Adam Smith: How Bad is Trump for Seattle? Really bad!

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice, the only podcast about politics in Seattle that says it's okay to disagree with your friends about politics. I'm David Hyde with my friend, political consultant Sandeep Kaushik. Hi, Sandeep. Hey, David. Unfortunately, our other friend Erica C. Barnett is out this week on some sort of fabulous vacation, no doubt. But fortunately, we're joined by a very special guest, Congressman Adam Smith, who represents Washington's ninth congressional district in the US House, which includes parts of the United States.

[00:00:40] of Seattle. Adam Smith was also on our other award winning podcast, Blue City Blues fairly recently, being a little bit critical of Blue City governance in cities like Seattle. So check out that conversation if you haven't yet. Adam Smith, thanks so much for being here. Adam Smith, thanks so much for being here. Adam Smith Well, thanks for giving me the chance. Look forward to the conversation. Adam Smith So before we get into Seattle politics, just for folks who aren't as familiar with your career as some might be, you're a member of the Progressive Caucus.

[00:01:09] Adam Smith And the New Democrats. So I just wanted to ask about that. How are you in both the super lefty caucus, you know, as well as the caucus that's known for being a little bit more moderate?

[00:01:20] Adam Smith This answer could literally take up the next hour. So we'll see what my speed reading ability is. So loosely speaking, you know, I grew up in the SeaTac area. My father was a member of Machinist Union. He was the secretary treasurer of that union. So I grew up in a really blue collar family. He was a ramp serviceman at United Airlines. And so and I was interested in politics from a young age. He sort of brought me into it. Initially in politics, I was a very laborer, you know, working class sort of oriented.

[00:01:49] Adam Smith You know, person workers of the world unite against the corporate behemoths who are keeping us down, you know, expand opportunity and all of that. And that that was sort of my initial political take as I was working on campaigns.

[00:02:01] Adam Smith Went to college in the mid 80s law school and sort of noticed that while the Republicans were kicking our ass, for lack of a better way to put it, Reagan was ascendant. We were really struggling. So I started to look at politics. So how do we fix that? How do we start winning again? How do we start, you know, succeeding again? And that sort of drew me into the then New Dem movement, the Democratic Leadership Council at the time.

[00:02:25] Adam Smith This is where Bill Clinton came from. And I was really I like the idea that they were more practical in their approach. They seem to know how to win. They seem to know how to deal with some of the challenges that New Deal liberalism hadn't dealt with. Adam Smith And that sort of put me on a centrist path for quite a while through my first couple of terms in Congress.

[00:02:45] Adam Smith And then around about the time that George W. Bush showed up, I noticed that centrist politics were themselves failing to address the issues that need to be addressed because I still had that sort of blue collar workers, workers of the world unite thing. Adam Smith And a lot of centrists back in the day thought that unions were passe, basically. We didn't need unions anymore. Workers were fine. And I never agreed with that.

[00:03:08] Adam Smith I didn't agree with the degree to which their deregulation seemed to be allowed. So that sort of left me with no particular home. Adam Smith And I got off of this notion that democratic politics should be a battle between the center and the left and who's going to win. You know, because that's always the fight. You know, you're heading into a campaign. Do we need to appeal to the center to win or do we need to appeal to the left?

[00:03:32] Adam Smith And I reached the conclusion in around 2005, well, we need to do both, folks. We need to figure out what's working, what's not working on both sides. And so I tried to sort of get out of that battle of, well, I'm a centrist fighting the left, to I'm a Democrat. I'm a progressive. I'm trying to, you know, help people. I mean, to me, progressives believe in the concept that government can be part of what helps people live their best lives and creates opportunity.

[00:04:02] So all of that, and that hasn't really changed. Now, it's difficult because, gosh, people really want to fight those old battles. So I'm a progressive and a new Democrat because I want to build a bigger tent for the Democratic Party and for the progressive movement so we can get a coalition that is large enough to win elections, govern effectively, and then win another election. Let me bring the conversation then back to what's going on in D.C. right now, right?

[00:04:30] Trump is the president. Republicans control both houses of Congress. We've seen we're now past the first hundred days. We're seeing, you know, the breakneck pace with it, which the president's been kind of rolling out this agenda. And we're starting to see what this administration is starting to mean for how how it impacts our lives here locally in Seattle and King County.

[00:04:53] And it's no secret that there's a lot of freak out locally right now in the city among just sort of ordinary voters, among nonprofit groups, among elected officials about, you know, potential steep cutbacks in federal dollars for all sorts of top tier local priorities. So what is so, Adam, what is happening right now in the other Washington at the federal level right now?

[00:05:18] And and how bad is it and how bad are these impacts going to be? It's really bad. And it's bad on two levels. One, it's bad because, as I said in a video clip I did a couple of weeks ago, Trump wants to be a dictator. Make no mistake about that. You know, I'm not saying he's necessarily going to achieve that, but if he doesn't achieve it, it's not going to be for a lack of trying. That is what he wants.

