Normally SHIFT would leave the political humor to the late-night professionals, but we couldn’t let Jay Inslee’s recent effort at getting laughs pass unnoticed.
At least, we think he was trying to get laughs, because you wouldn’t think an elected official would try insult the intelligence of his own donors by putting so many errors in his own request for campaign dollars. However, if this e-mail was actually meant to be taken seriously, then the Democratic Governor’s Association may have to re-think its decision to make Jay the group’s finance chair for next year.
Just consider a few quotes from Jay’s email that don’t quite pass the straight-face test:
Referring to the next legislative session, Jay says he’ll be fighting for his “key priorities: good jobs, excellent schools, and quality health care.” Yet, none of those items seemed to be priorities in the many legislative sessions he presided over this year, which were required because he was focused like a laser beam on all things green – like the billion-dollar tax increase he proposed early in the regular session and a variety of environmental policies, like the job-killing cap-and-trade plan he is now demanding.
Evidently Jay forgot that it was the Majority Caucus in the Senate which put the most money into the public education budget. It took awhile for him and the House Democrats to eventually decide that listening to the Senate – and the State Supreme Court – might be a good idea for our schools. Perhaps he’s hoping his donors forgot about that fact as well.
And drawing even more of a belly laugh, Jay actually wrote that “getting the Washington Health Plan Finder up, running, and helping Washingtonians find excellent health care coverage has been the envy of the nation.” Evidently he sent the email out at one of the rare times last week that the site was actually working.
And he certainly sent it out before his own director of the state’s health care authority admitted last Thursday – regarding people who could lose Medicaid coverage early next year – that “We have a growing problem. We have a backlog … It’s a fairly significant issue.”
With a track record of constant breakdowns and costing people their medical coverage, you have to wonder, how many governors in other states are actually laughing at Jay when he claims they “envy” the Washington exchange site?
You can enjoy the rest of the email yourself, and be thankful that with the legislative session fundraising freeze now in effect, Jay won’t be able to send you any more until March, at least.
