So far, 2021 is looking way too much like 2020
The trouble with 2021 is that so far, it’s still way too much like 2020: There’s a raging pandemic, Donald Trump is still the President, and racism is alive and well.
In fact you could argue that so far, this year is even more 2020 than 2020 was: The new year began with news of the even more contagious variant of the virus landing in the U.S., and the most extreme episodes of Trump lies and Trump-provoked violence yet, made possible by a failure of U.S. Capitol law enforcement to do to white protesters what they have done to Black protesters.
In the past week in Olympia, we had copycat insurrectionists one of whome threatened violence against journalists. Others broke through the gate to the Governor’s Mansion and stood around the front yard yelling, taking selfies and video, and spraying the building with water from a hose, until they were convinced to leave by late-arriving Washington State Patrol troopers about a half hour later. The State Patrol’s repeated orders to disperse given to those outside the gate were ignored. Yet no one was arrested.
After this awful week, we just can’t live on hope alone much longer. We urgently need a peaceful presidential inauguration, a speedier vaccine inoculation program, and real progress on racial equity.
Right now, even the 2021 state legislative session feels too much like 2020: It will be nearly all online, leaving our town bereft of the annual jolt of energy — and the economic benefit — that comes from the annual migration into town. We will miss legislators’ and lobbyists’ typical lunch and dinner spending in local restaurants, and the uptick in business at local hotels and short-term rentals. When the familiar troupes of dressed-up people with briefcases and cellphones don’t show up in downtown Olympia in January, it’s as if time has stopped, and a new year has not quite begun.
But the problems the legislature faces make it abundantly clear that it really is 2021 now.
Pandemic recovery — not just pandemic response — is the legislature’s marquee agenda item. Gov. Jay Inslee is proposing an ambitious budget to tackle the economic damage, and to preserve the gains the state has made during the long recovery from the great recession — gains in early childhood education, school funding, child care, mental health, housing and climate change. Inslee also intends to invest in measures to reduce the economic and racial equity laid bare by the pandemic.
Inslee is strong and explicit about racial and economic equity. He directed all state agencies to address equity issues in their proposed budgets, and has established an equity office to “root out racism and discrimination” in state government and all the services it provides.
Growth in the number of legislators of color is likely to strengthen support for such measures. In the House of Representatives, there are now 19 Democrats of color and one Republican out of a total of 98 members. In the Senate, there are eight members of color, all Democrats, out of a total of 49.
Everything on the Governor’s agenda is important, and none of it is cheap.
His revenue proposals include draining the rainy day fund, and adopting a capital gains tax for the very most affluent among us. That tax has been on the Democratic wish list for several years now.
Republicans are, true to form, against new taxes. They also want to rein in the governor’s emergency powers. They are peeved that he refused to call a special legislative session during the past nine months so they could participate in making pandemic-response policies.
But now, as session finally begins, they will face the frustration of being in the minority in both the Senate and the House. Being in the minority means always feeling — and often being — left out and outvoted. Once session starts, they may soon wish it would end. This year is not a great time to be a member of the party of Trump.
We hope that revulsion to the disaster in our nation’s Capitol will call out the angels of our legislators’ better nature, and cause an increase of civility and bipartisanship.
But it’s hard to imagine such comity unless Washington’s Republicans engage in a serious moral inventory of their party, its sick relationship with Trump, and its long history of being a political refuge for racists. There is some hope that this could happen, given that J. T. Wilcox, a thoughtful, principled conservative, is the leader of the House Republican caucus. But it needs to happen deep and fast.
If our state is to achieve economic and racial justice, health, and prosperity, we need two fully functional political parties, capable of productive collaboration for the common good.