[00:05:46] He wants to be in total control and he wants to have that control to protect his own personal power and then the power of his family and the people close to him. You know, he is he wants to be a corrupt dictator in the mold of Vladimir Putin. You know, I mean, look, I mean, look, just the corruption, just, you know, he puts out his own little, you know, meme coin. I mean, I get the terminology wrong here. And literally he's raffling off access to the White House for his own personal money.

[00:06:13] I mean, the corruption is epic in its scale. And he also he doesn't want the federal government to function. He wants it to be at his control. So he's doing all of these firings and killing all of these programs. And it's not about making the federal government more efficient and more effective. It's about making it weaker so that his power in the executive branch is greater, his individual power.

[00:06:39] And then the power of people like Elon Musk and others is greater because they don't have those pesky regulatory agencies out there. You know, making sure that you don't poison the air and poison the water or making sure that you, you know, you don't hire people based on personal loyalty. You hire them based on ability. We're seeing this, gosh, in research, you know, in science. And we've fired so many people that some of our best researchers now are fleeing.

[00:07:02] You know, the NIH, CDC, all these research grants we used to do on health, on energy and so many things. That's part of what made us better and stronger. Trump's crippling that and weakening that for the sake of his own power. So all of that is a huge problem that he's doing that, like I said, basically for his own power. But then there's the fact that he obviously specifically targets those who he believes disagree with him in a way that's completely undemocratic. And Washington state fits that mold.

[00:07:32] We've seen it with a bunch of, you know, the higher education institutions where he's cutting off their grant funding. And if you don't adhere to his, you know, version of, well, if you don't get rid of DEI, you know, if you, you know, don't, you know, arrest every undocumented immigrant around, he's going to cut off every dollar that you have. And yeah, I think there's going to be a real impact in terms of dollars, you know, research money to the University of Washington. You can see it in transportation grants to King County.

[00:08:01] You can see him focusing on cutting that money off to the portions of the country that don't agree with him. So that's a long way of saying it is really bad. Trump is exercising his power to consolidate it around himself as a dictator and to punish his enemies and reward his friends, pardoning the January 6th people, you know, arresting a judge in Wisconsin. Now maybe, you know, arresting the mayor of Newark, giving Eric Adams a pardon because he cut a deal.

[00:08:29] This is corruption on a scale that we have not seen in the executive branch in the entire history of this country. You mentioned cuts to King County Transportation, University of Washington. Any other cuts locally that you're concerned about? Absolutely. Yes. A whole bunch. Every time I meet with a group, I mean, I met with a group of sustainable farmers last week. They have various different grants that would help them buy land and develop sustainable farm. Many of them have been frozen. They don't know if they're coming back on.

[00:08:58] You know, Head Start programs. Many of those programs have been frozen. There is almost no part of the federal government that isn't at risk of this. Now, it is chaotic. You know, frequently you will have grants frozen. And then two weeks later, we'll say, ah, no, we were just kidding. It's turned back on. And frequently you'll go back and forth on that more than once. It's off. It's on. It's off. It's on. And you don't know what's coming.

[00:09:26] But a lot of them have simply been shut off or frozen. And there's no way to know if they're going to be turned back on. And it's how I met with a group of people on housing. You know, we have a bunch of housing grants. Many of those have been frozen as well. So there is no part of the federal government that I'm aware of that hasn't suffered from that. And then, of course, you've got the firing of the employees. So we didn't freeze the grant. We just fired everyone who was supposed to give it to you. Yeah, no, it's your money. We just have no way to get it to you.

[00:09:56] It's sort of what they did with the Social Security Administration where they laid off a bunch of people. And now it's a lot harder to, you know, get signed up and actually receive your benefits. They do that. They do that as well. So it is wide and sweeping. As far as what we can do about it, there's a multi-step process here. One, we do need to push back. You can file lawsuits. I know I think we just filed another big – it's hard to keep track of all of them.

[00:10:23] But I know we just filed another big lawsuit about the layoffs of federal employees all across the country. I think Washington was one of 20 states that participated in that. I think Nick Brown's up to 14 lawsuits. There you are. And some of those bear fruit. Some of those do force reversals. Employees have to be brought back. Programs have to be turned back on. You know, it's a slow slog to get those turned back on. But it does have an impact.

[00:10:51] Yes, and you can also then bring political pressure to Republicans in Congress. A lot – you know, one best example of that is veterans. You know, they've frozen some programs that go to the VA that have negatively impact veterans' health care. That has gotten attention. That has put pressure on them to turn that back on. Also, they've fired tens of thousands of veterans from various different federal jobs, you know, putting pressure on them to turn that back on. That's part of what moves that piece forward.

[00:11:19] But then the overarching issue, and this gets us into the larger conversation, is how do we build more support in the country? How do we get more people to see the threat from Trump? If it's just the people who fought it out in the last three elections, we're on the losing side of that. Not by a lot, I'll grant you, but by two or three percentage points. How do we reach out to that other group? And then I think there's a really interesting contrast right now on that.

[00:11:47] You know, you've got Bernie Sanders and AOC and others doing the oligarch tour and basically going out there and talking about how terrible Trump and his supporters are and how we need to fight back against them. And I was really intrigued to see Ruben Gallego, a senator from down in Arizona. I'm a big fan of Ruben's, who was in Pennsylvania. And part of his message was we have to reach Trump voters. We have to understand why did they vote the way they did? What are they concerned about?

