December 23, 2009 06:44 PM UTC

Charlie Cook's Colorado Politics Malfunction

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• by: Colorado Pols

In our inbox this morning, from last night’s Hardball with Chris Matthews. In this segment, much-trumpeted political pundit Charlie Cook attempts to wax authoritative on the Colorado U.S. Senate race. We suppose he does okay overall, except that there hasn’t been a “Mayor Wellington” in Denver since 2003 (and Wellington Webb was never seriously considered for the Senate appointment), and–the cardinal error of 2009–Gale Norton isn’t running for the U.S. Senate. Ron Brownstein of The Atlantic was good enough to correct Cook on that last one, ‘Mayor Wellington’ was just kind of left out there in “I don’t know what I’m talking about” land.

Like we said, most of this segment’s commentary is pretty reasonable–Brownstein seemed to nail some important characteristics of Colorado’s political landscape towards the end–but nobody should ever get as worked up as Charlie Cook does on-air without having their basic facts straight. All that ‘intensity’ just looks cheesy when you get so many details wrong.