Washington 2020: The Calm Before the Drizzle

[GeneralMacArthur]

Looks like Sawant will survive, probably by about 2 points or so. I guess the argument that recalls are unnecessary really is quite effective.

There's no way it's anywhere close to a 2% victory.  The margin is 250 votes now and that's only 0.6% in the recall's favor.  She would need to win 1,000 of the 1,200 remaining votes to get a 2% margin.

I suspect the "final" number we get tomorrow will be within about 40-50 votes either way.  She could get 58% and lose by 40.  She could get 62% and win by 40.  Even if she wins the remaining vote 2-1 she'll only have a 100 vote margin of victory (winning 50.1% to 49.9% in that very optimistic scenario for her).

The real story here is that there are 600 voters who have signature verification issues, so the next week is going to be a mad sprint by both campaigns to get as many friendly voters to verify their signatures as possible.  Then whoever loses will issue a fat stack of residency challenges to try and disqualify anyone from the opposing camp who didn't live in D3 (far more likely among Sawant voters, who were plucked off the street and handed print-out ballots) and we're going to have the losing campaign paying for a recount as well.

It's so close that we ultimately won't know who won for weeks.  The odds of one side pulling it out may become less and less likely depending on how the margin changes, but we can't be sure.  The only thing that's certain is that if Sawant wins by 40 votes she'll act like she won by 40% and PSOL will absolutely eat it up.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Alternatively, there's a theory going around that most of the Sawant voters put their ballots in drop boxes, while most of the Recall voters mailed in their ballots, and since all the drop box votes were counted today (thus the 62% Sawant skew) the ones tomorrow will be 100% mail-in, and thus much less favorable to Sawant.

In the past, Sawant has won late mail-ins as well.  But there's been a major demographic divide between mail-ins and drop-boxes in this election that could change that.

So it's entirely possible that the ballots tomorrow will simply mirror the mail-ins that have come before, and Sawant will only win 50% or even less of them, resulting in a 3-400 vote loss, which will make the legal challenges mostly futile.

[PSOL]

Looks like Sawant will survive, probably by about 2 points or so. I guess the argument that recalls are unnecessary really is quite effective.

Recalls are necessary to make sure the majority of the peoples will is enacted. The thing is that both recalls are primarily supported by a small group of petty elites who are fuming at change. One, in California, enjoyed Democrats being United with the left to reject such a thing with ample resources at hand, while the other did not and is thus more competitive.

The only thing that's certain is that if Sawant wins by 40 votes she'll act like she won by 40% and PSOL will absolutely eat it up.—GMAC

Oh I am actually happy right now, and will be net happier given that both people that think like me see the larger picture. A socialist candidate did the best on a recall in US history and did so through ingenuity and (incomplete) base building. I probably would be pessimistic, but the cushion of possibly three likeminded candidates winning in Minneapolis makes this electoral season a good one.

[Crane]

Looks like Sawant will survive, probably by about 2 points or so. I guess the argument that recalls are unnecessary really is quite effective.

Recalls are necessary to make sure the majority of the peoples will is enacted. The thing is that both recalls are primarily supported by a small group of petty elites who are fuming at change. One, in California, enjoyed Democrats being United with the left to reject such a thing with ample resources at hand, while the other did not and is thus more competitive.

The only thing that's certain is that if Sawant wins by 40 votes she'll act like she won by 40% and PSOL will absolutely eat it up.—GMAC

Oh I am actually happy right now, and will be net happier given that both people that think like me see the larger picture. A socialist candidate did the best on a recall in US history and did so through ingenuity and (incomplete) base building. I probably would be pessimistic, but the cushion of possibly three likeminded candidates winning in Minneapolis makes this electoral season a good one.

Yeah, other than the Republicans winning in Buffalo and Seattle City Attorney's, this has been a pretty decent season for progressives, especially in city level races.

[Xing]

Looks like Sawant will survive, probably by about 2 points or so. I guess the argument that recalls are unnecessary really is quite effective.