[00:12:14] And we have to try to address that so that we can grow a base of support so that all of a sudden some of the people who are traditionally supporting Trump are the people who are showing up and yelling at their Republican members and saying that is when you begin to shift both policy in the short term. Pressure is brought to bear and they're like, oh, my gosh, if we don't change this, we're in trouble.

[00:12:34] And then ultimately winning the elections in 26 and 28 to get power back in the executive congressional branches so that we can be more effective at all of those things that I just laid out. So you mentioned your Republican colleagues and Adam, you're ranking Democrat on armed services, right?

[00:12:55] Traditionally, a fairly bipartisan committee, a committee where Republicans and Democrats work together to make sure that the armed services are adequately funded and equipped and operational and all of that stuff. So what about your Republican colleagues right now? What are in Congress? What are you hearing from them?

[00:13:14] Is there any chance or any hope that any of them are going to like publicly stand up or even privately break ranks with the Trump administration on some of, you know, the more egregious stuff that's happening here in terms of eviscerating swaths of the federal government? Yeah, I don't think there is much hope in the short term that you're going to see that. And I think Senator Murkowski up in Alaska nailed it.

[00:13:42] They're afraid of him and they're afraid of the MAGA movement. Some is just, you know, political fear. They they believe that Trump has enough power to be a problem in a primary. And so they just don't want to say anything. And some of it is, as Senator Murkowski alluded to, is actual fear. I mean, if you go against Trump, you get death threats. You get, you know, you know, people protesting. Your family can get death threats. I mean, they're a very intimidating group of people.

[00:14:09] And right now, the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party is is fearful. And they're just trying to look away from that, pretend it's not happening and not address it. We have got to change that dynamic. Now, you've seen some. I mean, Don Bacon has been very outspoken on Ukraine. I think a lot of the defense hawks, ironically, are deeply frustrated that Trump has not given them the defense budget that they wanted.

[00:14:35] And then you do have others who are seeing the impacts on veterans and they will talk about it privately. Yes, we have those private conversations. I was just I was down in Austin, Texas, Monday and Tuesday with the Armed Services Committee talking about acquisition reform, meeting with some of the tech companies down there and some others. So I was with a lot of Republicans. And look, there's hardcore Republican members of Congress who believe in everything Trump is doing. They're there. Don't get me wrong.

[00:15:02] But there's also a whole lot of others who are like, yeah, this is not good. But they're not willing to say anything publicly at this point.

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[00:15:42] Armed or unarmed agents trained in de-escalation and advanced first aid are available 24-7. More information at hearthprotection.org. Hearth Protection. Don't let fear make your world smaller. Is there anything Blue City dwellers, average citizens in places like Seattle ought to be doing before 2026? How can folks resist the Trump administration and the MAGA agenda?

[00:16:12] I'm sure you're talking to constituents. What do you say to them about that, about protest or petitioning? What should citizens do? Yeah, two big things. One, yes, we must speak out. We must speak out against everything. All the stuff we've talked about and how we haven't even talked about some other aspects of it, the corruption, but the whole different other pieces of it in terms of what they're doing. I mean, the Medicaid, the tax cuts for the budget. We need to speak.

[00:16:39] I mean, the complete evisceration of our foreign aid budget, just shutting down USAID and cutting off programs in the middle of them. You know, when we were feeding starving children, when we were providing health care to people who desperately needed it. I think it is really important that you organize around whatever the issue is, social security. You know, you're cutting all the staff members. Here's the impact on social security, the VA.

[00:17:03] I think in blue areas, you can absolutely organize around those issues, make yourself heard, make it known, and then organize nationally. I always use the example of a group called Results, which is a foreign aid group. But what they do is they organize district by district all across the country. They advocate for specific foreign aid programs, but they are a national movement. So if they care about something in Seattle, they've got people in Kansas who they can talk to about organizing.

[00:17:31] I think we need to do that on a wide range of issues. We need to be loud, consistent, constant, and pushing back against Trump. But the second thing we need to do is we need to make ourselves more appealing to a broader segment of the U.S. population so that people think that the alternative to Trump is acceptable. And there, I think we've got a lot of work to do.

[00:17:58] Let's talk about that, Adam, because, you know, we had David mentioned at the top of the podcast. We had you on David's and my other podcast, Blue City Blues, a couple months ago to talk about your frustrations with some of the things that have happened in terms of governance in blue cities and the failures of governance in blue cities in recent years.

[00:18:19] And how you feel that did lead, that that did contribute to creating the present situation of the Republican ascendancy and Trump in the White House. And so talk a little bit with us, explicate a little bit for us what your frustration is, what you've been seeing in recent years and why you think it's sort of played into the admittedly bad situation that we're kind of facing right now. Sure. And I was I was I was a little bit hot on the Blue City Blues thing there.

[00:18:47] And I don't say that as a way of apology or regret in any way. I think that point needs to be forcefully made and it needs to be understood. And I stand by everything I said and I hope people will listen to it and I hope they'll take it to heart and figure out how to get better. I think that the better sort of quick summation of it was and I told you right before we went on the air here that I listened to your Blue City Blues with the mayor of San Jose, whose name is escaping me at the moment.

