February 19, 2010 10:31 PM UTC

Playing with Fire

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• by: botw

This week’s Bennet-Romanoff debate suggests that Andrew Romanoff and his most vocal supporters are using a calculated and dangerous set of tactics.

Calculated because the message is repeated and consistent; dangerous because the message assumes voters aren’t smart or checking the facts and also because the message can easily boomerang on you and the people you say you are fighting for.

First, continue to make your signature issue and central theme that taking PAC money is wrong and shows you must be corrupt.  When pressed, the Romanoff camp says they aren’t really calling Bennet bought.  But a drumbeat of e-mail blasts and public statements says they are.

Two examples are a December 22, 2009 broadcast e-mail paid for by the campaign entitled “Unbought and Unbossed” and a January ad entitled “the best Senator money CAN’T buy” in which a fictional senator pats a pocket with money falling out of it and a cash register sound in the background.

They want caucus and primary voters to think Bennet is paid for, pure and simple.  When you took PAC money in each of your four previous elections, it’s a tough argument to make the centerpiece of your campaign.  It also assumes that potential voters are dumb enough to think that when all kinds of fine public servants have taken PAC money – including you – it’s only you and not the other folks who are able to handle it and make good public policy decisions.  It also ignores the reality that Democrats need the extra money from PACs to run effective statewide campaigns for federal office in Colorado.  Ask Senator Udall and Secretary Salazar.  Both of them are fine Democratic public servants who took PAC money in their campaigns.  The Democrat running for Senate this Fall will face a tremendous onslaught of ads fed by Republican, Tea Party, and 527-fed groups and individuals from around the country.

Second, misrepresent the other guy.  One example is that Romanoff supporters on this blog and in other places have said repeatedly (and for months) that Senator Bennet was not for a public option until Romanoff announced his challenge.  It isn’t true, and saying it without evidence over and over is shameful.  The claim has been thoroughly disproven by videotape evidence, but it still gets peddled.

A second example is that, in late January, the campaign broadcasts a link to an “article in the Huffington Post” they say provides “useful information for voters.”  What is the “article”?  It’s just the Wade Norris blog he posted on Huffington, Square State and Pols.  It’s the one with the flaming faucet video, suggesting that Bennet is in favor of flaming faucets, I suppose.  The theme of the Norris post (or is it “Huffington Article” with “key information for voters”?) is the equally odd claim that Bennet is really a “conservadem” (or at least hasn’t “disproven” that he is, whatever that means).  Bennet’s record on health care legislation, among other things, shows a strong, outspoken and consistent progressive record.

A final example that folks on this blog know well is that Romanoff supporters say – and Romanoff himself said in a blog the day after the debate this week – that Bennet “sent a surrogate” to the first candidate forum, implying that he dodged the forum.  They are referring to that “Be The Change” forum set on a date when the Bennet campaign said well in advance that he couldn’t attend.  Again, it seems they think their audience is just dumb and can’t check or simply doesn’t care about the facts.  It’s also a little odd to call a guy a dodge the day after he debates you.

Third, claim Bennet is just “my shadow,” as if the Senator is cloning his position to Romanoff’s. There is actually another reason, of course.  It’s that, as anyone who has followed their positions knows, their views and instincts are actually quite similar in most respects.  This is evidenced by Romanoff’s failure to identify any vote other than cramdown where he says his vote would have been different than Bennet’s (as reported in the Wall Street Journal on 12/29/09).  Except that now Romanoff says (or is it just hints) he would have single-handedly taken health care down on Christmas Eve.  Okay, I guess that’s two votes now.

Where does this leave voters trying to make a choice at the caucus and in the primary? A few months ago, people could be forgiven for thinking the two were more alike than different. One might think that based on their age, temperament, education, ability, and smarts. But the primary challenge may have done something quite different than Romanoff and his supporters intended. The challenge might have shown instead that there are some clear, meaningful differences between the candidates that have become evident precisely because of the primary challenge. And the differences could well be on the minds of thoughtful progressives and moderates voting in the caucus next month and in the primary in August.

Among other things, in response to Romanoff misrepresentations and snark, Bennet hasn’t bad-mouthed Romanoff, misrepresented his record, or called him names.  That says something about Bennet just as much as Romanoff’s tactics say something about him that some of us didn’t know before.

While Romanoff and supporters have been bad-mouthing and insinuating full time, Bennet has actually had a full-time job 1500 miles away.  When the unemployed, career politician challenger can only identify one (or is it two?) votes he would have done differently, that says more about the challenger being a clone than the other way around.  It also begs the question as to why, exactly, Romanoff is in this race and what he is accomplishing.

In a year when the tide may be turning, fairly or unfairly, toward Republican challengers who are actively courting the Tea Party, what is the rationale for a Romanoff challenge of a highly-capable, sitting Democratic senator whose views you fundamentally share? And why should a Democrat driving to the caucus or primary think that choosing you and endorsing your approach is good for them in a difficult environment?

Voters could be forgiven for thinking there are plenty of reasons not to choose Romanoff to represent this square, purplish state, many of which he and his most vocal supporters provided for them as a result of his campaign message and tactics.