Peter Steinbrueck has now left the building--Seattle City Hall, that is--and has left behind him a world-class example of embarrassing civic mediocrity unfortunately known as the Seattle City Council. The good news is, We the Voters didn't replace the irreplaceable Mr. Steinbrueck with Drinky Crow. The bad news is, we replaced him with Forrest Gump.

Yes, I'm conveniently forgetting for the sake of satire a certain Nick Licata, Steinbrueck's equally irreplaceable council colleague, one of the all-time great progressives in Seattle's city government history and, as of Jan. 1, the last remaining truly progressive member of the otherwise precious collection of satire magnets currently collecting publicly-funded paychecks on the second floor of 600 Fourth Avenue. The thing is, Licata himself is due for either re-election or resignation in a closer-than-you-think Nov. 2009. Which brings us to the central question, and thesis, of the article you're now reading: excuse my French, but when the fuck are Seattle-area progressives going to get our civic shit together and start winning elections again, rather than losing them to the likes of Bruce Harrell, Tim Burgess, and Jean Godden?

Last Nov.'s disastrous municipal elections surely served as a signal that, despite Seattle's multi-talented and deeply-rooted community of progressive activists, there's apparently something deeply dysfunctional about our fair city's grassroots politics that's lately keeping genuine progressives from engaging in serious campaigns for high public office, much less winning such offices. Joe Szwaja's otherwise-heroic campaign against Godden is the obvious case in point. Covert swift-boating by Godden's campaign staff notwithstanding, the crucial reason Szwaja's campaign failed is likely that the Green Party simply started the ball rolling much too late, drafting Szwaja and announcing his run dangerously close to the filing deadline. One can now only wonder whether Szwaja and the Greens could have defeated the do-nothing-but-smile Godden with more time and organization than the mere six months they gave themselves and local voters.

On a grander and more crucial level (and also involving the Green Party--incidentally, since my intent here is not to criticize the Greens, but rather to lament a problem I'm sure many local Greens also lament) is the case of Maria Cantwell's re-election in Nov. 2006, despite her notable failure to represent her constituents in many crucial matters, chief among them her Oct. 2002 vote to give George W. Bush a de facto green light for the invasion of Iraq.

Among other reasons why Aaron Dixon's otherwise-admirable challenge to Cantwell failed so miserably was its lack of advance planning, just as with Szwaja's loss to Godden. Here's the thing: a grassroots campaign to draft, vet, and politically groom a serious progressive candidate to challenge Cantwell's seat from the left could have--and should have--started the day after Cantwell's vote for House Joint Resolution 114. In other words, a truly organized Seattle-area progressive community had more than four years to plan and carry out an effective Dump Cantwell campaign. Instead, an antiwar candidate emerged ridiculously late, a mere nine months before the Nov. 2006 election. And the rest is the most unfortunate sort of history.

Mistakes were made, but mistakes can be learned from, and there's now ample time--and therefore hope--for progressives to take back Seattle's city government, if not higher and more powerful regional and state offices. Upcoming crucial elections which local progressives have ample time to organize around include the four even-numbered Seattle City Council seats up for grabs (including Licata's) in Nov. 2009 and Patty Murray's US Senate seat, up for grabs in Nov. 2010. And then there's the question of who will eventually replace Jim McDermott, who, despite ongoing rumors, likely will not actually live, much less occupy Seattle's US Congressional seat, until the sun swallows up the Earth. Conversations on this topic are surely already happening under the media radar among local progressives. Bringing such conversations to light now--rather than six months before McDermott's eventual retirement--would greatly increase the chances that McDermott is replaced with a genuinely progressive successor (rather than, say, Jamie Peterson, Bruce Harrell, or--I'm only half-joking here--KING-TV's very own John Curley).

With a millennially dreadful incoming city council now settling into a long two years of public-private partnerships and cringe-inducing public platitudes, and with 18 months before the filing deadline for the 2009 Seattle municipal elections, let the lesson be painfully obvious: planning for the long haul is better than jumping in at the last minute, and a progressive majority in City Hall once again would be far, far better than, well, Bruce Harrell, Tim Burgess, and Jean Godden.