Big Seattle name is in election battlegrounds — helping Trump

Danny Westneat, Tribune News Service

Seattle’s star socialist is at it again. This time, she’s making news with some uncomfortable truth-telling about her own aims that’s bound to make many Seattleites squirm. Former Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant was out in Michigan over the weekend, stumping for the Green Party presidential campaign of Jill Stein. Democrats have long suspected that Stein is a form of political malware. She pops up every four years espousing desirable lefty positions. But her “Green” campaign has no purpose other than to try to hand the election to Republicans, by siphoning off a handful of liberal votes. Far-fetched? That’s what I always thought. But Sawant, speaking at a Stein rally, admitted that it’s true.

“We need to be clear about what our goals are,” Sawant said in a speech on Sunday in Dearborn, Michigan. “We are not in a position to win the White House. “But we do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan. And the polls show that most likely Harris cannot win the election without Michigan.” So the goal is “fighting to defeat Harris, not just symbolically but in reality,” Sawant said. “This is ground zero to punish Kamala Harris and defeat her.”

If you admit Stein can’t win, and you claim Harris must be defeated, then you’re working to elect Donald Trump. The remarks came at a rally for Stein and Workers Strike Back, Sawant’s new activist group. I don’t know what effect Sawant or the Stein campaign will have on the presidential outcome. But that Seattle’s most left-wing politician is now out in the battlegrounds aiming to get Trump elected is quite the head-spinner. Everyone in Seattle who enabled Sawant’s rise over the years — I wonder how you are feeling about this. Like, say, The Stranger, which first elevated Sawant. If Trump wins, will this be part of your annual “regrets” issue?

The outline of Sawant’s argument is that she sees no difference between Republicans and Democrats, as both to her are equally warmongering, corporate tools. This time is different in that she’s arguing Harris is actually worse than Trump. “Ultimately, Harris is a more reliable and consistently controllable tool for billionaire interests,” Sawant alleged. She spent most of the remarks assailing Harris as responsible for Israel’s war in Gaza and all the destruction there. She made no mention of Hamas, the remaining hostages or the larger geopolitical conditions. Nor did she make a case for how defeating Harris in favour of Trump might help, on that or any other issue. She’s about burning down the village, but first starting the fire at the house closest to her own, the Democrats. “The Democrats were the party of slavery, and of slave owners — that’s in their history,” Sawant raged at one point. Sure but ... the party has changed a bit in the last 150 years, no? All of this raises a human behavioural question: Why do extremists always seem to go hardest after those closest to them on the ideological spectrum? It could be that if you’re a purist, you are most infuriated by those you feel should be on your side.

We just saw the same phenomenon play out here on the right, when MAGA activists rebelled against the campaign of more moderate GOP governor candidate Dave Reichert. Better to lose it all in fiery righteousness than to win only some of what you want — I guess? (I never said any of this makes a lick of practical sense.)

Or maybe this is a natural result of polarisation — where, as political divisions widen, the extremes also get more extreme. It may be why there are movements on both left and right threatening to tear apart the parties. “We need to break the two-party system, and we need to begin that by breaking this election for the Democrats in Michigan,” Sawant said. More chaos, with the election of Trump — that’s the goal. The same day, a group of 26 imams and Muslim leaders — people with much more at personal stake in the war — endorsed Harris. In their letter, they gave an alternative view — that purity has no place in adult politics.

“It’s not the lesser of two evils,” they wrote. “For us, as people of faith, specifically as Muslims, it’s the measure or estimate of the Harm and the Benefit. When faced with a choice, we are expected to carefully assess the potential benefits and harm involved, prioritizing actions that bring better, and minimize negative, consequences.”

They cut to the chase: “Knowingly enabling someone like Donald Trump to return to office, whether by voting directly for him or for a third-party candidate, is both a moral and a strategic failure.” You know who else understands these concepts — instinctively, like a reptile? “I like her also, Jill Stein, I like her very much,” Trump oozed in June. “You know why? She takes 100% from them.” Seattle, what is our rationalisation going to be? That we were too idealistic to foresee what Sawant might become? That we thought she’d just work on the minimum wage and then retire to giving feel-good talks at Town Hall? She said she wanted a revolution. Now the squirmy truth is that to try to start one, she’s out there in our city’s name being a useful fool for Trump.