before we get to this year's election let's talk a little bit about something from the past person who i greatly admired even though i did not support passed away recently george mcgovern joe i think that you actually worked with  hundred seventy two campaign this was one state that they thought they could carry so we saw a lonesome george here four times all in a mcgovern with tears in her eyes watching her husband give a speech wall at a fundraiser at the time of the type of culture the fundraiser was up at the cafeteria blessin sacrament church and you did not charge five thousand dollars to get your picture taken with him and sargent shriver who was nicknamed jojo by the secret service came here twice once on a visit to my place market when the engines and a couple of the of the brakes and one of the motorcade cars went out so it was an interesting interesting fall but senator mcgovern was painted as an extreme left wing candidate piloted one of the hardest of all planes to have to fly over some of the most heavy flock thank you back from the experience of war war one of those curious things in this country that some of our some of our most battle  those of experienced war tend to be a little bit wary about getting into it or predicting how it will turn out you know interesting that you would say that because that's exactly what my dad felt someone who and he had experienced war and spent twenty years the military and he was going to do anything that he possibly could that i never got to see it so thank you to that generation including those of senator mcgovern let's move on to this presidential election however and i've got to ask you this what's happened why isn't this just a slam dunk for president obama i personally never thought it would be a slam dunk but the reason why it's a deuce right now instead of advantage obama is because of that first debate and how ill prepared obama was for it or how willing gauge he was during it he's performed respectably for sure in the in the next two debates but romney got a bounce and got legitimized by that first debate well i mean aren't the debates just for show way way no no i think a lot of people who are not political junkies people who have a life you know tune into the debates and sometimes that's where they get their impressions and the impression of romney was very very different than the out of touch rich guy that had been poked at and poked up at the press  has wonderfully said that we would all cats romney well it's october twenty fifth as we record this show and i think if you were to look at the polls it's kind of a dead heat that's right but you know just to expand upon something joel was was getting at i believe like i believe with george w bush that romney wants to get elected more than he wants to be president and that's sort of disconcerting that you know i guess the difference is romney in my mind isn't way out there and i actually think he's competent he annoys the living eck out of me as he does many republicans i should say but you know he's an equal opportunity in a way that's will say absolutely anything to get elected which is a really dangerous device and a really formidable device any sort of campaign or debate setting especially but at the same point time to an awful lot of people president obama has been a disappointment well savior the turning the turn the united states around is kind of like turning an ocean liner around the takes a lot of time and a lot of space and the other thing is that he's rather cool and aloof chap he is not the sort of person to have to directly directly engage something he has to do something that has really kind of bothered me and bothered several of us involved with the show during the campaign and that is about it's about small business it seems that there's been a lot of discussion about business with the big b but very little about the primary driver of our economy small business neither one of them seem to have touched it do they not have answers romney considers bain capital bennett small business yeah but he's the only what i know and that's a big problem so if you want to you know you're right hasn't been talked about enough but if you want to you know show which candidate is more in touch with reality that's perfect anecdote bain capital is not a small business man who won here he's always coming here to raise money of course obama has occasionally appeared with let's see there's a pizza shop owner from stone way north there's a cupcake person there about three or four standard businesses that were saved by a loan so i think elliott bay book company as well grand central it always has to do with lunch and that he and he essentially appears with these people but i get a feeling where obama is concerned there props you know clinton would public events the furious curious reluctance at least in this region which was peppered by democratic presidents ranging from roosevelt to clinton to to engage the region all right so let's say obama wins he wins re election is he going to change as president is he going to do some of the things be because he he doesn't have to run for re election anymore that he that he talked about and when he ran the first crossroads crossroads g p s americans for prosperity all of these corporate super pacs that are supposedly social welfare organizations spending millions and millions and millions of dollars and it's so if he manages to get honeymoon depends on how he wins i'd say yeah i think there's a bit of a honeymoon for mitt romney because you know if he wins he will have come so far but in the course of a couple of months when even his own party left him for  well let's let's go away from the president's re election for now we will come back to a prediction though and we'll hold you to a prediction and let's go to the washington state governor's race rob mccann and jay inslee it's been a spirited campaign has it been a good campaign have the people learned anything about these candidates i think they have i mean i think when the campaign began most pundits or people just you know close observers of the race john i included  coast but would win you know by decent margin kind of like we maybe