September 12, 2014 11:45 AM UTC

Wash Post: Dems Feel Good About Senate Races in IA, MI, and...Colorado

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• by: Colorado Pols

From our friends at "The Fix" comes an interesting new look at the Senate races around the country:

And so, before we ranked the twelve most competitive races in the fight for the Senate majority this fall, we chatted — via email — with a half dozen strategists in both parties to get their sense of which races are moving where. With a few exceptions, their impressions jibed — private polling rarely lies — and suggested that Republicans should feel good but not great about their chances of picking up the six seats they need to retake Senate control in November.

In pursuit of clarity, we've broken down their thoughts into three categories: 1) Races where Democrats feel good/Republicans don't 2) Races where Republicans feel good/Democrat's don't 3) Races where opinion is mixed.

In this reorganization of competitive Senate races, Colorado joins Iowa and Michigan as states where "Democrats feel good/Republicans don't" when it comes to November. Here's what "The Fix" says about Colorado specifically — which mirrors something we've been saying a lot lately:

10. Colorado (Democratic-controlled): Rep. Cory Gardner (R) is a talented politician. Unfortunately for him, some of the votes and positions — particularly on personhood — during his time in the House are being effectively used by Democrats as a cudgel against him with suburban Denver women. Those women, of course, also represent the swing constituency that a Republican must make inroads with to have a chance of winning statewide. (Previous ranking: 10)

Yes, Personhood is absolutely destroying Rep. Cory Gardner's campaign — and he has nobody to blame but himself. When Gardner tried to reverse his position on Personhood back in March, he did so with the hope that he could get this prickly issue out of the way to focus on other narratives. Not only did that experiment fail miserably, but Gardner has been chasing his tail trying to explain himself ever since. Things have gotten so bad that Gardner has been reduced to just flat-out lying about his co-sponsorship of a federal Personhood bill, telling 9News' Brandon Rittiman that "there is no federal Personhood bill." What is so fascinating here is Gardner's brazenness in insisting that the bill doesn't exist — even though it takes all of about 15 seconds to find it with a simple Google search; it takes some serious chutzpah to try to sell that shit sandwich (to a reporter, no less).

Some six months after Gardner tried to scrub himself of Personhood responsibility, the issue has become such a weight on his campaign that national reporters have picked up on the problem. So, that didn't work so well.