23 thoughts on “Upcoming Events with Michael Bennet”

1. But most of these occurred this evening.

   It’s pretty cool that Bennet hit five different counties in one day though.

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2. He’s going to personally meet every voter in the state – twice.

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3. through Google Maps for a more user-friendly application?

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4. – BEGIN DISJOINTED PRO-ROMANOFF COMMENT –
   
   I’m surprised that Bennet has time to travel around the state in between selling out progressives to lobbyists in Washington. I’m supporting Andrew Romanoff because he is a dedicated public servant who will fight for real reform at all levels of government. I’m sorry, but I’m not like all of you jaded political hacks who give Bennet credit for things he’s actually done, raising money and what-not so he can get elected in November. Lobbyists. Politics-as-usual. Rawr.
   
   – END DISJOINTED PRO-ROMANOFF COMMENT –

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   1. I will give you the idea that he needs to travel because he is campaigning (although his events are more open to the public than other politician’s seem to be), but how are we jaded?

      Michael Bennet listens to his constituents.  I was once a Romanoff supporter, but I gave Michael Bennet a chance to earn my respect.  He has earned it again and again and again by listening to my concerns, and those of the people I know. He is also a “dedicated public servant who will figt for real reform at all levels of government”. The difference between him and Andrew Romanoff in this Senate race? Michael Bennet is already doing the job, and doing it extremely well.  He deserves to be in the Senate, and we need him there.

      Seems to me “jaded” may apply to those who won’t examine his impressive record or give him a chance.  

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         1. ; )

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5. Is there a harder working Senator in the US Senate? I would find it hard to believe.  Despite this grueling schedule (and he has been doing this kind of thing for many months all over the state), he has also taken time to review materials given to him by constitutents and respond personally. In my three decades of political interest/involvement, I have never met a politician as responsive to his constituents — ever.

   Last week, I was out of town for an emergency with my father who was gravely ill. While there, I received a personal message from Senator Bennet and his family saying my family was in their thoughts and prayers. I don’t work for Senator Bennet — I am just a constituent who gave him a chance from the beginning to impress me.  He has earned my respect and support many times over.  
   

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6. Type the hard questions online, get a response online, sworn to have been written by Mr. Bennet personally (given that he seems to have endless hours to spend motoring about from house to house–do those meetings include free Fuller brushes?) that everyone can read without schlepping off to Estes Park for a chance (pant, pant) to meet (pant pant pant) and greet (pant pant pant pant) Michael (pass out on floor).

   1. Do you really expect us to believe that campaign contributions don’t influence your votes in the Senate?

   2. Did your pharmaceutical company contributors give the money so you could buy gas to get to Estes and promise to vote against specific rules and laws (no reimportation, for example) that appear to benefit Pharma at the expense of people down there in the Other End of town?

   3. IF I lay down bucks and buy something–all legal, I swear, Sargent Preston, and God Save the, errr, Queen–and you tell me I can’t bring it with me in my toilet kit when I cross from Canada to the USofA on grounds of intellectual property,… well, is that a principle you learned at Yale law school, or in a post-grad course conducted in a Washington townhouse after work? You know, the one where the teachers paid you to attend. Yeah, that one.

   4. If I get into debt over my head and declare bankruptcy, the money I owe can be reduced–even to zero–unless the money was used to buy a house, in which case the bank is better off if I’m in the street and they’re selling a foreclosed house in a market jammed with houses like this, on grounds that the national financial picture, already grim, would be grimmer if I lived in that house and paid something for it, hoping against hope its value would rise, in which case maybe I’d pay off the whole mortgage. In other words, banks are better off if everyone suffers immediate losses, plus one party has to move onto the street ’cause s/he lost a job. Is that right? Was this part of a Wesleyan Money and Banking course in sophomore year? Or a lobbyist’s pitch post-grad?

   5. Just between you and me, Senator, is that a twinkle I see in your eye? ‘Cause I have a lot more questions we could discuss outside…
   

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   1. Side bet: $5 will get you $10 that Mikey won’t be coming online, personally, to answer the hard questions any time soon. (I get to define “soon.”)

      Medical advice: Don’t hold your breath until he does answer rude questions outside the context of Croon and Swoon, or until he starts championing vigorous financial markets reform as a member, albeit junior, of the Banking Committee.

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   2. He voted for reimportation(no I’m not looking it up right now)

      http://www.senate.gov/legislat…

      I know, I know you’re wondering how something he voted for could still have failed to pass.  Well, there’s 99 other Senators, see and …. you get the idea

      You think his campaign stops are too ez – great attend one, and ask anything you want.
      