There's no way it's anywhere close to a 2% victory.  The margin is 250 votes now and that's only 0.6% in the recall's favor.  She would need to win 1,000 of the 1,200 remaining votes to get a 2% margin.

I suspect the "final" number we get tomorrow will be within about 40-50 votes either way.  She could get 58% and lose by 40.  She could get 62% and win by 40.  Even if she wins the remaining vote 2-1 she'll only have a 100 vote margin of victory (winning 50.1% to 49.9% in that very optimistic scenario for her).

The real story here is that there are 600 voters who have signature verification issues, so the next week is going to be a mad sprint by both campaigns to get as many friendly voters to verify their signatures as possible.  Then whoever loses will issue a fat stack of residency challenges to try and disqualify anyone from the opposing camp who didn't live in D3 (far more likely among Sawant voters, who were plucked off the street and handed print-out ballots) and we're going to have the losing campaign paying for a recount as well.

It's so close that we ultimately won't know who won for weeks.  The odds of one side pulling it out may become less and less likely depending on how the margin changes, but we can't be sure.  The only thing that's certain is that if Sawant wins by 40 votes she'll act like she won by 40% and PSOL will absolutely eat it up.

I thought that there were closer to 2,000 total ballots left to be counted, including the ones with signature challenges? Either way, I still expect the later ballots to be Sawant-friendly, though it's not impossible that they aren't.

[RI]

No takes the lead, 50.3-49.7 with 40,629 ballots counted.

[Xing]

Yeah, looks like this is over.

[PSOL]

If Sawant is recalled, can she legally run for her position for the special election?

Yeah, looks like this is over.

It really isn’t.

[Xing]

If Sawant is recalled, can she legally run for her position for the special election?

Yeah, looks like this is over.

It really isn’t.

I can’t imagine the remaining ballots not favoring Sawant or breaking roughly even.

[Хahar 🤔]

Sawant has successfully driven a lot of small landlords out of D3 and now all the local apartment buildings are owned by big corporations who can afford to legally defend themselves against her, and that just makes things more expensive and impersonal for renters.

I am not a communist and I have no particular issue with the rest of what you posted, but is this really true? When it comes to renting, as with most economic transactions in my life, I'd rather deal with a large corporation that has established legal policies than with a small proprietor for whom things are personal.

[PSOL]

Sawant has successfully driven a lot of small landlords out of D3 and now all the local apartment buildings are owned by big corporations who can afford to legally defend themselves against her, and that just makes things more expensive and impersonal for renters.

I am not a communist and I have no particular issue with the rest of what you posted, but is this really true? When it comes to renting, as with most economic transactions in my life, I'd rather deal with a large corporation that has established legal policies than with a small proprietor for whom things are personal.

It definitely distances things from how relations with tenants at times go

[GeneralMacArthur]

Sawant has successfully driven a lot of small landlords out of D3 and now all the local apartment buildings are owned by big corporations who can afford to legally defend themselves against her, and that just makes things more expensive and impersonal for renters.

I am not a communist and I have no particular issue with the rest of what you posted, but is this really true? When it comes to renting, as with most economic transactions in my life, I'd rather deal with a large corporation that has established legal policies than with a small proprietor for whom things are personal.

I'm well-off and when I rented I always went with a large corporation because they knew what they were doing and had a solid reputation.  Basically, I knew what I was getting, and knew there would be a pretty high floor for the experience, and I was willing to pay a premium for that.

But Sawant isn't representing me, supposedly.  She claims to be representing the poor people (the "working class" -- not including people who make a lot of money working, like me) who are stuck renting more run-down places with fewer amenities and and less-experienced or less-professional management.  Obviously almost all those places are run by local landlords who are going out on their own rather than teaming up with some big megacorporation that will run their property for them.

