Tag: colorado

Infighting Among Our Enemy Watch, Colorado edition.

Come, I will reveal to you a mystery: both side’s base voters are convinced that their party is the Stupid one.  And here is another mystery: both side’s base voters are right. Case in point: the Colorado Democratic party. “The Democratic Party in the crucial presidential state of Colorado dissolved into bitter infighting Friday over a combination of obscure party rules and allegations that the party’s leader has ignored women and Latinos within the party.” Just in time for the 2016 election cycle!  Thanks, guys!

The actual dispute is arcane; but then, it’s just a smokescreen for the real dispute, which is… a rationalization for the actual problem, which is that a sufficiently large portion of the Democratic party of Colorado loathes another sufficiently large portion of the Democratic party of Colorado.  Which means that it’s time for the knives to come out. And the Democratic party of Colorado will thus spend several months punching itself in the face, because that’s apparently what you do when you lose elections that you were told that you were going to win.

I mention all of this not to reassure you that we’re better than that, over in the GOP. Obviously, we’re not.  But neither are we particularly worse than that, either.  Both parties seem bound and determined to not let the other one win the Who’s The Biggest Idiot? contest…

Gov. John Hickenlooper (D, Colorado) goes after the horrible scourge of… UNSANCTIONED YOGA INSTRUCTORS

Hey, John Hickenlooper is the governor and it’s his state agency that’s doing the crackdown on yoga certification*. Or should it be shakedown? – Because there’s apparently money in regulating this.

Teacher-training programs that are required to be certified must pay fees to the state. The state charges $1,750 for an initial provisional certificate that is good for up to two years, then $1,500 for a renewable certificate good for three years. It also charges $175 for every “agent” authorized to enter into a contract with a student, plus $3.75 per student per quarter. In addition, schools that have been certified must secure a minimum bond of $5,000, which is based on the amount of tuition collected.

You gotta wonder what the victory condition for Colorado is for this one. I mean, liberals like yoga, right? And Hickenlooper’s a liberal. You’d think that he’d do the smart thing and take this as an opportunity to get rid of a stupid set of regulations… and, yes, this is stupid. A remarkable amount of our licensing regime is based on the twin engines of stupidity and laziness: people write a quick regulation instead of making a specific, circumstances-based decision; and then other people expand that regulation to cover something that it had no business covering.  Happens. All the. Time.

So good job, Gov. Hickenlooper. You keep finding those enemies of the State! …As I said: he’s the governor.  Fish rots from the head down, and all that.

Via @Aaron_RS.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*To be fair, this program started up in 2002, under a Republican governor. To be equally fair, nobody enforced the dumb thing for a decade because it’s yoga.

Yeah. ‘Mark Uterus.’

What was up with that?

That came out of nowhere, and it probably ensured that Mark Udall’s campaign would falter in CO-SEN. Not that I mind, because Mark Udall’s constant consultant-based rhetorical strategy was indeed awful, but I have to wonder. What triggered it?

The fatally flawed Democratic Senate retention campaign, in crystallized form.

This shouldn’t have worked.

Rachel Maddow’s producer had a question: “Does Cory Gardner even have a campaign headquarters?”

He did, but Colorado Democrats were confounded that they had no idea where it was located, which is why I frequently got asked, “Is there a headquarters?” and “Have you been there?” Yes and yes.

Here’s the scoop: Gardner’s campaign was located across the hall from the Colorado Republican Party headquarters in the Denver Tech Center, making it easy for operatives in both groups to run back and forth. The only sign outside Gardner’s office was the one left by the previous tenant, which read, “Building Maintenance Company.” The campaign decided to keep it.

Continue reading The fatally flawed Democratic Senate retention campaign, in crystallized form.

Colorado Senate: …DOOM.

Well, Mark Udall, you had a pretty good run.

Then, finally, came the only reference to policy in [Mark] Udall’s speech. “And by the way, I’m proud to stand with Colorado’s women,” he said, almost as an aside. “I’m proud to stand for reproductive freedom.”

An angry voice from the crowd jeered: “That’s not the only thing you stand for! J[****] C[*****]!”

Udall turned to a short, dark man on his left. The senator look genuinely stunned. “I’m sorry?”

“That’s not the only thing you stand for!” The heckler was Leo Beserra, a 73-year-old who made millions on Wall Street and, since the early 1990s, has shared a generous slice of that wealth with Colorado Democrats.

Continue reading Colorado Senate: …DOOM.

Mark Udall calls Cory Gardner ‘Senator’ at yesterday’s Colorado debate.

Man. Mark Udall’s internal polling must be awful.

If this election was anything except a fully mail-in ballot election, that would be DOOM right there. Heck, if it was Colorado’s second mail-in ballot election it’d be DOOM.  But between this, yesterday’s absolute disaster of an attempted hit piece against Gardner, and of course the polling… Cory Gardner is nicely in the glide path for winning in two and a half weeks.  There are some things that the margin of fraud* can do nothing for.

But no sense being complacent. Cory Gardner for Senate.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I do believe in it; I merely think that the percentages involved are a lot narrower than do many of my colleagues.  I suspect that it is mostly used to make sure that the ‘right’ people win Democratic primaries.  Not as many people looking at those races and in many cases winning the primary = winning the election.

…That was an amazingly messed-up partisan own-goal by the Left over Cory Gardner.

Twitchy has the gory details: suffice it to say, Deadspin tried to pitch a story (that Cory Gardner never played high school football) into a game changer for Colorado’s Senate race, and ended up probably guaranteeing Gardner’s election (because Gardner actually played high school football, and has the pictures to prove it).  In the process Deadspin has managed to make at least several dozen Lefty journalists and activists look like chumps, and that promises to keep going on for a little while longer.

Lots of fun, but I should have kept better notes. Or any notes at all.

Moe Lane

Breaking: DCCC cuts loose Andrew Romanoff (D CAND, Colorado-06).

Dude.

More here (via @politicoalex): and I kind of wish that they had stayed in. The DCCC already dumped in almost $2 million bucks to lose this race; seeing that additional $1.4 million taken out to a field a burned would have warmed the cockles of my heart. Oh, well, you can’t always expect the opposition to keep throwing in good money after bad.

Moe Lane

PS: Mike Coffman for CO-06, of course.

Mark Udall: standing up for Planned Parenthood’s Taxpayer-Funded Contraceptive Racket.

Oh, man, that was embarrassing for Mark Udall.

Short version: Cory Gardner supports making birth control pills available OTC. Mark Udall opposes everything Cory Gardner does, because of the way that Cory Gardner does it. So Cory Gardner asked Udall whether Udall supported making birth control pills available OTC at all… and Mark Udall declined to answer. Because Mark Udall is counting on Planned Parenthood’s support, and since Planned Parenthood is making a nice hunk of change out of the current regulatory system (courtesy of the American taxpayer), well…

Mark Uterus.

Alternate title: Meet Sen. Mark Uterus, Democratic candidate for Colorado’s Collective Reproductive System.

Look, I didn’t call Senator Mark Udall ‘Mark Uterus:’ the debate moderator last night did.  And I have rarely seen so many people on Twitter be incredulous over something as those people were to hear that this happened:

“Mr. Udall, your campaign has been so focused on women’s issues that you’ve been dubbed ‘Mark Uterus.’
…Have you gone too far?”

Well, given that a moderator had to ask that question? I’d say yes. Continue reading Mark Uterus.