Jay Inslee has never done a good job for the state of Washington. In the last year or two, he has been downright horrendous. How did he do in the primary? Last I checked, he was receiving over half the vote.
A surprising number of people seem to have forgotten this, but Inslee ran an ill-conceived presidential campaign. Most comments I saw, even from liberals, tended to be critical. Washington state taxpayers were on the hook for his security during this time. He performed horribly and had to pull the plug on his campaign, but this was long after he should have. When asked if he would reimburse the state for wasting taxpayer money, he rejected the idea. We were forced to pay for his mistake, even though we told him that it was a mistake.
He also embraced what many people call Trump derangement syndrome. His fixation on Trump has distracted him from the state he is supposed to be running. This was especially noteworthy during the days of CHAZ/CHOP. He actually insisted that he didn't know what was going on in our state's biggest city.
The one thing that Inslee has going for him is his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. At least, that's how the media has portrayed things. Yes, there are some positive stats. We were originally considered to be the epicenter, but we actually have faired better so far than most states. Of course, this isn't over yet, so I don't think we can treat these stats as final.
In reality, his handling of the pandemic hasn't been that good. There were reasons for concern from the very beginning. He declared a state of emergency, giving himself far more power than any single individual should possess and wielding that power for months. This approach raised serious questions about the lack of checks and balances in our state. His approach could very well be described as tyrannical.
Inslee took an arbitrary approach to closures. I can even give an example. Imagine having a dog that gets poop in its fur when it hasn't been properly groomed. You end up with your dog's health at risk because your governor doesn't realize that grooming is essential for some dogs. A chain of pet stores that knew that dog grooming was essential got into trouble for defying Inslee's order. Why should they get into trouble for our governor's stupidity?
Inslee also took a far too narrow perspective of the situation. From day one of his insane amount of power, he looked strictly at what would help minimize casualties as a result of the disease. This might sound good on paper, but reality is far more complex. Even during a pandemic, there's more to the world than a virus.
Among the problems with this approach is that he failed to look at human behavior. If you restrict too much for too long, there will be resistance. Even if he was 100% perfect in what would prevent any further deaths, these policies could only be effective if he could get the public behind them. The good news for Inslee is that there are a lot of blindly loyal Democrats who would do anything he ever said. For more rational individuals, his policies came off as downright oppressive. While most people started by obeying orders, he was fueling resistance.
When people became fed up with the restriction, we saw the start of protesting. Inslee and the loyalists to the Democratic party known as the media defended his orders. They explicitly stated that it is illegal to protest during a pandemic. Our governor had the power to unilaterally suspend the Constitution in our state. At least, that was the original portrayal.
After the killing of George Floyd, the narrative on protests was completely reversed. The same people who insisted that protests were illegal referred to the latest round of protests as lawful. Apparently, the legality of protests is contingent on the approval of one man. This is a despicable approach to governing a state.
This resistance became more apparent when just about all health agencies in a remarkably short period of time completely reversed their advise regarding masks. They went from insisting that masks would actually make things worse to insisting that they were absolutely flawless inventions. Coming from a man who had already made oppression his primary solution, Inslee's mask mandate turned masks into a symbol of oppression. In many ways, this was a big convenience for Inslee. If the numbers didn't improve, he could use those who he pushed into resistance as scapegoats.
More importantly, Inslee completely failed to acknowledge the negative consequences of his policies. Shutting down the economy while forcing Washingtonians into isolation guaranteed a spike in suicides and substance abuse. His buddies in the media outright refused to acknowledge that Inslee's solution to the pandemic involves killing people who were vulnerable to mental health issues. A lot of his supporters have repeatedly insisted that nobody is being harmed. Supposedly, we are only being inconvenienced. Anyone who believes that is completely oblivious to reality.
How does Inslee treat those who can't handle his mishandling of the pandemic? By insulting them. If you so much as question his massive overreach, you are anti-science. If you can't handle oppression? You're selfish. You're even killing grandma. This is a man who has absolutely no compassion for those who his policies are harming.
Even if you think that most of his policies have worked out, there's one area where he has undeniably screwed up, unemployment. Under Inslee's watch, our state was scammed out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Legitimate claims were slow to be processed, sometimes taking months for those who were eligible to receive payments.
Loyal Democrats have no problems following Inslee off of a cliff. I do. We have had some bad governors before, but this is the first time that I have said this: Our governor absolutely has to go. His performance over the last year has been a complete disaster. He is throwing away our money while depriving us of fundamental human rights and freedoms. He is killing people and doesn't even care. Our state isn't even close to what it used to be, and we desperately need a recovery phase.
Then there's Bob Ferguson, our attorney general. He has spent his entire time in office looking for any excuse to sue the Trump administration purely for the sake of putting his name in the news. He aggressively uses press conferences to further his career. He has repeatedly proven that he cares more about himself than the people. Our state's worst attorney general ever did even better that Inslee in the primary. This one-two punch of Inslee and Fergusons has been disastrous. We don't need to repeat this mistake in November.
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