David Brewster, a founding member of Post Alley, has a long career in publishing, having founded Seattle Weekly, Sasquatch Books, and Crosscut.com. His civic ventures have been Town Hall Seattle and FolioSeattle.
We should focus on being a good place to live, tapping our great ability to create urban neighborhoods. We have terribly underinvested in this as we have rapidly built apartment towers without the needed urban amenities such as schools, playgrounds, and safe open spaces.
The main killing field will be Seattle's downtown, where restaurants were once buoyed by tourists, office workers, business visitors, arts-audiences, and shoppers -- all in steep decline.
Seattle media exhibits a growing monoculture of reporting that is too-predictably sympathetic to victims and underdogs. "Follow the victim" has supplanted the old mantra of "follow the money."
Durkan has governed as if there really is a Center in Seattle politics. Certainly there used to be: a progressive business/legal community; pragmatic organizations such as the Municipal League; and good negotiating partners in minority communities and labor. Now--not so much.
One positive step was the emergence of Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who happens to be the current budget chair and who knows how to consult with business for their views and to get other councilmembers on board.
It is extremely unlikely that the council would heed her advice and investigate and punish Sawant, even though few on the council harbor any affection for the boundary-pushing socialist.
Two groups likely hold the key. One is Black Lives Matter, which has an issue-focus on police reform but needs to get some distance from its CHOP partners on the far/libertarian/utopian Left. The other group is labor, which is now the key driver of Seattle politics (by default).
Seattle got a little of this regional spirit, but never drank deeply. Our cultural institutions are instead quite derivative, which is more comforting for audiences and donors. Take away the New York dominance, however, and you might have more vitality at the regional level.