[00:19:16] Matt Mahan. Matt Mahan. And I think what he said and it's not right left again. You know, we get out of the whole progressive, centrist, new Democrat, you know, activist left, whatever. You know, what he basically said at the start of that, which I thought was awesome before he talked about a specific issue. He said, look, we have some challenges in San Jose. And my approach was we're going to come in and we're going to be practical and logical about how we solved it. We're going to try things and we're going to measure the results. Did it work? Did it not work?

[00:19:46] What worked about it? What didn't work about it? So having a practical problem solving mentality as opposed to an ideologically driven mentality is crucial to governing better and providing for people. Now, in our podcast, I laid out in vivid detail my concerns about where sort of left wing ideology has been. But I also, as I said earlier, you know, centrists want to stand up and defend everything they've ever done. And that's not right either.

[00:20:14] So part of it is just having an approach that says, I am not here to defend every idea that I've ever had, everything that I've ever said or everything that I've ever done. I'm here to get results. I'm here to make life better in my community from this point forward. And if that means that I was right about something three years ago and I need to convince people of it, great. If it means that I was wrong and I need to say, damn, that didn't work out. Let's try this. Terrific.

[00:20:41] But we are so locked into ideological battles and then personal battles. You know, just people not wanting to be flexible themselves and defend what they're doing as opposed to how can we build more housing? Like, how can we do a better job of having fewer homeless people on the street? How can we get after the drug abuse problem? I also listened to some of your discussions about that on involuntary commitment with Frederick DeBoer.

[00:21:10] And then on I'll just shamelessly plug Blue City Blues here for the rest of the year. We talked to Keith Humphries, Obama's drug policy advisor, about drug reform. Yeah. And it's not so much about saying, oh, this was stupid. How could you ever have thought of that before? I mean, for the most part, most of the ideas, I see where they came from and I see why people wanted to go down that road. It just didn't work. And there's no shame in that. All right. So let's figure out how to do it better and how to provide better. So part of that is governance.

[00:21:39] I think part of it also is messaging. And this occurred to me just in the last week. I think one of the strengths of Trump's messaging is he speaks to something that is essential in being an American. I think more American than any other culture out there. And that is ambition and individual achievement. Now, yes, I believe in the power of collective action to help people. And I think that is important. But America is about dreams. And some of those dreams are very individual.

[00:22:07] You grow up and, you know, you want to start a business and you want to be successful. You know, you want to, I don't know, be the CEO of a company or in my case, you want to be an elected official. And, you know, and Trump speaks to that. Our message is always about how even if you've achieved something, think about all the people that you left behind. And that's fine. But it denigrates people. And you see it also impacting policy most specifically.

[00:22:35] And we haven't talked that much about K-12 education. But I think a lot of the left-leaning policies on K-12 education, you know, which took away the idea of achievement. In fact, I'll tell a quick anecdote, hopefully quick. When I was in Denver, I was talking with some people about some of the reforms that they made in Colorado schools. And they did this circa, I don't know, 2013, 2014, maybe a little later. And they really focused on results and achievement, measuring them, holding people accountable, and helping students get to a better place.

[00:23:04] And they got incredible results from that. You know, their standardized testing by whatever measure you want to have seemed to show that they were making achievements. And then they elected a bunch of people who came from the left perspective who took away all of those programs. And they've been struggling since then. And one of the messages from some of the folks on the left side was, you know, how did they put it exactly? Achievement and results aren't really how you should measure the success of a school. Okay?

[00:23:34] That, you know, that it's not fair to say, well, these students, they did better, so therefore the school is doing well. And it is a radical view of equity that says that equity means that if anyone achieves a little bit more, then that's a problem. As opposed to, okay, how can we try to be more inclusive? How can we have more people achieve more? Not to bring folks down. And I think of a simple little example.

[00:23:58] When my kids were in the school, when they were going to elementary school in Northeast Tacoma, they had a thing called walk to read. And what that meant was, you know, for an hour during the school day, you would go to a different class where people at your reading level were at. Which meant that, you know, sometimes you'd have a first grader with third graders, fourth graders. They read at different levels, so they didn't confine them to their grade. Well, they got rid of that. And they got rid of that because, well, it's judgmental.

[00:24:25] You know, if you're in first grade and you can see the kids are walking off to the third grade reading level and you're stuck at the first grade level, it makes you feel bad. And that's true. I remember being in elementary school and sometimes I was in the better group and sometimes I wasn't. And I remember the feelings around that. But the solution to that is not to dumb down all of the standards so that nobody ever feels bad. It's two things. One, help. Help them. Help them achieve. Help them get to a better place.

[00:24:50] And two, make sure that they know that what reading level you're in in the second grade is not going to be determinative of your future. It's okay to fail from time to time, you know. And you're still a good person and we still love you and we're going to help you get there. Not we're going to eliminate all of the standards to make sure that you never have to feel bad.

[00:25:10] And I think as we message and as we implement policy, we need to be aware of what worked and what didn't work and be willing to change to appeal to a broader group of folks. A lot of progressives, as you know, Adam, in cities like Seattle, listeners to Seattle Nice are going to say, look, the rise in crime, homelessness, the fentanyl crisis has been due to systemic issues, rising inequality.

