Less than two weeks after her election as Seattle mayor, Katie Wilson has made clear she would accept a White House meeting with President Donald Trump if invited.

The declaration by the self-described “socialist” comes amid mounting mass opposition to the Trump administration’s fascistic assault on social services, healthcare and democratic rights, along with the accelerating war drive. It reveals the character of her politics and her administration’s accommodation to the capitalist establishment.

Wilson made her statement welcoming a dialogue with Trump in a November 22 interview with the Seattle Times. “I’ll meet with anyone,” Wilson said. “I mean, he’s the president of the United States.” Her response came the day after New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, met with Trump and declared a “partnership” with Trump.

Wilson made no attempt to expose or condemn the criminality of the Trump administration. Instead, in an attempt to preempt left-wing criticism of her comments, Wilson also told the Times, “There are going to be some people who probably see taking those meetings as selling out.” She continued, “But I think that a lot of people on the progressive left do have a sophisticated understanding of what it’s going to take to deliver on a bold progressive agenda, and that it’s not just about only talking to your friends and using the mayor’s office as a soapbox.”

In other words, Wilson is seeking to follow in the footsteps of Mamdani and look for “sophisticated” ways to “work together” with the would-be dictator. In both cases, Wilson and Mamdani are not offering a perspective and a program to fight for the interests of the working class, but working to disorient workers and redirect popular anger back into the dead end of capitalist politics and the Democratic Party.

Wilson’s touted “bold progressive agenda” has been limited to attempts to reforming public transit, proposing minor tax hikes and suggesting the need for emergency housing assistance. When challenged about her previous call for cutting funding to the Seattle Police Department, Wilson abandoned the pledge almost immediately, stating that she had “learned a lot since then.”

One of the initiatives with which Wilson is associated is the effort to “Trump-Proof Seattle” in 2017, when she worked alongside Kshama Sawant, who at the time was on the Seattle City Council and a member of Socialist Alternative, which operates in the orbit of the Democratic Party. With Trump’s return to power, Wilson revived the “Trump-Proof Seattle” banner, now saying it was necessary to “think about how to protect ourselves and our neighbors from the actions of an even more virulent federal administration.”

Not only are such words undercut by Wilson’s own willingness to talk with Trump, it’s undercut by the actions of the administration to which Wilson has no answer. There have been at least 1,000 ICE arrests in Washington this year, and the agency’s own data shows that at least two-thirds of those picked up have not committed a crime.

Wilson’s orientation to capitalist establishment is also exemplified by her 60-member transition team. On the stated goal of this group that will define policy for her incoming administration, Wilson declared  “I’m a coalition-builder, that’s how I ran my campaign, and that’s how I’ll govern.”

A selection of these individuals reveals the nature of this “coalition”:

• Jon Scholes, the president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association (Housing Affordability and Community Needs). He recently criticized a modest tax increase on businesses, calling it “a boneheaded proposal of epic proportions.” On policing, he said “We’re not moving fast enough to hire officers. The city needs to move with more urgency. We should approach this like a business would and try to recruit and retain great talent.”
• Dr. Ana Mari Cauce, the President Emeritus for the University of Washington (Civic Narrative & Major Initiatives). Last year she oversaw an aggressive police assault on a student occupation protesting a campus building funded by war-profiteer Boeing. She also was responsible for illegally withholding promised raises from university staff.
• Erin Goodman, the Executive Director, SODO (South of Downtown) Business Improvement Area (Public Safety, Parks, & Wellbeing). The group advocates for increased use of police sweeps to eradicate homeless encampments.
• Joe Mizrahi, the co-executive director of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 3000. The UFCW has repeatedly forced through sellout contracts for the workers it supposedly represents, including on members of UFCW 3000 with a Kroger deal earlier this year that locked in a below-inflation wage increase and introduced contract language allowing ICE easier access to arrest Kroger workers.

The appointment of these figures is intended as a message both to Trump and to the corporate behemoths who dominate the political scene in Seattle—such as Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks—that Wilson has no intention of pausing the austerity policies and the growth of increasingly militarized police in the city. She is ready to work with these reactionary forces to suppress any independent mobilization of the working class.

Wilson’s election reflected working class anger at social inequality. Workers and youth who supported her campaign were expressing their hatred of the current socioeconomic order and their search for a socialist alternative. However, they will not find it in Wilson.

While Wilson is not a member of the DSA like Mamdani, her politics are the same. She promotes the fiction that the interests of workers and youth can be advanced through the Democratic Party. In class terms, these figures represent sections of the upper middle class, not the working class.

Amidst a broad political radicalization in the US and internationally, the experiences of these elections must be drawn, as part of the development of a political movement of the working class, in opposition to the oligarchy and the entire political system, on the basis of a genuine and revolutionary socialist program and perspective.