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      1. Apologies to the senator.

         Note to self: Fact check, JO. Check your facts before you fly off, next time…

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      2. … I couldn’t find Bennet’s vote on reimportation. The link above refers to the USA PATRIOT Act in one or other of its iterations.

         Since I expect that the good senator’s staff monitors this blog from month to month, perhaps they could aid a constituent and point us to his (losing) drug reimportation vote.

         (The apology stands, however, unless I have to retract it in the event that he didn’t vote in particular on authorizing reimportation, but… well, let’s not get carried away… yet. The day is young, the coffee still fresh, the sunrise was beautiful. Great day to drive up to Estes, or down to Berthoud, maybe head over to the Left Slope, or wait, may I’m on the Left Slope. Oh, life is so confusing. I should just do what the White House and Rahm tell me…)
         

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         1. I gave you the link to look it up- you didn’t but here

            http://www.dtcperspectives.com…
            

            This week, the Senate voted down the much debated reimportation bill proposed by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and supported by Sen. John McCain (R, Ariz.).  The vote, which actually went 51-48 in favor of the bill, failed because it required at least 60 votes in order to be adopted.
            

            amendment #2793

            And here or

            http://www.senate.gov/legislat…

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            1. Apology stands, double down since I sorta seemed to be waffling a bit ’cause I couldn’t work the Google machine properly. My fault.

               I accept that Bennet voted to legalize (or against de-legalizing, again, as the case may have been) reimportation. To his credit.

               And now I’m afraid to ask, “Just in case, who’s going to run to replace Loopdeloop?” for fear of whose name I might hear…

               And where it stops, nobody knows…

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               1. but I’m not going to say anything until and unless

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   3. I think JO is prepping the field for a third candidate in the D Senate Primary.

      The message has been loud, if not 100% clear
      
      1. JO wants a Senator who will vote against corporate donors
      
      2. JO wants a Senator who is for drug re-importation
      
      3. JO wants someone not Ivy league educated, or maybe just not law school educated
      
      4. JO wants bankruptcy reform – but not from someone who went to Wesleyan
      
      5. JO wants to make out with a US Senator. Or throw down in a brawl.

      Bennet has taken corporate donations, and voted against those donors. But JO doesn’t like Bennet. Andrew took corporate donations before, voting record up until the special session is unclear ont his one. Sometimes he voted for them, sometimes against.

      Bennet voted for reimportation, against big pharma donor wishes.  I can’t find a voting opportunity for Andrew on reimportaiton – I presume he would have voted for it too. It apparently never came up when he was in office. Which seems odd- I recall other states getting into it, but not CO. Oh, CO just chose not to.
      
      They both went to Yale and both went to law school.

      I’m starting to get it: JO does not want either of them to have JO”s support. There must be a third D getting ready to announce. And I hope so- primaries are apparently a good thing.

      JO wants bankruptcy reform. Senator Bennet voted against the cramdown last spring, and then this winter admitted eforts to keep homeowners in their homes was a colossal failure and the Senate will do better.  Romaonoff has no voting record on this issue that I can find. Though the most homeowner friendy mortgage regulations are state laws not federal anymore. CO never got into it.

      Andrew has the rep for being the cute one. But I never understood what that had to do with anything. I always liked Senator Paul Simon and Senator Wellstone. Not exactly cover boys. Waitaminute- JO tried to call me out over mentioning candidates’ families and dogs, so this must not have been a veiled suggestion of making out. She wants to fight Senator Bennet.   Wait – this must be one of those loud but no-so-clear moments where JO is saying something, I just have no idea what.

      Now – some Romanoff quotes from the campaign trail.

      http://coloradocommunitynewspa…

      While taking questions from an audience of about 100 residents in the neighborhood’s clubhouse, the senatorial hopeful playfully dismissed a suggestion that he seek the Democratic nomination for governor instead.

      “We get a lot of calls to that effect, but not all of them from Sen. Bennet’s campaign,” Romanoff joked.
      

      That was last Thursday night. And by Sunday he had apparently decided to quit the Senate race, and then decided to unquit later the same day.

      “I’m running for the Senate because I want to bring the same bipartisan leadership that we’ve been able to build in Colorado to a town where it seems in such short supply. It’s almost invisible,” the former House speaker said.

