Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet wants President Joe Biden to steer clear of Colorado until after November’s mid-term election. The Washington Free Beacon reports on Bennet’s “snub of Biden” as “part of his campaign’s broader strategy of countering the impression that he is a Washington, D.C., insider.”
Discouraging a Biden visit, Bennet recently said the president “doesn’t need to come here.”
That’s a wise strategy, but Coloradans should not forget the past two years.
The polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight reports Bennet has voted with the president 98.1% since 2021. That puts Bennet among the most partisan members of Congress, blindly voting for the left-wing agenda more than New York activist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — only 94.2% compliant with Biden’s agenda.
Representing a traditional swing state, we hoped Bennet would serve during the Biden years as a moderating force to be reckoned with. We hoped he would make Biden a better president by challenging him on policies that don’t represent the best interests of Colorado or the country.
Bennet could have and should have been more of a free agent, leading with the level of state allegiance shown by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona.
If Bennet had led more for Colorado during 13 years in office, we might not have some of the country’s highest crime rates — including car thefts, rapes and bank robberies. We might not be losing so many children and young adults to drugs.
Colorado’s crime problem relates directly to our drug problem and that relates directly to our country’s porous border. Mexican cartels ship massive amounts of fentanyl across our southern border and drug-friendly Colorado has become a major destination for dealers.
Bennet has declined to demand better border enforcement — which he could done by negotiating with Biden. Even worse, he has countered efforts to control border crossings. His website calls the border wall “medieval,” yet he leads no crusade for a better solution.
As Colorado contends with a litany of drug-related problems — from crime, to broken marriages, to employee shortages to the overdose crisis — Bennet boasts of floating the most permissive marijuana bill in the history of Congress.
Bennet’s lost connection with Colorado became clear in 2019, when he ran for president and failed to achieve 1% support at home.
Nothing screamed Washington insider more than Bennet’s first campaign ad back in July.
“I’m fighting to ban members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists… I’m not taking a dime in corporate PAC money… I’m working to stop senators and congressmen from making personal stock trades,” Bennet declares in the ad.
We never hear from Coloradans expressing concern about these inside-the-Capitol concerns. Instead, Coloradans worry about soaring utility rates, inflation, crime, drugs and schools that fail their children.
Maybe that’s why moderate-Republican senatorial nominee Joe O’Dea has a shot at unseating Bennet. The adopted son of a revered Denver cop, O’Dea expresses more concern for Colorado’s growing demographic of crime victims than for the convicts who harm them.
“His (Bennet’s) Republican opponent, first-time candidate Joe O’Dea, is running a strikingly different campaign than many other GOP Senate candidates around the country,” notes a Colorado Public Radio report. “He’s emphasizing his moderate credentials, which include support for legal abortion up to 20 weeks and his desire for someone other than Donald Trump as his party’s presidential nominee in 2024.”
“The Cook Political Report recently shifted the contest from ‘Likely Democrat’ to ‘Lean Democrat.’ The Republican is threatening to make a race of it,” explains The New York Times under the headline “A Surprise Senate Race Rises Out West.”
A recent report by CNN has the Colorado Senate race among the “10 Senate seats most likely to flip.”
Colorado has significant problems, and most have developed under 13 years of Bennet service. If he wants another term, he must convince voters he’s ready to put our state ahead of a party increasingly controlled by left-wing extremists. He needs a plan to curtail our troubling trends of inflation, rising crime, drug deaths and dropping test scores among poor and minority children. If he doesn’t have a viable plan, voters will replace him.
Before voting in November, Coloradans need to grill both candidates and demand good answers. Take political parties out of the equation and ask which candidate would improve Colorado.
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(c)2022 The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
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Who is another do nothing Democrat.
Funny how Democrat politicians vote with the President in lock step but doen’t want him around when election time is at hand, that’s really party unity, “It’s all Joe Biben’s fault *even though I voted for it!).”
Joe Biden is to loser Democrats, what Tar Baby was to Brer’ Rabbit in Song of the South. They can try as they will to unstick themselves from Joe’s dark policies and vapid administrations, but only the Briar Patch of election losses await a party of people too corrupt to clean out its own house rented to them by THE PEOPLE, and pay the mortgage before the election notes came due. The eviction notices for many are on the way for those who forgot to work and earn their way into the Houses of THE PEOPLE in productive endeavors, but instead chose to just take, give out and live off of the temporary COVID bribe money, whose note also is coming due in the form of Insane inflation, food and commodity shortages, and unaffordable housing having to compete with an additional 2 million illegals for a decent affordable place to live, with the price of food making it unaffordable to eat, and funded social programs overwhelmed where not even legal citizens can get their fair Democrat promised share. As the rats begin to abandon the Biden sinking ship, they will only drown in their own demises within the murky self-made quicksands of the Washington Democrat run establishment swamp, Whose John Denver rocky Mountain Highly failed policies,,,”Fill up our senses,,,,,Like a fart in a Phone booth”
That’s typical of those who ‘ride the coat of someone else to success”’.. WHEN THEY SEE the negativity that other person gets, they do all they can to distance themselves from that person. NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES THEY publicly were there BY HIS (or her) SIDE for the ride UP the ladder.
This guy collects his check and votes, that’s it. He will probably be elected again because there’s a RINO running against him. The Colorado GOP is as bad as Democrats and that’s why they can’t win.
ALL because the sane folk there, DID NOTHING To prevent the libtard rejects from commiefornia, moving in, and poisoning the state.
ALL because the sane folk there, DID NOTHING To prevent the libtard rejects from commiefornia, moving in, and poisoning the state.
So you would like a country where some political entity would have to approve your right to move, as a citizen, into his state based on your politics. I’m pretty sure they have something like that in Russia and North Korea. Good luck.
IN a way yes.. There’s too many stories, of liberals and others moving from a RUINED STATE, into a good one, and SLOWLY BUT SURELY RUINING THEIR NEW state too.. So there’s GOT to be some way to stop that.
IF not by govt legislation, then how?