Evergreen Politics' Lynn Allen spoke with the Lisa Brown, the Eastern Washington University professor of economics who is Senate Majority Leader (D-Spokane) and the only Democratic senator from Eastern Washington. Read her excellent interview here.
Lynn gives Brown a forum to go back and look at the 2005 legislature and take an inventory.
It came up looking pretty good.
(We talked with Brown a few times in 2001, as she was beginning in leadership as the new chair of the powerful Senate Ways & Means Committee. Her grasp of the numbers and the incumbent political situation was dazzling. And with all that wonk, she has great sense of humor and a down-to-earth lets-get-it-done attitude of a politician who's in it for a calling higher than her own ego. Brown is in the our state's proud lineage of smart women in power: Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell and Christine Gregoire. We, for one, hope she stays in politics and continues to make her way up the food chain).
Brown talks about one of the most productive sessions in memory. They took risks, got a lot done. Some of it was bitter medicine for an ailing state hurting because of the gridlock of recent sessions with close majorities and dwindled revenues. Not all they accomplished will go down easy with the voters--brave solons from both parties have some 'splainin' to do in their districts.
It's the ability of Democrats to do the splainin' that worries us.
Lisa Brown says:
We have to be able to do a better job of telling our story. We grapple with the issue of communication. For example, the state is now faced with the possibility of this anti-tax initiative. We worked very hard to get support from community leaders, business leaders and labor across all the cities and counties in Washington State for passage of the Transportation Bill. The whole story about the importance of that bill and its support by such a wide group of people is not getting out. It is being characterized as a ten cent tax increase when we were very careful to phase in the additional taxes, a few cents at a time over several years.
This bill, was painfully worked out in a responsible, thoughtful, legislative sausage machine that included the usual public input, open hearings, spite, malice; plus uncommon give & take between Eastsiders/Westsiders, Democrats/Republicans, dog/cats, fish/fowl, stalkers and dreamers.
This not unminor miracle is being threatened by an opportunistic, faux populist uprising fired-up by neocon talk-jocks John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur.
They're not only pumping their listenership with fear and loathing, they're organizing and directing the logistics of the hurry-up signature gathering effort on-air.
They're both Republican operatives and county by county, the Grand Old Party is supporting this to spite their face...nothing new there--pass it with the left hand, smack it down with the right. This existential political strategy will bite them in the end, but for now it's working with a public seemingly afflicted with political attention deficit disorder.
The only Republicans to support it are the Mainstream Republicans, who haven't had any clout in the party since Reagan.
Conventional wisdom says the initiative will pass if it gets on the ballot. The opposition has little to counter all this other than some meager legal hopes that this may be found unfair or improper.
Meanwhile, the veto campaign romps through the legal loopholes.
Democrats have a communications problem right here in liberal Seattle, where where 60% of the state's electorate resides and a Republican can't get elected for love or money (though they haven't tried the former lately).
Instead, they run dual, but paradoxical messages over the right-wing airwaves of KVI and KTTH. In one ear they pound the rigorous drivel of hard-ass, narcissistic civic libertarianism that would cut the feet from beneath any public attempt to provide a safety net or any government help for individual citizens.
If they had their way, they'd take government out of education, highways, the environment. There'd be no Social Security, no food stamps, no help for the disabled, or families in financial crises. They want you all in your cars, but they won't fix the roads!
Simultaneously, in your other ear, they're sermonizing away at your rights by preaching a hidebound, moralistic, loveless, faith-based, legalistic, anti-sex, antihuman message that strives to pass laws to stifle medical research, dictate your family's choices about life and death all based on their own religious dogma.
They want the government to be able to regulate what you can read, watch on TV, who you sleep with, and would withhold your rights, take away your birthday, or even lock you up if your choices might deviate from their secular mandates.
And somehow, the economic conservatives (who have the interests of business in their hearts) have convinced the Bible-thumpers, that their cold-blooded message is biblical!
These are the messages that talk radio is repeating day in and day out and has been for 15 years. Like reprogramming methods from a Chinese prison camp, the repetition over time changes the molecular structure of the brain cells of the unsuspecting, the under informed, the already pissed-off, and the naive.
Folks, there are no other loudspeakers out there worth talking about, here in act-locally country. The message they send to politicians is: if you act, you'll be punished, if you don't act, you'll be punished.
We're damn lucky we can attract anyone with the capabilities and commitment of a Lisa Brown to elected service. But how long can that last?
You are absolutely right Michael. The
blowhards (Carlson,Wilbur & Dorki Monson) are 3 boring pissed of WASP's. When the rapture comes, little do they know that because of there intolernace and disdain from anything other than LIBERPUBLICAN, they will find themselves "left Behind".
Posted by: P-1 Stern Fan | June 28, 2005 at 07:10 AM