[00:25:36] And that the federal government, which has been partly dominated by Republicans, entirely dominated by Republicans right now, isn't doing enough to solve these problems. So focusing on the failures of blue city governance kind of misses that big picture. And I'm wondering, I'm sure you've heard it, but what's your response? I think that's right in one sense and wrong in another.

[00:26:01] It is absolutely correct that the challenges that people find themselves in drive all of those issues. And that if we did more to create more opportunity for people at an earlier age, and I am a supporter of a robust social welfare state. I'm a supporter of helping people beyond any shadow of doubt.

[00:26:20] And I do not disagree in the least bit that our homelessness problem is driven in large part because we haven't built enough housing, that people find themselves in tough circumstances, that people need more support at different points. I will not argue that point whatsoever. Now, there's a little sub point on the housing thing, which I'll get to in a second. But the other part of it, though, is part of how you help people achieve is you set expectations for them and you help them meet those expectations.

[00:26:47] And where the ideology goes too far in the other direction is when they say individuals do not control their fates whatsoever. That all of those things that you just said, that's what controls it. And telling someone that they should work harder or that it was wrong that they stole that car, that completely misses the point. That's got nothing to do with it. And that's wrong. And I'll use one. I have many anecdotes. But one example, I was talking with someone about drug treatment issues. This is someone who works on the methadone program.

[00:27:17] And I was trying to argue that personal choice and personal responsibility has something to do with the number of people who are abusing drugs. And if you tell people it is completely out of their control, that if you're a drug abuser, it's just like you caught cancer. It's got nothing to do with individual choices you make. I think that's wrong. You know, and he was talking about different choices and how people are in tougher circumstances. And he literally said to me, look, if you're a black person born in Southeast Seattle, what chance do you have?

[00:27:46] And I just found that appalling because I know a lot of black people who were born in Southeast Seattle who are doing quite well. Thank you very much. All right. This idea that your circumstances 100% control your destiny, I think, has contributed to the problems. Even while I disagree with the Ayn Rand bullshit of, you know, oh, it's all individual. No, I mean, circumstances obviously matter. I want to build a good education system. Hell, I want more child support.

[00:28:16] You know, I want to make sure that we help people. I love Head Start. I want universal pre-K for people in third and fourth. But we can't keep telling people that every time they screw up, it's society's fault. It's a combination. You need to make people individually. You need to empower them. It's not empowering to tell somebody that from the day you were born, your life was pretty much hopeless because of the circumstances you were born into. That is not empowering.

[00:28:44] And I see too much of the policy around drugs, around crime, focused on the fact that it is not your fault. You are not responsible. Well, you got a little bit of a piece of that. So let's teach people how to be more responsible and to make better choices. But then, and this is where I'm as passionate as anybody. If you tell people that and then you don't help them, you don't give them any support, that's appalling to me. I'm going to help you every step of the way.

[00:29:13] But you got to work at it. And I think we messed up that ideology a little bit. It's a matter of balance. And I know a lot of people on the left would tell me, oh, that stuff doesn't happen. I don't know. Sandeep, you know, David, you live. It happens. It happens. It happens. All the time. So let's. Oh, it fucking happens. Let's stop doing it. Let's get to that balance. I've spent four years on this podcast railing about it happening.

[00:29:44] You know, I mean, that's part of it. I've had people and I'll tell this story. I won't tell you who did it to me. I was having an argument about abolishing the criminal justice system and why I thought that was wrong, why I thought there needed to be accountability in the system with a progressive who, you know, was, you know, arguing back against me about, you know, all the stuff you would imagine. And finally, at one point, and I think it was because I was winning the argument.

[00:30:08] The person said, well, you know, that that's you only feel that way because white people don't have to worry about getting arrested. Think about that sentence for a moment. And by the way, as I didn't say this at the time, I said, well, you know, my older brother in particular would find that surprising because he spent half his adult life in jail and he's as white as I am. So clearly white people do have to worry about it a little bit. But then the really interesting part about it was I expressed a measure of disagreement with that assessment.

[00:30:37] And not two minutes after we got into the argument about whether or not white people need to worry about getting arrested, the person said, oh, I would never say that. I'm like, you just did three minutes ago. But that's part of it. It's like we do this stuff and then we say, oh, no, it never happened. But but it did happen. So let's stop that and become true progressives, which is collective action helps people. So does individual responsibility. It's fine.

[00:31:06] Let's find the right balance, which, by the way, the Republicans, they do not find the right balance. You know, they I mean, Trump's out there busily, you know, bilking the country of unbelievable amounts of money while cutting Medicaid. So I'm not in favor of that. But let's get the right balance. And I think that'll help us build support across the country. Yeah. I mean, look, there really was a big push to defund the police and to abolish the criminal justice system in cities like Seattle, like a few years ago.

[00:31:34] And I know people want to memory hole all of that stuff or say it didn't happen. Therefore, it doesn't matter. But it did matter. And I I'm with you, Adam. I think this did contribute to the shitty situation we now face on the national level where we have this MAGA ascendancy. There was a blowback among kind of normie voters to, I think, some of the excesses of well-intentioned as it may be.