suspected obama would win by a good margin over romney obviously that hasn't played out ends lee has proven himself to be a formidable candidate or at least one that doesn't make the mistakes that mckenna makes or at least one that has a better personality the run mechanic my best bellwether is my ninety one year old grandmother who is as conservative as can be will not vote for gay marriage obviously won't vote to legalize logging the russians of stalin bred in world war two so he has proved to be a remarkable i've never thought of insley of the words insley and disciplined being kind of an oxymoron but he has been a discipline candidate in staying on his message at all times and avoiding the situation where he has a or he is truly plumbed the depths of how much he understands that message one of the difficult things that seem to me for my cat is that just about every day now some republican back east says something stupid and they can't may not necessarily have to defend it but he still has an r by its name how much of a factor is here in washington state is it that mckenna is a republican you know it's a bit of a factor for sure but i do think for every stupid comment that's come out of the national wing of his party you know he takes he's a smart enough politician and he has a smart enough and moderate enough track record to blunt  that so i think when it comes to that race it's the things he's done within the campaign that will either help him or hurt him and i just think it's going to be an absolute nail biter so a little bit more significant i think there is always the factor of the democratic vote coming home and were a stance on gay marriage but do you think that will cost him a great deal among his base and you know i think for instance better prepare for the office more when going away nobody  fact that reagan done is has his name and his mom it's not going to help him enough on the outside people have taken over this race with a republican group running ads about ferguson the democrats responding in the sort of like they've been on the county council together they don't like they don't like each other ferguson has laid the groundwork for this race for a very very long time i think on the down ballot races again is the state more democrat or more republican i think where more and more democrats and i think barry's going to take the presidential race but points oh sorry got that one that's good to hear and i stay right here in the state interview just one quick point if you're  democrat and you're looking to be contrary and at one point your ballot and i don't think most democrats do more than that you're probably either going to vote rob mccann or bill finkbeiner you're not looking to reagan done for that cherry and i don't have this one on the list but  often but if ever something was legalizing pot might be some my answer would be yes in that case well but there's another point and mckenna's actually has made this is that ok so the state goes ahead and legalize it you still have the federal law which makes it a crime the feds  they have developed instead of a cash trade or barter trade where were meth and cocaine go north and b c come south so end with this is not a few murders and has come you know strong arm tactics big grow operations of do a lot of polluting damage and so on all of the things in british columbia that would be seabed trade and so on and so difficult is that many of the people in the judiciary and the publicity in the political life are baby boomers whose association with marijuana was taking the focus while you've been out the pacific rim national park you know what the guys there with a girlfriend when they were young they don't realize how tough this is now and the bullet have said never gets old but the bullet the bullet or running the the initiative aims at developing small business small grow operations to stabilize and stores selling of relatively small amount of the products to those over twenty one it is a small business friendly initiative  be coming coming to washington legalize pot over small business got it right let's talk about eleven eighty five the latest of the i'm on a mission initiatives which is the same one that he's done before and over and over and over and it keeps getting passed in the legislature keeps coming their nose at it is this one of those things where the people are finally going to say ok we're tired of passing this or it's going to be the other way around a certain number of people have wised up to the ever terrible the very intelligent editorial saying that this is a socially become something that the olympia lobbyists are no used to and that's powerful special interests of just a two so far from being a populist vehicle of controlling spending it's the situation in which people use it in order to maintain their tax breaks the minute you world woke up the greater seattle chamber of commerce woke up the electorate and so it's going to be passed again and then the legislature is going to ignore it again is that it after a bit ok with that it's the state version the monorail i guess charter schools pass fail shut it i believe it will and i hope it fails personally i you know i'm not anti charter schools but i think a lot depends on the situation and what a lot of people in washington state especially seattle don't realize is our public schools for whatever their flaws are are very very good when you look at them compared to the rest of the country and charter schools you know when you enact them and give them public money tend to her public school systems at large and in certain desperate situations that make sense i do not think it makes sense here a lot of democratic voters still undecided a lot of billionaire's money going into persuading them would say that the odds favor its passage nonetheless however there are been three or four times and this is before the voters in the state usually will pull off a lot of money behind it and the voters of said no you know speaking of high tech and education there as an awful lot of talk right now whether it's coming from saul khan or whether it's on the front page or the cover of time magazine about now or you just talk to many