I Was Featured on "Seattle Nice," Sort Of

Is Misrepresentation The Highest Form of Flattery?

A Rowdy Local Discussion

One podcast I enjoy listening to is “Seattle Nice,” wherein Erica Barnett and Sandeep Kaushik argue with one another about politics in Seattle. The show is moderated by former KUOW reporter David Hyde.

I was delighted that David and Erica both said out loud that some council member’s tax plans are aligned with Republican plans. This is both factually true, and something I’ve been pushing hard to inject into discussions of Seattle politics.

It turns out, I wasn’t the only one to notice that my framing had shown up!

Sandeep Kaushik, the show’s charming curmudgeon of a centrist picked this up too and called it out, but then instantly misrepresented my position. You can always tell when Sandeep knows he’s in trouble–because he starts making things up.

You “sound like frickin’ Ron Davis all of a sudden…he was a City Council candidate from the last election cycle and Ron’s a smart guy but he’s extremely extremely polarized…makes the argument that anybody who isn’t 100% in full fidelity to the left progressive agenda is a MAGA Republican.”

This is false, and of course Sandeep knows it. No one who graduates from Princeton, as Sandeep did, does so without learning how to read. 

And so he knows full well that when I point to a particular position of say, Sara Nelson’s, and make the argument that her position on that issue is at odds with basic Democratic party policy–and is aligned with the Republican party position–that this is not the same thing as saying she has embraced the entire MAGA agenda. Nor that anyone who isn’t aligned with “the left” is MAGA or anything so lazy of that sort. 

Anyway earlier in the episode, Sandeep kind of admitted that he’s more progressive than the council on taxes too(!), so I suppose I’ll have to give him a pass for being a secret lefty.

But I was a bit more bummed to hear their moderator, David Hyde, a former KUOW reporter, say the following:

“He [Ron] compared their tax positions to the Project 2025 plan. Which involves ending democracy. So I’m not sure that we have the exact same positions on that.”

As an experienced journalist, this was a surprisingly sloppy way to put it. I did compare Woo and Nelson’s approach to taxes to the tax provisions in Project 2025. And in doing so, I did not in any way imply that they want to end Democracy, which seems to be the implication of his statement here. In fact, I certainly hope they do not want this!

Suggesting otherwise is grasping at straw men, to mix my metaphors.

Now look, it was a jokey section of the conversation, and a lot of people understand that people debating one another get some of the details wrong. I know I’ll continue listening to Seattle Nice–I've even been considering becoming a patron–and I hope you listen too. 

And I’d love to feature in their discussions again–heck, I’d love to come join them. 

Just hopefully not via misrepresentation.