As darkness envelops American democracy, Washington State charts a progressive path

Cat­a­stro­phe. Dev­as­tat­ing. Tragedy.

Those are some of the words I’m see­ing being used in an attempt to describe the out­come of the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, which end­ed last night in a series of dark, dis­turb­ing defeats for Hillary Clin­ton and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

And yet, while vot­ers in Michi­gan, Wis­con­sin, and Penn­syl­va­nia were hand­ing the nation’s high­est and most impor­tant office to neo­fas­cist Don­ald Trump, vot­ers on the Left Coast were chart­ing a very dif­fer­ent path for their states.

In Wash­ing­ton, vot­ers elect­ed a Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor, Demo­c­ra­t­ic exec­u­tive depart­ment, major­i­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion, increased the state House­’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty, and brought state Sen­ate Democ­rats to with­in one vote of a major­i­ty — while approv­ing ini­tia­tives to increase the min­i­mum wage, insti­tute extreme risk pro­tec­tion orders, and call for an amend­ment to the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion to over­turn Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and get big mon­ey out of politics.

These vic­to­ries, it should be not­ed, came because vot­ers across the state — not just in King Coun­ty! — unit­ed to chart a pro­gres­sive path for Wash­ing­ton State.

King Coun­ty can and has been out­vot­ed through what has been called “the boa con­stric­tor strat­e­gy”, where swing and rur­al coun­ties align in oppo­si­tion to King Coun­ty’s posi­tion on a bal­lot mea­sure, or band togeth­er sup­port of an alter­na­tive can­di­date. In fact, that is hap­pen­ing right now in this elec­tion in some contests.

Not all of King Coun­ty’s favored posi­tions and can­di­dates are being embraced by vot­ers else­where. But most of them are. And that’s significant.

Democ­rats have suc­ceed­ed in elect­ing dis­tin­guished Iran­ian Amer­i­can Cyrus Habib as Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor, Hilary Franz as Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands, and Pat McCarthy as Audi­tor, in addi­tion to retain­ing Jay Inslee as Gov­er­nor, Bob Fer­gu­son as Attor­ney Gen­er­al, and Mike Krei­dler as Insur­ance Commissioner.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty only gave up one statewide posi­tion, Trea­sur­er, due to not hav­ing advanced any­one through the Top Two elec­tion. With a strong can­di­date, it stands a rea­son­ably good chance of win­ning that posi­tion back in 2020.

And mean­while, the three pro­gres­sive Supreme Court jus­tices who came under attack by Rod­ney Tom, Tim Eyman, Matt Man­weller, and their wealthy bene­fac­tors have all been returned to the bench by wide mar­gins by the voters.

Jus­tices Bar­bara Mad­sen, Mary Yu, and Char­lie Wig­gins are cruis­ing to reelec­tion, despite hav­ing endured months of attacks by the right wing.

In Mad­sen and Wig­gins’ case, the attacks were turned into expen­sive tele­vi­sion ad buys intend­ed to help their right wing oppo­nents knock them out.

But vot­ers saw through these attacks and chose to give all three new terms on the Court. That is a huge­ly reas­sur­ing out­come for pro­gres­sives and for democ­ra­cy. It shows that right wing megabucks can’t buy everything.

Final­ly, in the heart of the state, urban vot­ers said yes to a big, bold expan­sion of mass tran­sit, ensur­ing that cen­tral Puget Sound will get a rail spine link­ing togeth­er all of its major cities — with expand­ed bus and com­muter rail ser­vice to boot. Sound Tran­sit plans to begin work imme­di­ate­ly to bring the promised projects to fruition, so that more neigh­bor­hoods can be Linked in (pun intend­ed) as soon as possible.

In 2016, Wash­ing­ton vot­ers were giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote for com­pelling down­bal­lot can­di­dates in addi­tion to pro­gres­sive caus­es. And they are tak­ing advan­tage. In the 41st Dis­trict, Repub­li­can Steve Lit­zow is being turned out of office, with a major­i­ty back­ing one of the par­ty’s top ris­ing stars, Lisa Wellman.

In the 30th Dis­trict, vot­ers are exchang­ing their two Repub­li­can oppo­nents for two high cal­iber Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lengers — Mike Pel­lic­ciot­ti and Kris­tine Reeves.

In the 5th Dis­trict, Jason Ritchie has a nar­row lead over dis­graced Repub­li­can Jay Rodne, whose big­ot­ed, xeno­pho­bic com­ments on refugees drew wide­spread con­dem­na­tion. Dar­cy Burn­er, mean­while, trails Repub­li­can Paul Graves by only a few votes, in what is one of the state’s clos­est leg­isla­tive contests.

Democ­rats will enter 2017 with a stronger work­ing major­i­ty in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and will be in posi­tion to take con­trol of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate before 2018 arrives, if they win next year’s spe­cial elec­tions in the 45th, 48th, and 37th. (The 48th and 37th are reli­ably blue districts.)

Gov­er­nor Inslee, mean­while, has won reelec­tion with a size­able man­date to gov­ern the state in accor­dance with pro­gres­sive prin­ci­ples and pol­i­cy directions.

The Pacif­ic time­zone has cho­sen a very dif­fer­ent path than that of the rest of the coun­try, save for New Eng­land, the South­west, and the mid-Atlantic states, which also backed Hillary Clin­ton for the presidency.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty may be in bad shape fed­er­al­ly and in oth­er states, but on the Left Coast, it is find­ing suc­cess cham­pi­oning pro­gres­sive ideas and candidates.

That’s a les­son the mem­bers of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee and oth­er par­ty lead­ers should take to heart. The par­ty bad­ly needs a new chair and lead­er­ship team who can effec­tive­ly chal­lenge Don­ald Trump and rebuild after a bad elec­tion cycle.