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March 18, 2010 09:58 PM UTC

Hold the Confetti, Really

  • 75 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

There are two very different narratives taking shape in the wake of last Tuesday’s Democratic caucuses–one is what we’re seeing repeated quite a bit in national press, the story of candidate Andrew Romanoff’s “stunning victory” over appointed Sen. Michael Bennet, which dovetails nicely with the story of Ken Buck’s surprisingly strong finish in GOP Senate preference polls. We don’t begrudge out-of-state reporters for oversimplifying what happened in Colorado this week for the purposes of fitting the whole thing into one paragraph or TV news clip, c’est la vie.

But the other narrative, which we think much more accurately reflects the process in Colorado and the state of this race generally, was reported by the Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels today:

Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff declared victory for the little guy in Tuesday night’s caucuses, saying “Main Street won, Wall Street lost,” but among the pundit class, the results were viewed differently.

By barely cracking 50 percent among the people perceived as his base, Romanoff has a tough row to hoe to compete with Michael Bennet, his $3.7 million in the bank and deep support from the Obama administration, said political consultants Steve Welchert, a Democrat, and Katy Atkinson, a Republican…

Democrats at their caucuses had only one major contested race, the matchup between Romanoff and Bennet, who was appointed to the U.S. Senate in January 2009. Romanoff received 50 percent to Bennet’s 41 percent.

“We just saw the strongest day Romanoff is likely to have,” Welchert said. “The fact that the spread is 10 points evaporates when you’re going to be outspent 10-to-1.”

Atkinson said she had expected Romanoff to top Bennet, but by a wider margin.

With irony that few readers will miss, Romanoff’s biggest defender in Bartels’ story is none other than Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams:

“Are you kidding me?” Wadhams said. “With all respect to my good friend Katy, Romanoff didn’t even get into the race until September, and President Obama just came here and campaigned for Bennet.”

We have a little bit of news to add to this parlor-game debate, which is really just a debate about impressions of impressions ahead of the parts of the primary process that matter: but impressions being the game today, you might be interested in knowing that Romanoff has dropped below the much-balleyhooed 50% threshold in the latest updated caucus preference poll results. As of 12:50PM MDT, Romanoff is sitting at 49.96%–unlike sale prices in the grocery store, a few cents off doesn’t actually make this number more appealing.

Joking aside, our view hasn’t changed: Romanoff didn’t beat Bennet by enough of a margin to make Tuesday’s caucus preference poll “conclusive” either way, and that means Romanoff did not perform well enough to meaningfully affect the same long odds he faced before the caucuses.

Steve Welchert is stating the simple facts of the matter above when he talks about Romanoff being outspent 10-1 in the coming months, and that is all that’s going to matter when it comes to reaching thousands of primary voters instead of hundreds of ardent party-activist caucusgoers. The same thing holds true for Buck on the Republican side; his victory on Tuesday is certainly significant, but if he has another $40,000 quarter of fundraising, none of this will make any difference come August. As we’ve said over and over, the voters who will decide the primary are not all that different than the voters who will decide the general election. They’re not that interested and not well-informed, so it’s going to take a lot of mail, radio, and especially television to get those votes–none of which you can buy with contrived moral rectitude.

Comments

75 thoughts on “Hold the Confetti, Really

  1. how close that Wadhams quote is compared to parts of what Romanoff supporters on this site have been saying yesterday and today.

    I feel like I’m in an alternate dimension. Dick Wadhams comments are in line with passionate Democratic activists. As Maggie Simpson said in Treehouse of Horror V: “This is indeed a disturbing universe.”

    1. break 50% with the tiny portion of hardcore devoted, tuned in Dems who attend caucus, the ones that are suposed to be his base?  And Andrew was supposed to be the underdog with this crowd? Everybody, including Romanoff,everyone working on his campaign and including Wadhams knows that everything coming out of their mouths about a stunning victory for an underdog is total crap.

      Romanoff was heavily favored for caucus. Bennet was such an underdog a few months ago there was actually some fretting about his being able to break the 30% threshold to avoid having to petition on.

      If this is all AR’s base amounts to, barely half of the voters most likely to be Romanoff supporters, what chance does he have with primary voters, most of whom know little or nothing about him against an incumbent who can so spend as much as he wants on TV, spreading his name rec?  Yeah, stunning.  

      1. always without attribution.

        Romanoff was expected to win the caucus, true, but when did anyone seriously claim or worry that Bennet wouldn’t break 30%?  

        1. I really don’t want to go through hundreds of comments to find it, but it was said by more than person.

          On the other hand, those people were probably the equivalent of StrykerK2.

          Shocking to some, but concern trolling was prevalent last year as well.

        2. campaign volunteers.  True, they may have been a little neurotic.  But the truth is it was Bennet who came into caucus as the underdog and Romanoff who was the overwhelming favorite to win since the  tiny world of dedicated, non-presidential year, Dem caucus goers was supposed to be the source of his most ardent, strongest support.

