Jim McDermott, will be reelected to Congress. That makes me sad.
Jim is our local politician activist, showboat of the progressives , and Congressman. He still think she lives in Seattle .. a city dominated by unions, the blue class workers of his past. Jim’s mantra has been anti war, pro gay, pro choice, … all the left issues.
Jim has never been very good about one of our major industries .. he seems uninterested in the UW, even loudly praising a third rate Texas medical school for ite dumbed down program in rural medicine while not even mentioning the #1 rated UW School of Medicine.* Jim’s odd ignorance of the UW, is typical of a guy who grew up when Seattle was Boeing’s back yard.
Meanwhile Jim’s district has changed. The Party chose to remove the African American part of the district to create a “people of color” district mixing Mercer Island Jews, Blacks fleeing the rents of gentrified Seattle, Hindustani and Asian folks living in the southern reaches of Bellevue, and the assorted immigrant communities (poor people) of White Center.
A study by the think tank City Observatory found Seattle added 45,676 people aged 25 to 34 between 2000 and 2012. As of 2012, Seattle’s cohort of folks this age was was 217,926, about 1/3 of our total population! Seattle also area ranked 10th among all cities for the degree percentage of all aged 25-34 holding degrees. We don’t attract blue collar young folks, they cannot afford to live in Jim’s district.
Today’s Seattlelite works for Amazon, thinks unions are part of the airplane company that left here decades ago, worries a lot about how to find his next job when Amazon downsizes, rides a bike but really, really wants to buy a Tesla.
This is a HUGE metric and one that could vote Republican if some libertarian candidate appeared with the right corporate ties. The Democratic Party needs to wonder, what happens if some cheerleader of a libertarian emerges out of Amazon?
* I wonder if he is planning to move to Spokane as a member of the faculty of their proposed Washington State Cougars School of Medicine?