[00:31:59] But some of the excesses of sort of progressive thinking, not just about politics, but about culture and and, you know, some of these foundational cultural beliefs about, as you say, individuality. There's a lot about progressive thinking, 100 percent for it was more sort of a particular element of progressive thinking that became excessively ideological and pushed an ideology that fundamentally misread human nature and the choices we face.

[00:32:28] So we just got to fix that. So coming back, let's bring the conversation back more kind of the local impact stuff you mentioned in passing Medicaid, but the potential for really deep Medicaid cuts. Danny Westney, we're recording this on Wednesday morning. Danny Westney does a column in The Seattle Times today talking about how, you know, you want to talk about where Medicaid cuts are going to have the biggest impact.

[00:32:54] It's going to be across the board, but it's in red counties in eastern Washington where more than half of people are on programs like Medicaid or Obamacare. Right. And so is this real? I guess my first question is, is this real? Are they really going to. Slash. Programs like Medicaid, because I know this has been a recurring theme on this podcast.

[00:33:18] The social service providers, the people who address homelessness and stuff, you know, all of that behavioral health care, all of that, you know, health care for people on the streets. That's paid for largely by Medicaid. If that money goes away. God knows what it's going to what you know, what what what is going to mean in terms of addiction on the streets of Seattle. It's absolutely real.

[00:33:39] And like I said, you know, aspects of it are already real in terms of cuts to housing programs, cuts to Head Start programs, cuts to nutrition programs. It is very. HUD's getting slashed, right? HUD, the housing and urban development. Yeah, it is very real and is going to have devastating impacts on the most vulnerable in our communities. And yeah, it's going to impact red states as well. Now, I do have the one piece of advice.

[00:34:04] I never think it's good to show up in red communities and say, you know, I'm here to explain to you better what your own interests are. I think we need to meet people a little bit more halfway when we're trying to persuade them. And part of that is getting back to what I said is acknowledging that these people didn't vote for Trump because they're stupid. All right. They voted for Trump because they had solid concerns about the alternative in many instances.

[00:34:29] And I think if we met them halfway on that, they would then have more space to hear us when we say, here's the impact on Medicaid. You know, but just to show up and say, OK, you stupid people, you're now getting exactly what you voted for. How do you feel about it? I think there is a more persuasive way to deliver that message. Adam, you've endorsed here in Seattle. We've got municipal elections coming up for mayor.

[00:34:55] I don't know if you've endorsed in that race, but I think you endorsed Sarah Nelson, city council president. You're also backing Ann Davison for city attorney. And I wanted to ask about that one because she's a Republican. How can you how can you back a Republican in 2025? Well, I don't know. Actually, as near as I can tell, she's not one or the other. And I think Ann Davison is actually a good story, a good a good cautionary tale about what the Democratic Party needs to do to expand our base.

[00:35:23] Ann Davison is not a Republican. OK, she is not a Trump supporter. She's not a MAGA person. She's not remotely Republican. What happened to Ann Davison is she was not overwhelmingly political. I forget exactly what her background was. I think she worked in some international development stuff when she came back to Seattle. I don't mean I don't mean to stop you, but she's definitely Republican. She doesn't file as one party or the other. She, you know, basically it's nonpartisan office. You know, but I can tell you this much. I know she's not a Trump supporter. I know she's not a MAGA person.

[00:35:51] And I know she was willing to take on some of the worst excesses of left wing politics in Seattle to get back to the place where we would actually arrest people for open air drug use. Now, I don't agree with everything that she has done. But frankly, I endorsed her largely because her willingness to stand up in a place where very, very few people were willing to do so, I think, made a positive difference in moving us in a more positive direction.

[00:36:17] You know, I didn't agree with completely getting rid of the community courts, but she has now put forward an idea to reestablish the community courts in a more sensible way. So, no, I think she's actually trying to strike the right balance. And, you know, look, we're going to need some Republicans if we're going to stop Trump. You know, and if we're going to say, hey, if you're in the Senate, we're going to excommunicate everybody on the other side of it. We better find some people. And let me tell you this. Ann Davidson is not Liz Cheney.

[00:36:47] I'll tell you that much. You can say they're both Republicans. They are very much not the same people. So I'm not too worried about that. I'm worried about what kind of job she's going to do as city attorney. And I think she's done a decent job the last four years. We've seen improvements. I'll just weigh in here on this because, as listeners of the podcast know, I did the IE for that helped elect Ann Davidson four years ago. And I don't regret it a bit for exactly the reasons, Adam, that you're saying.

[00:37:13] I think she's actually been quite pragmatic and sensible in her approaches to criminal justice and public safety issues in the city of Seattle. She hasn't been some wacko, MAGA, whatever. The version of community court that she got rid of that is a talking point against her nowadays. That that frankly version of community court was a frickin joke. Right.

[00:37:37] Where absolutely just to just just to remind people of what it was for a whole series of blanket categories of misdemeanor crimes in the city of Seattle, comprising something like more than more than half of all of the misdemeanor cases. You were automatically sent to this alternative community court where 80 percent of the people didn't show up for their court hearings without any tangible consequence for not showing up.

