What is the Editorial Board really saying in this Seattle Times editorial titled Gubernatorial hopeful Jay Inslee should shift gears toward state issues?
U.S. REP. Jay Inslee is wasting voters’ time by making an issue of federal health-insurance reform in his campaign for governor in 2012. Instead of attacking Attorney General Rob McKenna’s challenge to “Obamacare,” Inslee should focus on state issues.
Translation: “By ‘wasting voters’ time’ we mean that you can only discuss one issue at a time. And this isn’t it! Come on, Inslee, you’re killing us here. Rob made a mistake—showed his cards, if you will—but we still want folks to believe that McKenna is an honest-to-gosh moderate.”
That the health insurance law will apply in this state does not make it a state issue. The law applies in all the states. It is a federal law being challenged in federal court regarding the federal Constitution.
Translation: “The Tea Party is quite unpopular in Washington state, so stop pointing out that McKenna jumped into this Tea Party-inspired lawsuit. That’s just dirty politics to tarnish McKenna with his own actions.”
Opponents argue that the Constitution gives the federal government no power to order individuals to buy insurance. The Obama administration argues it has that power under the Commerce Clause. This is just the sort of argument the Supreme Court is designed to settle, and the argument was bound to arrive there. That McKenna joined one side and Gov. Chris Gregoire joined the other will not affect the outcome. Nor will a future governor of Washington, whether Inslee or McKenna.
Translation: “Whatever you do, don’t remind people of what has happened in other states when a Teabagger Republican has taken the reigns as Governor. Mentioning the lawsuit makes people fear that a future Governor Rob McKenna might do to Washington state what Florida Governor Rick Scott or Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker have done to their states. We don’t like that. So stop it and talk about other stuff.”
All the while, there boils a huge state issue: the $2-billion budget shortfall. Gregoire has ordered state agencies to offer a list of 10-percent cuts. She will use this list to recommend a package of cuts to a special session of the Legislature. Does Inslee support this?
Translation: “Jay, do you support a Governor being able to collect information from state agencies and make recommendations to the Legislature? Really?!? Because…we’re not so sure….”
Does he think the governor should be empowered to make discretionary cuts if the Legislature does not? How would he close a $2 billion gap? Cuts? Tax increases? Reforms?
Translation: “And don’t even think of bringing up the fact that our own reporting finds McKenna’s state budgetary ideas utter fantasy.”
This gap should be closed by the time the new governor takes office in 2013, but the questions are likely to be similar.
Translation: “So even though our recommended “issue” will quite possibly be irrelevant for the next Governor, and you have 13 more months to talk about similar issues anyway, and regardless of the Health Care reform lawsuit being a timely news item now, and ignoring the fact that McKenna has admitted to losing control of the lawsuit’s agenda, and dismissing the fact that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Washingtonians will be hurt by success of the lawsuit that McKenna claims to have co-founded, please, please talk about only what we want you to talk about.”
Inslee has been in Congress since 1999, and he is still thinking about national issues. He needs to shift gears.
Translation: “Inslee should shift away from discussing things McKenna has done to harm the people of Washington. The people don’t need to know.”
“P.S. We won’t be endorsing you.”
A. Yes it does.
B. Inslee voted for it, McKenna joined a lawsuit against it. Given that, how could it not be an issue in the election?
C. McKenna’s been campaigning on it, every Republican presidential hopeful has been campaigning on it, but Inslee can’t campaign on it? Wtf?
D. It should be legal to kick editorial boards in the shins when they write something this stupid.
The Seattle Times editorial board has clearly already taken sides, and their coverage will reflect this.
The editorial makes an inane attempt to turn logic into something of the shape of a preztel in order to claim that Inslee can’t bring up McKenna’s poor judgement in joining the lawsuit.
But more importantly, note that the Times demands that Inslee take positions on cuts to the Washington state budget, but makes no such demands on McKenna. It’s an old Republican trick: try to force your opponant to publically make unpopular and difficult decisions, then critizice those decisions without offering any of your own.
That, in essence, has been the Republican strategy since the Reagan years: avoid the difficult process of identifying spending cuts, and instead just go ahead and make the tax cuts, then leave it to the other guys to make the hard choices.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a REAL newspaper in this town?
Oh wait…we do!
It’s called “The Stranger”.
What pap. Whoever wrote that nonsense must have been on mushrooms at the time. The piece is not just wrong, but utter foolishness.
Republicans aren’t very imaginative, and rather transparent.
It is a sign of the destruction that they’ve visited upon our educational system, leaving millions of citizens too unskilled at critical thinking to call them on this utter bullshit.
It’s also a testament to the economic insecurity that they’ve created, leaving vast millions sweating away at multiple low-wage jobs and too exhausted to pay attention. Or too demoralized and disenfranchised to care.
Or so frightened and pissed off, and too poorly educated, and desperate, that they take the Republican cues to heart and fix the blame for their misery on gay brown Mexican environmentalists without health care coming to take away their trailer.
Fuck the Seattle Times, and fuck the the sniveling inbred dynasty of whores and tax cheats that run the pathetic, dying fish wrapper.
I used to think the Seattle Times still served a purpose, even though I disagreed with them. But the continued existence of the web-only Seattle P.I. has proven that we can live without the Seattle Times. It’s editorial nonsense has pretty much led me to the belief that it does more harm than good.
Today we had a staff meeting, and one of the “housekeeping” notes was which newspapers/magazines we need to renew. As of tomorrow, the Seattle Times will be canceled at our office, as well as the Wall Street Journal. We will still subscribe to industry publications.
“honest-to-gosh” What are you translating it to?
Carl @ 7,
You are aware that Ryan will get his mouth washed out with soap if he takes God’s name in vain, right?
What do you expect from the Right Wing Times? You’d be hard-pressed to find a newspaper anywhere more out of touch with its community than this one.
I canceled the ST a couple years ago due to their editorial content (and the WSJ a couple years earlier for the same reason), and I told them so at the time. They still call every few months to try to get me to re-subscribe, and I tell them the same thing each time.
I got another of these calls the other day, and the woman with whom I spoke had a new one for me: After I asked her to take me off the list (again) because I don’t like the editorial content, she said, “but hey, you’d be supporting local businesses and people — including me!” Good one!
Darryl: Nice recap of a ridiculous editorial.