In practice, here in D3, what this looks like is corporations handling the management of all the fancy new six-story glass "luxury apartments", which are around $2,000 a month for a 1BR.  But there are also still plenty of ancient three-story buildings, built pre-WW2 (and likely pre-WW1).  They're drafty, made of thin wood and plaster, you can hear everything everyone else is doing, the appliances are all decades out of date and break down all the time, and there's certainly no amenities.  No firepit on the roof.  But you can live in one of those for more like $1,300 a month.  So your Amazon employees live in the "luxury" apartments with the rooftop firepits, and your Starbucks baristas and artists live in the 19th-century apartments with matchlight ovens, and that's the way things are.

But when Sawant keeps making things worse and worse for the small landlords who manage those WW1-era buildings, they eventually decide, screw this, I don't have to deal with this.  They sell their WW1-era building to a developer, the developer tears it down and builds a new six-story glass luxury apartment building on the parcel.  Now there's more housing for Amazon employees and less housing for Starbucks baristas.  And with less supply of the WW1-era buildings, but the same demand, prices go up.  So those Starbucks baristas get angry at landlords for raising prices, and vote for Sawant, who promises to fight for them by antagonizing those landlords, thus driving more of them out and further shrinking the supply of housing for her constituency.

It's a vicious cycle, and one that's completely unnecessary.  A competent city councilmember could solve this problem, maybe by creating grants to restore some old properties or make improvements so they're more livable and the landlords don't have to keep raising rent to pay for new boilers and repairs to the centuries-old architecture.  But the only language Sawant understands is animosity, so she just attacks and demonizes them and introduces policies to make their lives harder.  And of course it's only the small landlords she goes after, since she can bully Grandpa Tom renting his old building out to six artists, she can't bully the big corporations with their professional legal outfits.

So how do you solve this problem?  Sawant's solution is rent control.  Just make it impossible for landlords to raise rents.  Of course this will never actually pass (there's a statewide prohibition on rent control ffs) but if it did, supply would immediately shrink to 0 because nobody would want to become a small-time landlord in Seattle anymore, and landlords would immediately search for any loophole available to evict their tenants and bail on their properties.  But the reality of this doesn't matter because Sawant has no intention of actually passing rent control -- it's just a wedge issue she can use to get re-elected again and again, which is her sole motivation.

[gerritcole]

Sawant should primary cantwell

[Crane]

Sawant has successfully driven a lot of small landlords out of D3 and now all the local apartment buildings are owned by big corporations who can afford to legally defend themselves against her, and that just makes things more expensive and impersonal for renters.

I am not a communist and I have no particular issue with the rest of what you posted, but is this really true? When it comes to renting, as with most economic transactions in my life, I'd rather deal with a large corporation that has established legal policies than with a small proprietor for whom things are personal.

I'm well-off and when I rented I always went with a large corporation because they knew what they were doing and had a solid reputation.  Basically, I knew what I was getting, and knew there would be a pretty high floor for the experience, and I was willing to pay a premium for that.

But Sawant isn't representing me, supposedly.  She claims to be representing the poor people (the "working class" -- not including people who make a lot of money working, like me) who are stuck renting more run-down places with fewer amenities and and less-experienced or less-professional management.  Obviously almost all those places are run by local landlords who are going out on their own rather than teaming up with some big megacorporation that will run their property for them.

In practice, here in D3, what this looks like is corporations handling the management of all the fancy new six-story glass "luxury apartments", which are around $2,000 a month for a 1BR.  But there are also still plenty of ancient three-story buildings, built pre-WW2 (and likely pre-WW1).  They're drafty, made of thin wood and plaster, you can hear everything everyone else is doing, the appliances are all decades out of date and break down all the time, and there's certainly no amenities.  No firepit on the roof.  But you can live in one of those for more like $1,300 a month.  So your Amazon employees live in the "luxury" apartments with the rooftop firepits, and your Starbucks baristas and artists live in the 19th-century apartments with matchlight ovens, and that's the way things are.

