"Last year Democrats flipped 40 Republican seats in the House, and not one of those 40 Democrats supported the policies of our front-runners at center stage."
--John Hickenlooper, in the early debates
Democrats have a record number of candidates for president crowding patient folks at Iowa state fairs. There are still more than 20 candidates in the teeming field. Most voters can't remember them all. But the throng of candidates is thinning every few weeks:
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper finally came out Thursday and formally ended his presidential campaign. The New York Times says he might run for U.S. Senate against his state's Cory Gardner, a Republican in good standing. Politicos have identified Sen. Gardner as one of the more vulnerable candidates since Colorado seems to grow a little more blue every year.
Either way, this is probably a smart move for John Hickenlooper and Chuck Shumer. But for the rest of us, it's a darned shame.
John Hickenlooper, Joe Biden and Sen. Amy Klobuchar are three of the more centrist candidates in the party. They aren't racing to dismantle private health insurance, push college tuition on taxpayers and give all Americans guaranteed incomes--along with a guaranteed disaster of a national debt. Remember the more leftist of the candidates' rallying cries/tirades/harangues during the debates:
"I've heard some people here tonight, I almost wonder why you're Democrats. You seem to think there's something wrong about using the instruments of government to help people."--Marianne Williamson
"I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for."--Elizabeth Warren
"I get a little bit tired of Democrats afraid of big ideas."--Bernie Sanders
John Hickenlooper was more level-headed. As if he knows that this country is pert-near divided right down the middle on a number of issues, and incremental steps, such as Barack Obama mostly took, are more successful in a country in which the very founding Constitution limits the government.
But he never really caught on. See realclearpolitics.com, which tracks polls better than anybody. Over the past few weeks, pollsters have pointed to three or four candidates standing at zero percent. But John Hickenlooper wasn't even mentioned. Is it possible he polled less than zero? Now that would be a first.
This from a guy who started a business in Colorado. Then ran for mayor of Denver when nobody thought he could win. Then won re-election four years later . . . with 86 percent of the vote. Then went on to be Colorado's governor for eight years.
And he had a lot of legislative wins, from expanding Medicaid to requiring background checks on guns. Sure, he ran and governed as a proud Democrat, but don't hold that against him. What he didn't do, if polls in Colorado are to be believed, is go bonkers with a wish-list of far-left dream items to scare off any moderates in his party and the occasional and rare Colorado Republicanus that came down out of the mountains.
It's disappointing to lose moderates in this race--or any race. They help pull toward the center. As each moderate drops out, and surely John Hickenlooper won't be the last, the field will be abandoned to those who'd push their party further and further toward AOC and her politics. And if you think that's good for the country, you're already much too close to those politics--and to rendering the Democratic Party irrelevant.
The American people need two strong parties in a two-party system. And they need both parties to hold their meetings in big tents. This trend to push to the extremes--a trend observable in both parties--is what got us where we are today, fellow Americans: Everything's a fight. Everything's a confrontation. Everything's a face-off.
"John Hickenlooper for Senate" might be good for Colorado. But bad for the rest of these several states.
Editorial on 08/16/2019