many professors now there is so much change in education coming that maybe this isn't the time for for charter schools maybe the time is to take a bigger look at education and look at that how online is is something for all kids and not just college kids all one thing the obama administration has done really well though they haven't trumpeted it properly like a lot of their their better initiatives is what you have just said which is you know put schools on notice that you know you have to innovate in order to be deemed successful by our administration by federal standards and you make a really good point in that if you introduce charter schools into the equation when a lot of public schools are already doing what charter schools should be doing in terms of their specialisation then you might disrupt the flow through same sex marriage in all seriousness i look at this issue and i say ok what's the big deal it should be a no brainer to me it should it should pass because i frankly don't care you know who marries who personally but apparently it's a bigger deal than that to me it's a straight civil rights issue and probably the civil rights issue of our time  n you know who cares so i think it's kind of the way to go if you're kind of ambivalent about it you know it is just legalizing gay marriage churches are still going to be able to decide whether they you know w though it's a mess of partnerships or denied certain rights that married couples have in order for in order to make decisions for their loved ones to visit their loved ones to me it's just such a no brainer it's tough for me to really elaborate on it frankly because the great liberties with the troops so incidentally do some of the bishops and so it's going to be a tight race i think one point george just made about churches having the freedom to decide whether they want to perform these ceremonies in a way it's about religious freedom currently some churches don't have the religious freedom to perform marriage ceremonies for committed members of their churches well at the beginning when when the laws were made there was a reason i think to protect  those who cannot protect themselves and that typically in any society is a woman that's changed to a large extent now and the need to protect children is the is the biggest thing and gay marriage should we pay for that out of this type of money or or wasn't that the kind of thing that is necessary as a result of digging up the tunnel think of course of course seattle will approve this likely approve just about every bond issue the put enormously generous when it comes to property taxes and those who are renting far more generous than those who own homes when it comes to property taxes so this will be it will be said that this is this is absolutely necessary in time it will take place if we don't approve this and i don't think they really need to rub that up too much in order to get the vote can you top that one no no way why are more elections interesting this year i actually think it's a pretty interesting year to be honest with you really i mean binay custer's kind of fascinating to me all the new how many times it's cost around the birth of soon but they both yeah so i mean he but granted he's come a lot closer than darcy but that the canadian federal action for fifty seven days here this has been grinding on since early two thousand and one throughout the entire latter half of obama's first term maryland mackem of the wife of the  candidate had a wonderful facebook entry not long ago say that after watching all the political commercials people are going to welcome cialis back on the air all right so we've covered all of the elections that we're going to cover except for the predictions and we'll get to those in a few minutes joe you wrote a column recently though about is it time for counsel manic districts and seattle and i have to tell you that i like the fact that out that there are council members in other parts of the country who are protecting their districts and yes that may be balkanized but i like that i want my council member but i don't have one and with three members of the staff they can't very well do their constituents services and so consequently if you have something like a few blocks away from here where the city of seattle was building potholes on eighty fifth street for four or five months or something like this not too far from the mayor's greenwood  home something is inconveniencing or dangerous and so on you can turn to your council member there's a famous chicago power broker named eddie burke of the city councils and chairman of the finance committee mrs eddy is on the state supreme court he is a national power b but at the same time his ward and those bungalows of the root of his power which means he can threaten he can jolt and so on the part of the part of his constituents and when he's done that he goes off to  exercising power and making money but at same time the root of his power is the fourteenth ward is it time for council many districts i actually think it is you know it's the third strike i think at least in my memory but i think people are more likely to go for something like this when things aren't so peachy as they have been with the prior to attempts to get districts passed i want to be able to complain to somebody about the pothole or about the  school i want to be able to complain to somebody about my school that it's not safe around my neighborhood and i don't have anybody to complain to about that and if they know they faced about eighty five thousand voters and the full city and they were accountable to those eighty thousand less money more influence in terms of you know hands on being there and more emphasis on actually solving neighborhood problems who's going to lead the effort this time i think you got people all over the political spectrum we have thirty seconds left and we have to predictions the first prediction is the governor's race who win barely winning based on women winning in the order in states obama wins the electoral college romney ekes out the popular vote so obama wins but without the clear mandate well i would say that we'll find out soon but we may not there may