But when Sawant keeps making things worse and worse for the small landlords who manage those WW1-era buildings, they eventually decide, screw this, I don't have to deal with this.  They sell their WW1-era building to a developer, the developer tears it down and builds a new six-story glass luxury apartment building on the parcel.  Now there's more housing for Amazon employees and less housing for Starbucks baristas.  And with less supply of the WW1-era buildings, but the same demand, prices go up.  So those Starbucks baristas get angry at landlords for raising prices, and vote for Sawant, who promises to fight for them by antagonizing those landlords, thus driving more of them out and further shrinking the supply of housing for her constituency.

It's a vicious cycle, and one that's completely unnecessary.  A competent city councilmember could solve this problem, maybe by creating grants to restore some old properties or make improvements so they're more livable and the landlords don't have to keep raising rent to pay for new boilers and repairs to the centuries-old architecture.  But the only language Sawant understands is animosity, so she just attacks and demonizes them and introduces policies to make their lives harder.  And of course it's only the small landlords she goes after, since she can bully Grandpa Tom renting his old building out to six artists, she can't bully the big corporations with their professional legal outfits.

So how do you solve this problem?  Sawant's solution is rent control.  Just make it impossible for landlords to raise rents.  Of course this will never actually pass (there's a statewide prohibition on rent control ffs) but if it did, supply would immediately shrink to 0 because nobody would want to become a small-time landlord in Seattle anymore, and landlords would immediately search for any loophole available to evict their tenants and bail on their properties.  But the reality of this doesn't matter because Sawant has no intention of actually passing rent control -- it's just a wedge issue she can use to get re-elected again and again, which is her sole motivation.

You can just write "I do not understand housing"

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Sawant has successfully driven a lot of small landlords out of D3 and now all the local apartment buildings are owned by big corporations who can afford to legally defend themselves against her, and that just makes things more expensive and impersonal for renters.

I am not a communist and I have no particular issue with the rest of what you posted, but is this really true? When it comes to renting, as with most economic transactions in my life, I'd rather deal with a large corporation that has established legal policies than with a small proprietor for whom things are personal.

I'm well-off and when I rented I always went with a large corporation because they knew what they were doing and had a solid reputation.  Basically, I knew what I was getting, and knew there would be a pretty high floor for the experience, and I was willing to pay a premium for that.

But Sawant isn't representing me, supposedly.  She claims to be representing the poor people (the "working class" -- not including people who make a lot of money working, like me) who are stuck renting more run-down places with fewer amenities and and less-experienced or less-professional management.  Obviously almost all those places are run by local landlords who are going out on their own rather than teaming up with some big megacorporation that will run their property for them.

In practice, here in D3, what this looks like is corporations handling the management of all the fancy new six-story glass "luxury apartments", which are around $2,000 a month for a 1BR.  But there are also still plenty of ancient three-story buildings, built pre-WW2 (and likely pre-WW1).  They're drafty, made of thin wood and plaster, you can hear everything everyone else is doing, the appliances are all decades out of date and break down all the time, and there's certainly no amenities.  No firepit on the roof.  But you can live in one of those for more like $1,300 a month.  So your Amazon employees live in the "luxury" apartments with the rooftop firepits, and your Starbucks baristas and artists live in the 19th-century apartments with matchlight ovens, and that's the way things are.

But when Sawant keeps making things worse and worse for the small landlords who manage those WW1-era buildings, they eventually decide, screw this, I don't have to deal with this.  They sell their WW1-era building to a developer, the developer tears it down and builds a new six-story glass luxury apartment building on the parcel.  Now there's more housing for Amazon employees and less housing for Starbucks baristas.  And with less supply of the WW1-era buildings, but the same demand, prices go up.  So those Starbucks baristas get angry at landlords for raising prices, and vote for Sawant, who promises to fight for them by antagonizing those landlords, thus driving more of them out and further shrinking the supply of housing for her constituency.