[00:38:05] And even those who did, the vast majority of them did not get their underlying issues addressed. Right. If we're going to have a therapeutic court, it's supposed to be about helping you with your addiction or helping you with your mental illness or what have you. None of that happened. They got assigned to a 90 minute Zoom life skills class that doesn't help anybody. And people got sent there regardless of how many times they'd been sent before and not shown up, how many bad their criminal histories were, how dangerous they were or what have you.

[00:38:35] And I thought that was a court that was built on abolitionist. Yeah. And let me just say, by the way, but Federal Way in Auburn, two cities in my district, they have community courts and have had them for a number of years that are effective. And I think really do help people address the issues that they have. So, look, I wrote about this. Yeah, I wrote a thing on actually on Erica's website on Publicola and my predictions. I talked about how in the suburbs are doing some of these courts that are showing real results.

[00:39:04] This gets us back to where we started. What I want, I want progressive policymakers, but I want them to be practical, use common sense, try to solve problems and really think of things outside of a strictly ideological lens. And I think we've lacked that. We've had either leaders who buy into the extreme ideology or who are afraid of the ideology and unwilling to stand up against it.

[00:39:33] And just against it is the wrong way to put it. But Rome did even ask questions and look at it. There's just sort of an ideological rigidity and intimidation aspect of this. I mean, the 43rd District Democrats voted to condemn me or not because I was quoted in a New Yorker article because I read Christopher Rufo's book. And then I met with him.

[00:40:00] And in the New Yorker article, by the way, I made it 100 percent clear that I didn't agree with the guy. But the mere fact, they want to enforce this rule that you are not allowed to think differently. This is the ideology. You must adhere to it. So when I think of Ann Davidson and Sarah Nelson, you know, as a couple of examples, I could certainly walk through things about the way both have done their jobs that I wouldn't have done it that way.

[00:40:28] You know, I think in both instances, they were not experienced politicians or policymakers. They're learning. But to have a couple of people who are willing to challenge the ideology and at least start the conversation, I think that's one of the most important things that we need to get better in the Puget Sound region right now. Hey, Seattle nice listeners.

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[00:41:23] Download the Ikes app today or head on over to Ikes.com. That's Ikes.com. I think you're both right about that. And I think your statement, we're going to need some Republicans if we're going to stop Trump. I mean, if there's going to be any kind of a anything sort of resembling a popular front of resistance over the next couple of years, that's absolutely right. And ideological litmus tests are wrong.

[00:41:52] But in a year where elections in Australia and Canada were essentially backlash elections against Donald Trump, don't you both think that in the city of Seattle, Ann Davidson would do better to distance herself a little bit more clearly from the Republican Party and, in fact, burn her Republican Party card if she wants to be taken seriously in a city where Trump is a toxic. I mean, it's a completely toxic brand. So I don't know. I think she's going to lose the election. David, I can address that. Just so you know.

[00:42:21] You know, is what I'm saying, unless she does more. And Sandeep is right there with me. Yeah. We've both told her that she should dump the Republican Party brand and declare herself a Democrat. In fact, I think she's going to have – I told her just be an independent. Be an independent, whatever. No, and part of her reasoning on that is, you know, she doesn't want it to be about that, all right? She wants to focus on the issues and other stuff.

[00:42:48] She doesn't want to make a big deal about which party she – and I think, broadly speaking, in an ideal world, she's kind of right about that. We should be talking about what – the job she's done, what she's working on. But she's wrong in terms of the politics of it. Yeah. And again, that comes back to the thing. She's not really a politician. You know, she's not been doing this the way I've been doing it. But yes, David, I have directly asked her and everybody around her to tell her to reject the Republican Party in this moment.

[00:43:18] She rejects Trump. She has rejected Trump. And let's make sure all your listeners know that. Unequivocally, she's rejected Trump. She's rejected the MAGA people. She's joined in in some of these lawsuits. But I think you're right. I think given this moment, she should reject the Republican Party writ large regardless of what version of it is that she envisions. But, you know, again, the issues matter more to me than the label. But the voters might have a different take.

[00:43:46] You know, I respect this because I have had this conversation with her. And she also has this belief that we need a sane Republican Party. As Adam said, she is not MAGA. She is not pro-Trump. All of that stuff is bullshit. When I did the IE for her four years ago, I had actually talked to her before then. And that was my main question to her. What kind of Republican are you exactly? Because I'm not going to do an IE. I'm not going to help elect some MAGA wacko, right?

[00:44:16] And she very convincingly showed me that she was not that kind of person, right? And she had caucused for Hillary in 2016. She's kind of maybe a kind of moderate to conservative D, right? Is sort of where I put her on the spectrum. But anyway, that said, David, you're right. Like the politics of this, I do think in Seattle where we've been spending this whole episode talking about all of the provocations and bad things that Trump is doing, it's going to

[00:44:44] be hard for a lot of voters to get past the kind of scarlet R on her forehead to look at the actual record, right? Adam, as you're saying, if you want to talk to people in Eastern Washington, you can't go there and provoke them and then have a meaningful conversation about substance and issues and nuances. Well, this is just relationship 101, all right? And I've managed a lot of different relationships in my life.

