CO-SEN Megathread: Cory In The House

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Remember when Ron Johnson was toast? Pepperidge farms remembers.


I am not saying Gardner is poised to win, but I am simply saying the left should not be throwing a victory party a year before election day.

Remember when Dean Heller was toast?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Just what the Senate needs. More anti-MFA centrists.

Gardner is no unbeatable titan. Let a real Democrat have the opportunity.

Lmao... unlike Saint Bernard, the Hick is actually a Democrat.

When it comes to actual policies, Bernie is a helluva lot more of a Democrat than Frackenlooper

Who would you prefer be the Democratic nominee against Gardner? Someone like Neguse? Or Johnston? Why the need for a bold progressive?

Because Colorado's only getting bluer. I wouldn't be mad about Hick running in, say, GA, NC, or even my state. But this state just elected a progressive governor last year. A progressive narrowly lost to Gardner in 2014. A more moderate incumbent won in 2016. The state can elect progressives in a right environment, and dare I say, will re-elect progressives in a post-2016 landscape. Instead, The Establishment is anointing someone who's campaigned on the Delaney line of "No, we can't".

This isn't a Lujan situation, where the national establishment is trying to get a leg up. This isn't like my whining about Shaheen's Haspel vote. Run the Mark Warners and Tom Carpers in all the purple states you damn well please. You can even run a candidate like Hick in NH. Just don't run them here.

A Senate that is comprised primarily of hard-right conservatives and hard-left progressives is a body which would be even more deadlocked and ineffectual than the one which we already possess. But I digress. At any rate, Hickenlooper's center-left views, I would argue, would ensure a larger victory over Gardner than would be generated by a progressive. Mention has already been made of how Hickenlooper would do well in Southern Colorado because of them, and I've alluded to the possibility.

The Senate is already deadlocked and ineffectual to the point of uselessness.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

DSCC essentially endorses Hickenlooper

https://twitter.com/dscc/status/1164901959515680768?s=20

This is why I left.

Fair

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Say what you will about the Tara Reade allegations, but for John Hickenlooper to say that he "believes" in them and that he still supports Biden is beyond ignorant. This is to say nothing of his ignorance regarding George Floyd's death. I'm definitely not on the Hickenlooper Train now, as much as I was before, but he's still going to defeat Romanoff and Gardner.

Yeah, if I were in Colorado and Hickenlooper got nominated then I'd either leave the race blank or vote third party in this race.  Tbh, the fact that Reade's allegations were clearly false is beside the point.  Hickenlooper - for some bizarre reason - seems to think Biden really is a rapist, but still plans to vote for him and that makes him a horrible person, period.  Hopefully Romanoff sends this clown packing

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

We could really use a Bernie/AOC endorsement here.

Bernie in particular could do a lot of good here

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I was planning on voting for Romanoff but this is an absolutely outrageous attack and Anderson should be ashamed by this.

Anybody who watches the video would pick up on the very obvious and crucial word "ancient" used to describe the slave ship. The image he is relying on is a decades-old portrayal of life in ancient war and cargo/merchant ships.

Connections to the Middle Passage are so laughably tenuous that they should be ignored wholesale. Simply put, Tay Anderson either didn't watch the video he is amplifying, or is lying when he draws a connection to "his ancestors". Anderson is a pretty obvious Romanoff supporter; if this is coordinated in any way, it's a despicable and cynical mis-use of charges of anti-black racism. If Romanoff is planning on weaponizing this footage himself, then he will lose my vote.

Of course, the forum's pseudomoderate boobs who have zero ideology except for moderation for moderation's sake are now abandoning Hick because they have no apparent principles and appear to be too dumb to understand what is happening here.

The best reason not to vote for Prickenlooper is that he took the Ilhan Omar position on Tara Reade’s false rape allegation (I.e. that he believed it, but was going to vote for Biden anyway).

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

This is a laughably out-of-context quote that Anderson is obviously willfully lying about, and Hickenlooper already apologized and moved on.  What's up with the chicken littles on this forum suddenly jumping ship for Romanoff over a handful of gaffes?

You guys don't want Romanoff to be the nominee.  He wasn't particularly good in 2014, and the Dems cut funding for his district after he failed to compete.  Lots by 9 in a district we won by 12 in 2018.
 Hickenlooper may be cringe nationally, but he's a proven winner in Colorado and polling double digits above Gardner.

Three things:

-1) If Prickenlooper can't even beat #WeakCandidate Romanoff in the primary despite having almost every institutional advantage under the sun and Romanoff inexplicably getting little-to-no support or even attention from national Berniecrats, then it's also possible that he'd have blown the GE (and with it, the Senate).  

-2) What Prickenlooper said about the Tara Reade stuff was disgraceful.  I've been pretty vocal about both my opposition to the Bernie or Bust crowd and the fact that I consider Tara Reade little more than an odious con artist whose false allegations were being deliberately spread in bad faith by Bernie or Bust folks simply because they were salty that their guy lost the Democratic nomination.  However, one of the few circumstances where it would be not only acceptable for a progressive to vote third-party, but a moral responsibility is if they genuinely believe Reade's allegations.  

As Biden himself has repeatedly said, if you believe Tara Reade then you should not vote for him.  Granted, at this point it's pretty hard (to say the least) to imagine how a reasonable person comprehensively reviewing all the relevant known facts in good faith could possibly conclude that Reade's claims aren't fabricated (obviously, the false allegations have been thoroughly debunked).*

However, if Prickenlooper was confident enough to say he believed the Reade allegations in a Democratic primary debate this long after they've been thoroughly debunked...well...that only makes sense if he genuinely believes Reade (especially since he's not a Berniecrat by any stretch).  What that would mean is that he's willing to vote for someone he believes to be a rapist and that alone should disqualify him from holding public office.  Of course, Gardner is a staunch Trump supporter who has been happy to support a man who is - as a matter of objective fact - a serial sexual predator.  Thus, Gardner is also unfit to serve in the Senate, but this isn't about him.  