It's a vicious cycle, and one that's completely unnecessary.  A competent city councilmember could solve this problem, maybe by creating grants to restore some old properties or make improvements so they're more livable and the landlords don't have to keep raising rent to pay for new boilers and repairs to the centuries-old architecture.  But the only language Sawant understands is animosity, so she just attacks and demonizes them and introduces policies to make their lives harder.  And of course it's only the small landlords she goes after, since she can bully Grandpa Tom renting his old building out to six artists, she can't bully the big corporations with their professional legal outfits.

So how do you solve this problem?  Sawant's solution is rent control.  Just make it impossible for landlords to raise rents.  Of course this will never actually pass (there's a statewide prohibition on rent control ffs) but if it did, supply would immediately shrink to 0 because nobody would want to become a small-time landlord in Seattle anymore, and landlords would immediately search for any loophole available to evict their tenants and bail on their properties.  But the reality of this doesn't matter because Sawant has no intention of actually passing rent control -- it's just a wedge issue she can use to get re-elected again and again, which is her sole motivation.

You can just write "I do not understand housing"

Socialists and those on the left also don't seem to understand housing. If you have a city there are X amount of apartments and Y amount of people who wants to stay in the city where Y>X then there's going to have to be some method of filtering out people unless you increase the amount of apartments which a lot of left-wing groups resist.

[PSOL]

Here’s how the recall can still win

[Crane]

Sawant has successfully driven a lot of small landlords out of D3 and now all the local apartment buildings are owned by big corporations who can afford to legally defend themselves against her, and that just makes things more expensive and impersonal for renters.

I am not a communist and I have no particular issue with the rest of what you posted, but is this really true? When it comes to renting, as with most economic transactions in my life, I'd rather deal with a large corporation that has established legal policies than with a small proprietor for whom things are personal.

You can just write "I do not understand housing"

Wow, he reported me using the least offensive language in existence to describe his selfish and revolting views. So much for that ignore button.

[PSOL]

Both Sawant and the recall figureheads says it’s over, it’s over

Sawant should primary cantwell

SAlt will run as their own. What I suspect is that after 2023 they’ll have her run for state senate/house and then statewide.

Honestly, Sawant would make a good VP for 2028. The question becomes VP for whom.

[Calthrina950]

Both Sawant and the recall figureheads says it’s over, it’s over

Sawant should primary cantwell

SAlt will run as their own. What I suspect is that after 2023 they’ll have her run for state senate/house and then statewide.

Honestly, Sawant would make a good VP for 2028. The question becomes VP for whom.

Obviously, you're a Sawant supporter, but why has she been so controversial and faced so many challenges? I know virtually nothing about her.

[PSOL]

Both Sawant and the recall figureheads says it’s over, it’s over

Sawant should primary cantwell

SAlt will run as their own. What I suspect is that after 2023 they’ll have her run for state senate/house and then statewide.

Honestly, Sawant would make a good VP for 2028. The question becomes VP for whom.

Obviously, you're a Sawant supporter, but why has she been so controversial and faced so many challenges? I know virtually nothing about her.

It’s a wild ride. Start from like 6 pages ago and move onwards.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Both Sawant and the recall figureheads says it’s over, it’s over

Sawant should primary cantwell

SAlt will run as their own. What I suspect is that after 2023 they’ll have her run for state senate/house and then statewide.

Honestly, Sawant would make a good VP for 2028. The question becomes VP for whom.

Obviously, you're a Sawant supporter, but why has she been so controversial and faced so many challenges? I know virtually nothing about her.

She's just a really, really, really bad person in virtually every way a person can be bad.

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

This district literally voted for NTK, correct? Not surprising this failed

[Kamala's side hoe]

Both Sawant and the recall figureheads says it’s over, it’s over

Sawant should primary cantwell

SAlt will run as their own. What I suspect is that after 2023 they’ll have her run for state senate/house and then statewide.

Honestly, Sawant would make a good VP for 2028. The question becomes VP for whom.

Obviously, you're a Sawant supporter, but why has she been so controversial and faced so many challenges? I know virtually nothing about her.

