August 02, 2010 12:05 PM UTC

Scapegoating a Good Democrat

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• by: peacemonger

The rise of passion in the CO Senate race  escalated into a firestorm over the weekend. On Saturday, a crowd of approximately 200 Bennet supporters and 100 Romanoff supporters (and a few pro-marijuana protesters who always show up to events) assembled in the park across from the CO state capitol, with Senator Michael Bennet and Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien. The press conference was called to refute Andrew Romanoff’s most recent personal attacks on the Senator.

Bennet thanked his own supporters, as well as Andrew Romanoff’s supporters, when he started speaking. He praised his opponent’s work in the Senate before saying the latest round of attack ads had “gone too far”. During the remaining 15-20 minutes, Bennet was frequently shouted at by Romanoff supporters carrying signs, chanting things like “corporate shill” and “Anschutz is a bigot”. When Bennet mentioned Andrew Romanoff’s name and one person boohed, Bennet quickly said, “No, don’t do that”. Bennet ended with a plea for party unity.

The most surprising thing about the CO Senate primary to me is how eager some Colorado Democrats have been to accept a lynch-mob mentality. Where is all this tea-party style hatred coming from?

People are angry — very, very, very angry.

The economy is in its worst recession since the great Depresion. Jobs are scarce. The ocean is full of oil and know one really knows how it will effect our food chain. The earth is growing hotter and hotter, and no one seems to be doing anything about it. War is raging in several places around the globe. We still have the Patriot Act, prisoners held in detention camps, and a minority in Congress have effectively blocked much of which the majority has attempted.

People are legitimately very, very, very angry.

And what do Americans do when they are angry? They scapegoat someone. Usually good people. Preferably people who can’t or won’t fight back. Sometimes it is groups of people (the Japanese, African-Americans, Latinos, little people, Jews, women, gays, Muslims, blondes, unions, ACORN — take your pick) and sometimes it is high-profile individuals.

They (we) scapegoated Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, John Lennon, Bill Clinton, Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod, and many others. We also scapegoated Jesse Jackson, Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter, minimizing their legacy and their vision — men of peace who attempted to bring forward solutions at a time when there was rising anger and frustration. Last year, angry Americans scapegoated President Barack Obama, congregating in crowds of tea-bag-hat wearing people holding mispelled signs (and sometimes packing heat).

Andrew Romanoff’s strategists succesfully tapped into that anger, fed it, and released it back, unbridled out onto the streets. So now, many Romanoff supporters are scapegoating Senator Michael Bennet.  

Sadly, only Barbara O’Brien stood Saturday with Bennet and cried, “Enough is enough!” Other federal and state legislatators were not there, most likely because the press conference was held on less than twenty-four hours notice. Still, I imagine Governor Ritter, Mark Udall, Jared Polis, Betsy Markey, Ken Salazar, John Salazar, Diana DeGette, Ed Perlmutter, John Hickenlooper, Cary Kennedy, and the rest, huddled together in a corner saying, “Geez — I’m glad it’s not me!”

What are the differences between all of those people and Bennet? They all had successful careers before taking office. All of them have accepted corporate donations, as far as I know (with the possible exception of Jared Polis, who has owned his own corporations). Like Bennet, Barbara O’Brien was appointed to run as Lt. Gov. by Bill Ritter. Like Bennet, Mark Udall also as a voting-with-his party percentage of approximately 91%, most days. http://projects.washingtonpost… In fact, Bennet and Udall (you know — the “Boulder liberal”) have voted almost exactly the same since they’ve been in office.

Still, no one is scapegoating any of them at the moment — at least not in large numbers. Why?

Early in the Senate primary campaign, Andrew Romanoff promised he would focus on policy differences, and would not make personal attacks on his fellow Democratic opponent. Within weeks, that promise was broken. Romanoff was assigning ulterior motives to Bennet’s votes. If they did not appear progressive enough for Romanoff’s staff, with no evidence whatsoever, they accused Bennet of being corrupt. When Romanoff decided he would no longer accept PAC money, he insinuated Bennet was beholden to it. The Romanoff attacks continued, escalating week by week, month by month.

No one on the Romanoff team listened to what Bennet had to say on how Michael Bennet votes. They just hung him out to dry… because they could.

If you listen carefully between the lines of anti-Bennet rhetoric, there is something much deeper going on than just a preference for the candidate, Andrew Romanoff. Many Romanoff supporters are furious at corporate America and spout angry rants about getting money out of campaigns. Some of them actually seem to believe that Michael Bennet represents corporate America, as ridiculous as that may sound to rational observers.

What is the truth?  According to a recently published interview with Bennet’s environmental defense attorney wife Susan Daggett, Bennet left his job in corporate America because he wanted to make a difference. Bennet did the opposite of corporate raiding and looting, as Romanoff’s strategists have spun. Instead of taking successful businesses and destroying them, Bennet took failed businesses and rebuilt them, creating hundreds of jobs in CO, and thousands of new jobs across the country.

The most ridiculous of the outlandish claims is that Bennet is somehow responsible for the political behavior of his former boss, Phil Anschutz. Bennet never had anything in common with Phil Anschutz politically, and Phil Anschutz is not supporting Michael Bennet in this race.(In fact, Anschutz has been donating heavily to Jane Norton’s campaign to defeat Bennet.) In fact, when Bennet took the job with Anschutz, one of the first things he said to him was, “You know my wife is an attorny who sues people like you for a living”.

Michael Bennet then took a huge pay cut to serve as John Hickenlooper’s Chief of Staff, after helping John get elected to office. Bennet was warned when he took the job at the Denver Public Schools that it was a thankless job, and he would be forced to make difficult, unpopular decisions — yet he still he took it. Bennet did not seek out a job as Sentor, but when it became available, he decided he would interview for it, so he could serve the public.

The Romanoff campaign’s anti-Bennet vitriol-spewing machine has no basis in reality. It is not rooted in policy distinctions, respect for the President or Colorado’s Democratic delegation, the mathematical odds of Romanoff winning an election without funding, Romanoff’s actual qualifications or experience, or a desire to preserve the unity and the dignity of the Democratic party in CO. Like the tea-party movement on the right, CO’s misguided yet legitimately angry anti-corporate movement on the far left has been manipulated by crafty campaign strategists and talk-show hosts who depend on ratings to pay their out-of-state mortgages.

For now, the passion and the rhetoric seem to be increasing. Bennet appears to be the scapegoat-du-jour, until of course, CO Democrats find a Republican to hate soon.