Governor Jay Inslee (along with, no doubt, the bulk of our state's political and business establishment) was disappointed that the Machinists union rejected Boeing's draconian contract offer:

"The fact is we could have won this tonight without any competition. That didn’t happen," Inslee said.

The fact that to "win" the 777X assembly without competition would have required the Machinists to sell out younger and future members, doesn't seem to matter to those bemoaning the IAM vote. Machinists were being asked to give up their pensions, to accept higher health care costs, to agree to a 1 percent raise every other year, and to force new workers to move up the pay scale slower. Oh... and they were being asked to surrender the right to strike over the next decade.

Meanwhile, the highly profitable Boeing would get $8.7 billion worth of tax breaks in return. It's as if having the most highly skilled and productive aerospace workforce in the world just isn't worth anything to Boeing at the bargaining table.

Later today we'll get to read the inevitable Seattle Times editorial blasting the Machinists union for potentially costing the region thousands of manufacturing jobs... as if these jobs belong to the region and not to the actual Machinists working them. It's a weird argument—pitting jobs versus workers—but one which permeates all aspects of the political debate, from the minimum wage to Obamacare.

“Corporations are people, my friend,” Mitt Romney was famously blurted. Well, oddly enough, so are workers.