According to a "joint statement from the Jewish, Black, and Asian communities" (of Seattle proper), which was previously posted here by GenMac, she has:

• regularly traded in rhetoric giving rise in anti-Semitism, resulting in violence directed at Jewish residents
• sought to hijack the efforts of BLM organizers to promote her own political agenda, which has been well-documented by local news coverage
• refused to advocate for East/Southeast Asian small business owners by falsely equating poverty with crime
• approrpriated her own South Asian identity for political gain without adequately representing her AAPI constituents
• admitted to using city resources to support a ballot initiative, without complying with a public disclosure requirement related to this support
• disobeyed a state order and endangered public workers by admitting hundreds of people into City Hall on June 9th, 2020

[PSOL]

Kshama Sawant’s victory speech on her (probable) victory

…

How did we do this? We won because we did not back down.

We did not back down in our socialist City Council office. Instead we went on the offensive, and we won some of the most crucial victories for renters’ rights this year.

We did not back down in fighting for workers – we put our resources and our full commitment at the disposal of the courageous rank-and-file leadership of the Pacific Northwest Carpenters’ union. We did this even though their union’s leadership shamefully did not want to fight, and publicly attacked our Council office, falsely accusing us of interference.

If standing with union workers in their efforts to fight the bosses is interference, then I plead guilty. I am an interferer.

There are good and courageous labor leaders also, and we need to work alongside them. Workers have no choice but to rebuild a fighting labor movement, and if some conservative trade union leaders want to stand in the way, we can’t let that stop us.

…

And we should be clear, the voter suppression had a real effect. In 2019, we also had a strong get out the vote campaign – though not as strong as this time – and there was 60% turnout in our district. This time, it is only 53%. Had it not been for blatant voter suppression, we would have won by a far larger margin. It would not even have been close.

But even this time, in the pouring rain of December and an unprecedented holiday election, the outcome of this vote was NOT REMOTELY close in terms of the votes of working-class people, people of color, and young people. In all the precincts with clear majorities of working people, we have won by massive margins. Including this precinct. Majorities of 70 percent, 80 percent, and higher.

This has been true in every election. Working people by enormous margins support our socialist politics.

As seen in the November elections, it was primarily the working class and ethnically diverse districts that lent support for the grand coalition. The notion that community leaders did not support Sawant and that her time in office wasn’t well-received or substantial in their eyes along with in action is disproven beyond a reasonable doubt. Looking back, the carpenter’s strike should have been seen as a sign of flexing against the city elite that the Left was not going to cave in this election.

None of the above is surprising given the entrenched links SAlt has in Seattle; evident by the huge endorsement list, work across labor unions in Seattle, and uptick in support in Seattle since 2016. If you listened to the rentier capitalists and labor aristocrats who took up all the oxygen in this thread, you would have expected a blowout based on disconnection from reality. However, from the election results and momentum going into this race, it was obvious it would have been close due to lower turnout.

In 2023 the master chef won’t have to be conservative in helping the assistants cook, and I expect their work will have their ducks in order to fully win unless we get to the point of illegality being utilized by the capitalist class in Seattle

[GeneralMacArthur]

Dude she lost support between last election and this one.  Her victory margin has shrunk from 3,743 votes (2015) to 1,775 votes (2019) to 232 votes (2021).

I knew you guys were just going to fabricate a bunch of stuff and say this election "proves it" because she survived a recall by 200 votes, but come on.  The carpenters strikers told her to f--- off because she was trying to interfere with their strike to make it about her own personal issues instead of what they wanted.  Plenty of community leaders came out against her and very few came out for her.

If she hadn't found a loophole in the voting laws that she could exploit in the most brazen way possible to stash more votes, she would absolutely have lost.  She lost the fundraising battle in her own district.  She celebrated her victory by giving a speech where she attacked and alienated even more people.

I suppose it's a good thing that the communists hold her up as their national leader, because she's such a repulsive human being and awful politician that her prominence limits the cult's widespread appeal.