          [flagged]
          • busymom0 5y ago
            I mean for 5 years the elections were rigged by Russia, anti-kavanaugh protestors stormed the capitol and senate chambers just 2 years before, rioters burnt down churches and built CHAZ in the middle of multiple cities, bailed out by the current VP - all completely encouraged by one side.
• Erik816 5y ago
  A "Republican" who has previous run as a Democrat and has voted for Democrats in all recent presidential elections. This says less about any shift in the electorate than it does about the extremism of the Seattle left.
  • bingohbangoh 5y ago
    right, a shift in the electorate.
  • nostromo 5y ago
    I agree that Seattle is a little bonkers, but I disagree that this isn’t a larger shift. NJ and Virginia governorships were both supposed to be easy wins for incumbent Democrats. So far, one has lost and one is too close to call.
    • bingohbangoh 5y ago
      For those unaware, Murphy (D, incumbent) was ~20% up back in July. It's shocking its even close.
    • joecot 5y ago
      Phil Murphy ran for governor of NJ essentially on the promise of legal recreational weed. He did so beating out the NJ Democratic Machine, lead by the Norcross family. Knowing that weed was Murphy's #1 campaign promise, the NJ Democrat machine did everything they could to bring it to a halt. That was lead by Senate president Steve Sweeney. Eventually weed was legalized via referendum, but they're still slow walking dispensaries. And I'm guessing weed was not the only thing they slow walked him on. As a result, Murphy's election was painfully close, and Sweeney lost to this guy who paid $153 for his campaign.
    • cafard 5y ago
      No incumbent governor of Virginia can run for the office, for terms may not be consecutive. In fact, few who have been elected governor of Virginia have ever run again. There were questions raised about the legality of McAuliffe's running. And I'm not sure that anyone has ever been terribly inspired by Terry McAuliffe.
• Covzire 5y ago
  [flagged]
  • advrs 5y ago
    That word has completely lost all meaning and historical context at this point, hasn't it?
    • TbobbyZ 5y ago
      How about authoritarianism?
      • newfonewhodis 5y ago
        If anything, localities voting out incumbents is an example that the US is anything but totalitarian. I wish people would actually do some reading before spouting BS on anonymous online forums.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • fdemoz 5y ago
    [flagged]
  • kelnos 5y ago
    [flagged]
    • dlp211 5y ago
      For much longer than that. Not to mention we used to just straight quarantine people/households. America is a selfish country filled with dolts.
      • dang 5y ago
        Nationalistic attacks are not ok on HN, regardless of which country you have a problem with. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ruined 5y ago
  my glass-almost-half-full take on this is that a significant chunk of the electorate was willing to vote for the candidate that literally supports burning down jails, which is astonishing no matter how you look at it
  • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    That kinds of begs the question what the glass is half full of. I agree it's astonishing no matter what side of the isle you come at it from.