Harger: 68,000 fans chanted USA at Seattle’s World Cup match on Friday. Then the internet had to weigh in

Friday afternoon, 68,000 people packed Seattle Stadium for the USA-Australia World Cup match. They wore red, white, and blue. They chanted “USA! USA!” They sang the anthem. Rob Stone on the Fox broadcast looked at the crowd and said he’d never seen anything like it in American soccer.

The US won 2-0. The crowd sang “Country Roads” with the players after the final whistle. One of the best soccer atmospheres this country has ever produced, and it happened in Seattle.

Then both tribes got involved.

The right said the crowd couldn’t be real. The left made Girmay Zahilay apologize for a selfie

Within hours, conservative accounts online were posting some version of the same take: those people can’t be real Seattleites. Too patriotic. Must be out-of-towners. Because Seattle hates America, right?

Sure, it’s a World Cup match. There were Australians in the building, fans from around the country, visitors from around the world. But that crowd was overwhelmingly Seattle. This city showed up.

Meanwhile, conservative activist Brian Heywood ran into King County Executive Girmay Zahilay at the match. They’re about as far apart politically as two people in Washington can get. Heywood posted about it. They shook hands, agreed to put politics aside, and took a photo together. Zahilay’s wife joined. His father photobombed.

Heywood called it “a reminder that even political foes can pause for patriotism, pleasantries, and a well-timed fatherly photo bomb.”

Brief, casual, the kind of thing that used to happen without anyone needing to comment on it. A quick selfie. Took maybe 30 seconds. Even that was too much.

The left saw the photo and lost it. Hannah Krieg responded with a post dripping with sarcasm about how great it was to hang out with someone she views as hostile to trans rights.

Zahilay apologized. The County Executive of King County said he was sorry for being polite at a soccer game.

“I should have taken a beat to say no instead of doing the reflexive and socially familiar thing,” he wrote.

The reflexive and socially familiar thing. Being polite to a stranger who asked for a photo.

This is what has me worried about this country’s direction. It is being stated by the left that there can be no interaction with those on the right because they are somehow evil. And it is being stated by the right that Seattle is full of evil America-hating liberals who couldn’t possibly love their country. It’s exhausting. And it doesn’t end up in a happy place.

Former House Republican Leader JT Wilcox said what the left and right need to hear. He’s a conservative from Roy. And he’s right

JT Wilcox ran the Republican caucus in the state House for five years. He’s a farmer from Roy. He’s as conservative as they come in this state, and nobody would mistake him for a squish. So when he talks about how the right keeps losing here, his own side ought to listen.

The day after the game, he posted this: “Campaigning on ‘We hate Seattle’ and ‘Everything Sucks’ has an unbroken record of failure between Tacoma and Everett and statewide.”

That’s a conservative telling his own team to knock it off. Not the left. Not the media. A Republican from Roy.

Then he walked through the why, and it comes down to simple arithmetic. There are more Democrats in this state than Republicans. Not in every town, but when you add it all up statewide, the blue numbers are bigger. So if both teams just play to their own crowd and try to out-yell each other, the bigger crowd wins. Every time. A Republican can fire up every conservative in the state, write off Seattle entirely, and still come up short on election night. The hate-Seattle strategy doesn’t fail because it’s mean. It fails because the math was never there.

And this is the trap that a lot of people online, on the left and the right, fall into. You post a video dunking on the other side. It goes viral. Your replies are filled with people cheering you on. The likes pile up. It feels like the whole world agrees with you.

It doesn’t. What you’re seeing is your own crowd, the people who already think like you, gathered in one place, clapping. “Owning the libs” racks up likes. So does shaming a progressive for taking a 30-second selfie with the wrong guy at a soccer game. Neither one changes a single mind. Neither one wins over the one voter in the middle who decides every election in this state.

Wilcox put it as plainly as anyone could.

“The most wildly successful media figures, pundits, podcasters have held far less than a majority of the market for generations,” Wilcox said. “That’s success for them. It’s a metric of embarrassing failure for candidates or parties who must think of 50% plus 1, or they are losers.”

In other words, a big following makes you famous. It doesn’t make you a winner. You need more than half the votes, and likes aren’t votes.

If Republicans want to win in Washington, they’re going to need some votes from Seattle. Hating the city guarantees they won’t get them

And this is where it gets practical. If the right ever wants to win a statewide race in Washington again, they have to find votes in Seattle. Not a majority. Just enough to close the gap. That means showing up. Talking about the things Seattle voters already agree with you on, like public safety, like cost of living, like the tax burden this column spends half its time writing about. Treating city voters as people you can persuade instead of people you’ve given up on.

The formula exists. The party keeps walking away from it to chase applause lines that kill at a rally in Moses Lake but don’t move a single vote in Ballard.

I know a lot of you. I talk to you every morning. I try to appeal to a broad audience. Liberals can read my commentaries and, I hope, see that I always critique the policy, never the person. I’d ask the same of my conservative readers. As a moderate, I try to see all points of view. I want a conversation, not a condemnation.

If you hate Seattle, and you think everyone in it is bad and irredeemable, that there’s nothing good, that the whole city is rotten to the core, why are you still here? Do you think fanning the flames of division is going to convince the city to come around to your point of view?

Or, hear me out, might it be wiser to think about what you love about this place and be like JT?

And if you’re on the left and you think a progressive can’t shake hands with a conservative at a soccer game without betraying the cause, I’d ask you the same question. Is that the world you want to live in? One where being polite is a political act you have to apologize for?

Online is not real life. The 68,000 at Seattle Stadium already knew that

Consider this. Most people don’t care about any of this tribal scorekeeping. They’re not on X arguing about who shook whose hand. They’re at the game. They’re singing. They’re being neighbors.

The people chanting USA on Friday might vote differently from you. They might support candidates you can’t stand. They’re also the people who coach your kids’ soccer teams, hold doors, and show up for their country on a Friday afternoon because that’s what Americans do.

Be like JT. Be like the 68,000. They were too busy singing to check their notifications.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

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