3) Speaking for myself, one factor I always consider is who is the most liberal candidate that can win.  I was never crazy about Prickenlooper, but it had seemed like he could put this race away without making us spend any money and given how high the stakes are with the Senate this cycle, I was willing to tolerate him being the nominee in a state where we could probably do better.  Given his campaign's spectacular incompetence of late, I don't have confidence anymore that he's not the type to blow an otherwise easy win with a multi-month drip-drip-drip of gaffes and scandals.  

Romanoff is basically Generic D as far as electability goes in a statewide CO race and is more progressive than Prickenlooper to boot.  Romanoff would likely beat Gardner and do so fairly easily, albeit not by quite as much as we all assumed Prickenlooper would when the latter entered the race.  If Prickenlooper is more likely to blow the GE than Romanoff (I'm not saying that I think he would lose, but at this point, it's more likely than Romanoff losing to Gardner).  Since we'd now get both a more electable nominee and one who'd be more progressive, ditching Prickenlooper in favor of Romanoff while we still have the chance makes sense from both an ideological and electability perspective.  

IIRC, you're well to the right of the average Democratic (certainly the average Colorado Democrat) on a number of issues so I'm not surprised you're defending Prickenlooper, but it's not just bed-wetting over a few minor gaffes (although it might be with some folks).  Speaking for myself, I was never thrilled with the prospect of Prickenlooper being a Senator and had already switched to Romanoff due to Prickenlooper indicating that he planned to vote for a Presidential candidate whom he apparently believes is a rapist.  Whatever you think of Tara Reade's false allegations, I don't see how that Prickenlooper's comments about them could be anything other than completely disqualifying.

*I mean, it's also pretty clear that most of the Bernie or Busters peddling Reade's allegations didn't actually believe them or at the very least, didn't give a **** whether they were true or not when spreading them so long as the false allegations might hurt Biden, but that's a discussion for another thread.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I did not see that one coming.

Agreed, but it makes most sense as a small part of her bid for the VP slot. In my view, that's a bad gamble - presumably adding only marginal gain to her chances there while damaging her credibility for 2024 should Biden lose. The probability of this still high enough to be worth preparing for.

Warren isn't gonna be President no matter what happens with Biden.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I did not see that one coming.

Agreed, but it makes most sense as a small part of her bid for the VP slot. In my view, that's a bad gamble - presumably adding only marginal gain to her chances there while damaging her credibility for 2024 should Biden lose. The probability of this still high enough to be worth preparing for.

Warren isn't gonna be President no matter what happens with Biden.

Warren's odds are pretty low (this is normal for most presidents), but probably high enough to be worth taking in her position. If she was willing to keep her 2020 campaign going for as long as it did because she seriously considered herself in with a shot, there's no question she'd also consider her 2024 chances worth pursuing. What do you think the "Warren Democrats" movement is about, if not open faction-building in preparation for the next set of open primaries?

I don't think "Warren Democrats" are a major faction within the Democratic Party the way Berniecrats or even the AOC crowd are - or even one that really exists in any meaningful way tbh - and frankly, I'd argue she simply lacks the political skills necessary for national-level Presidential politics.  Nothing I saw during the 2020 campaign led me to believe she wasn't in way over her head from a political abilities/campaign competence standpoint.  She may think she has a shot, but unless Biden picks her as VP (and I don't know why he would), I don't think there is a realistic scenario where she doesn't significantly underperform her 2020 showing if she runs again. 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I did not see that one coming.

Agreed, but it makes most sense as a small part of her bid for the VP slot. In my view, that's a bad gamble - presumably adding only marginal gain to her chances there while damaging her credibility for 2024 should Biden lose. The probability of this still high enough to be worth preparing for.

Warren isn't gonna be President no matter what happens with Biden.

Warren's odds are pretty low (this is normal for most presidents), but probably high enough to be worth taking in her position. If she was willing to keep her 2020 campaign going for as long as it did because she seriously considered herself in with a shot, there's no question she'd also consider her 2024 chances worth pursuing. What do you think the "Warren Democrats" movement is about, if not open faction-building in preparation for the next set of open primaries?

I don't think "Warren Democrats" are a major faction within the Democratic Party the way Berniecrats or even the AOC crowd are - or even one that really exists in any meaningful way tbh - and frankly, I'd argue she simply lacks the political skills necessary for national-level Presidential politics.  Nothing I saw during the 2020 campaign led me to believe she wasn't in way over her head from a political abilities/campaign competence standpoint.  She may think she has a shot, but unless Biden picks her as VP (and I don't know why he would), I don't think there is a realistic scenario where she doesn't significantly underperform her 2020 showing if she runs again.  

I am a lot less skeptical than you given the impressive earlier segment of her campaign, but agree that trying to build a grassroots movement with branding in 4 years is probably going to prove a failure. I don't think her chances being slimmer than Sanders'/Biden's in 2020 means she isn't going to try, though, and my speculation as to her calculus in making this endorsement was based on the assumption that she still harboured presidential ambitions (no matter how unrealistic those and "the Warren Democrats" might be).

Fair enough.  In any case, I agree about her likely calculus for doing this.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

So tired of Dems going negative on each other.

TBF, Romanoff has a reputation for that IIRC

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Tbf, he was always gonna lose either way.