[00:45:14] And one of the things I think about, if I'm in a bad place with somebody or some group of people and I'm interested in trying to repair the relationship, odds are there's something that that person or those folks did that I didn't like. Um, you know, and I feel that I haven't changed my mind about that. Um, but if I want to rebuild the relationship, I cannot be, I think of the line from Moonstruck. I'm, I'm not a monument to justice here.

[00:45:41] Um, I'm not trying to make sure I'm trying to figure out how do I fix the relationship? And one of the great things you can do is be humble. All right. Show some humility and also show the other person or a group that you're trying to rebuild the relationship with that you recognize what you did wrong in that relationship. And so if you think about it in those terms, we need to build a broader coalition in the United States of America for the Democratic Party, um, to defeat Trump and MAGA, to be sure.

[00:46:10] But also I think to bring back some of the best things about the Democratic Party and the progressive movement, keep in mind, I mean, FDR, LBJ, I went to the LBJ presidential library when I was in Austin. Very cool. You know, Medicaid, Medicare, civil rights act, voting rights act, head start. I mean, we've done some really cool things to help people. And I think people recognize that. But if we're going to go into those portions of the country, um, to those people who have

[00:46:38] voted for Trump, who have left the Democratic Party, I don't think we're going to get as much ground if we just go in there saying you were wrong. You didn't know what was best for you. We've always been what was best for you. So that that's a and B when it comes to going to these portions of the country and having something to offer, the hardest time I ever have in rebuilding relationship is when even with my broad definition of it, I can't honestly think of anything that I did wrong. Okay. You know, that's really creates a problem.

[00:47:08] That is not the situation that the Democratic Party is in right now. If you want to walk into Yakima or the Tri-Cities or Iowa or any place in the world, we as Democrats have a whole hell of a lot of things that we could say, I hear you. Okay. Screwed that up. All right. You know, and we're going to try and fix it and we're going to work on it. And by the way, not all of that, as I've alluded to earlier in this conversation, not all of that is left-wing ideology.

[00:47:37] Yeah, certainly on crime and drug. We hadn't talked about immigration, you know, and having a secure border. But even the centrist policies that, you know, like I said, we're okay, we're going to all send you to a four-year degree. We got a massive amount of room to go to all these people who left us for Trump and say, hey, yeah, I screwed up. You know, I know, think of a relationship analogy. You know, I was supposed to be at your mother's party and I blew it off to go play poker with my friends. Whatever. Okay.

[00:48:07] There are plenty of examples for us to where we can say, yeah, we got some work to do. Let's work together to get to a better place. I'm just of the opinion that we need to do that. And this notion that all we need to do is fight harder. Yeah, we need to fight harder. We also need to fight smarter. Yeah. Just to follow up on that point, because you're right, there's all these different forms of progressivism. There are all these different forms of centrism, right? There's a version of centrism that I would kind of call corporate stooge centrism, right?

[00:48:37] Which is where we're not going to fight to lower prescription drug prices because Big Pharma doesn't want us to do that version of centrism is a problem for the Democratic Party, right? But there's other. Look at Marie Perez down in Washington 3, where she's doing a kind of lunch pill populism, kind of trying to reinvent the blue dogs. That's a different kind of anti-partisan, working class, blue collar centrism, right?

[00:49:06] Which is very, very different in its flavor and its direction. And it's something that the Democratic Party needs to listen to, right? And that, if I may, is the number one biggest point that I want to convey to people. If we are going to be successful, we need to rebuild our coalition and we need to rebuild our brand. And I came at this initially with considerable concerns about some of the left-wing stuff because I lived it in Seattle and King County.

[00:49:34] I had personal frustrations trying to get policymakers to make some fixes there. But it's not primarily about that. It's about recognizing that in the United States of America right now, the Democratic Party brand is toxic. Our coalition is broken. We need to be practical, common sense, problem solvers to figure out how to fix this, you know, and to really come at people. We can't come at people and say, we're just going to fight Trump harder and that's how

[00:50:03] we're going to win everybody back. We have to fight Trump as hard as possible because he's doing really, really bad stuff right now that we got to figure out some way to at least blunt and hopefully ultimately reverse. But if we're going to win elections, if we're going to get people to give us the power to govern again, we have got to be willing to not just keep fighting the same old fights, but to form a better coalition that addresses issues. And, you know, obviously the Ezra Klein stuff and the abundance piece that gets us back to

[00:50:32] the housing piece and where we've sort of fallen off in terms of being able to build things and get things done. That's part of it too. But just to accept that up front. And I still see us. I see the left digging in. I see the centrist digging in. And I don't see that willingness to just say, whoa, okay, we all got stuff that we should feel bad about here. Let's get together and fix it. That's what I want us to try and do. Adam Smith, thank you so much. Well, thank you. I appreciate the chance.

[00:51:01] It is a to-be-continued conversation that I'm working on constantly. So I always appreciate the opportunity. That's it for another edition of Seattle Nice. I'm David Hyde. He's Sandeep Kashuk. Erica C. Barnett. Don't worry, we'll be back next week. Our editor is Quinn Waller. And thanks, everybody, so much for listening.