      What? Bipartisanship? I thought that was a bad thing?  I recall several posts CoPols.com where Senator Bennet was criticized for saying that he wanted to bring bipartisan leadership to the Senate. Specifically when he said he wanted financial reform to attract bipartisan support.

      Romanoff is critical of the U.S. Senate health care bill that will soon be reconciled with a House version. The candidate believes Senate Democrats made a mistake when they removed the public insurance option from its reform measure.

      “Congress has chosen to pass a bill that requires every American to purchase insurance, but does too little to make the policies affordable,” he said. “… It’s not worth sacrificing our principles in order to achieve some cosmetic commitment to bipartisanship.”
      

      I recall several R posts and news articles that made essentially the same appeal to D’s This bill is flawed, let’s kill it and start over

      And Romanoff makes the same bizarre assumption that others have made; that somehow the healthcare bill could have passed with less than 60 votes. With the public option, or single payer, or a hundred other features, the bill couldn’t pass.  Secretary Clinton acknowledged this. President Clinton acknowledged this. As have hundreds and thousands of other D thinkers and leaders who want the bill to go further but realize the votes weren’t there.  Senator Bennet’s vote was there for a public option – he said so on national tv.  

      When pressed twice by an audience member, Romanoff stopped short of saying he would vote against the Senate bill in its current form.

      Of course. No way he was going to be the lone D holdout who killed any chance for the healthcare bill.

      But, hey, it’s the campaign season. It’s ok to MSU and change history and then change it back.

      …pledged not to accept contributions from corporate special-interest groups, tied the state of the final Senate bill to efforts by lobbyists for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

      “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but you can connect the dots without too much trouble,” he said. “If you allow large corporate special-interest groups to bankroll Congress, you ought not be surprised.”
      

      A lesson he learned when he was getting large corporate special-interest groups to bank roll him, in one of the safest house seats in Colorado, and his DLC and CODA friends and organizations that did wonders to build the party here. But it’s all tainted now because we now know that connecting the dots tells us that if the donors are not local, progressive, community activists but instead large corporate donors,  the elected leaders and organizations they support are worse than flawed.

      JO must be wanting another D.

      With respect to energy policy, the candidate advocated reducing the income tax and offsetting it with a new pollution or carbon-based tax.

      “Even if global warming is a fad that will go away on its own,” he said, “the worst thing that will happen if we … reduce our reliance on foreign fossil fuel and use our natural resources as alternatives is we will succeed in creating millions of good green-powered jobs, clean up our skies, protect our public health and defend our national security.”

      So now Andrew wants to raise taxes on energy – which affects everyone and is generally considered regressive.  And cut progressive income taxes. I know JO won’t go for that. Economic division of income is the single most important reason for government and therefore the one thing acceptably progressive D’s must be progressive about.  Not regressive taxes like consumption taxes.

      And Wade won’t be happy about this at all:  “Even if global warming is a fad”  OMG! I recall Wade attempting to imply that AR was wayyyy more progressive and in the know on AGW and climate change.  He must want a 3rd D too.  

      Which is ok, but primaries are a good thing. Even primaries where candidates MSU and re-write history cause they think that they can say one thing in the suburban clubhouse and something else somewhere else.

      I think if you look carefully in the picture accompanying the article, there is a fork or two. Makes sense to me.
      

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      1. Darn it, that also rules out Hickenlooper (or whatever JO’s latest, cutest nickname is — Loopdelooper?).

         As for the Third Way sought by JO and Wade … is it too late to ask Harold Ford to ditch New York and move to Colorado?

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         1. Is the most polite description I’ve heard for the apparent desires of  JO, Wade and many others.

            Too late.

            Fork, please.
            

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   4. While you were blogging every five minutes on S2, many of us were working on health care reform all year.  We met with Senator Michael Bennet in person, we met with his staff, we rallied with his staff, we called and talked to staff on the phone, etc.  Michael Bennet was extremely accessible to us, and extremely responsive.  He appeared at HUNDREDS of house parties and Town Halls where he told us health care is a moral obligation.

      Where was Andrew Romanoff on health care reform? Nowhere. Not a single event/rally/town hall/meeting, etc. I know he is a good guy and cares about people, but in 2009, he was resting on his laurels, and people do not forget that.

      Andrew jumped in the race too late and he knows it. Personally, I feel sorry for him.  He deserves better advice than what he got in 2009.

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      1. He has only himself to blame for his career missteps the last couple years.  So I cannot join you in feeling sorry for him.

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