          He didn’t quite manage 50% even among those deemed the very most likely of all voters to support him.  What are the chances of his doing as well or better among the much larger less Romanoff connected or connected in general pool of Dem primary voters.

          This was no upset and that’s a fact. It could have been worse for AR but not much. There will be no surge of funding based on this, all things considered,  very underwhelming victory.

  2. As I posted elsewhere, anything within 10 points was considered a victory.

    We are fine. The Speaker’s activist base gave us their best shot, and now we have the initiative.

    Besides the stimulus, Sen. Bennet has been influential in gaining aid of 300 million for Colorado dairy farmers, 40 million for  pine beetle disease in the mountains, and 40 Million for the Arkansas Valley conduit to bring fresh water to parts of Southern Colorado.

    Sen Bennet listens to Colorado voters, and tells it like it is, sometimes to his disadvantage as his opponents are keen to take thing sout of context.  

    He has an excellent relationship with the President, leads on healthcare, and deserves 6 more years to represent Colorado

  3. Sorry, Pols, but the Bennet spin aside, here are the facts:  hundreds of thousands spent to mobilize a machine that turned out over 100,000 Democrats in 2008 simply couldn’t mobilize a victory for Bennet.  You and the Bennet folks can call whatever you want “less than expected,” but the fact remains that all the DNC money and phone calls and Obama visits couldn’t change the results.

    Bennet put out a lot more than Norton in the hopes of an establishment victory.  And he failed even more spectacularly than Norton.  Springfield, you were bound to call whatevern Bennet ended the night with a victory, but the reality is at odds with what you are saying.

    Now, the national media are waking up to the fact that there is actually a race in Colorado.  The DC elite had told them something different.  Hmmm…  

    Maybe we’ll get off of all of this Romanoff-bashing on Pols, and get to substantive issues.  Oh, wait… apparently not.

    1. Let’s talk immigration reform.  Let’s talk jobs, Let’s talk new energy economy. Let’s talk getting some kind of health care.Let’s talk about the pine beetle problem. Let;s talk about daity farmers. Let’s talk about stopping Iran from getting a bomb.

      Let’s talk foriegn policy in general. Let’s talk about Iraq and Afganistan. Let’s talk about drugs and the violence on our borders due to prohibition.Let’s talk about civil rights.

      I’m very ready to have those discussions.

      1. The most effective and useful regulation in protecting homeowners from foreclosure has been done by the states that have done it. Likewise pay day loans.

          1. I’m pretty sure HOLC turned a profit- sometime in the  late 40’s or early 50’s.

            I’d love to see it back in action – but with tight definitions: primary residences, no fraud in the original loan, means tested against assets, etc.

            1. I think they wound it down in 47, and yes it had turned a profit.

              And I definitely want it just as you describe (primary residence not fraudulently acquired), but one of the keys of the HOLC was it tried to keep people who had lost their jobs in their homes while they found a new job so their has to be some flexibility in the means testing.  One of the advantages of the HOLC is they could show a lot of forbearance (just pay us something) which allowed people to come to the conclusion they had to move on themselves and prevented the large social disruption of forced evictions across a community.

    2. It’s Romanoff who couldn’t hang on to his base, which would be Dems involved enough to be caucus goers in a low attendance year like this one.  If he can’t get quite 50% of them, he’s not getting more than 50% of anybody else.  

    3. I would not exactly call this a big blow to Bennet. More of a love tap. Meanwhile I think the fact that Romanoff came up just short of breaking 50% means that I have to say, “Stick a fork in him.” I’m a delegate for Romanoff, but realistically unless something unexpected comes out about Bennet or we see a campaign that we have not seen up to this point it’s over.

      I’m still going to the convention and assembly and I’m still voting for him as a way to send a message, but I expect that when the primaries come around Romanoff will have dropped out and I’ll be voting for Bennet come November.

  4. Let’s not forget that the continuation of this race prevents the national staff and monetary resources of the DSCC from coming to help Bennet.  There are only six weeks after the August primary before mail ballots are sent out.  In essence, there is no meaningful general election here in Colorado.  (Maybe we should fix that, huh?)  

    So, if Romanoff happens to pull a unicorn out of the box and wins the August primary, there will be no time or money to run an effective general election campaign.

    As said before, I doubt the caucus results caused many people to open their wallots and donate to Romanoff.  

    Conclusion: If Romanoff reports another lackluster fundraising quarter, then he really must drop out of the race or risk the Dems losing this seat. And I’ll view all of his supporters with the same disdain I still view supporters of Ralph Nader.  

      1. Unfortunately, his campaign is more ego driven than anything else. What you hear from Romanoff and his supporters is this was HIS seat.

        I find it interesting also, to find Romanoff using Hillary and Republican tactics (Remember: Obama doesn’t have the experiance, he’s only been in the Senate 2 years).

        With all this anger toward Wasington and incumbents, Bennet is the better choice, afterall Romanoff is the career politician.

        Bennet has been an excellent Senator for short amount of  time he has served. Plus your progressive Democrats don’t belong to the DLC.

        1. I went to on Tuesday, the AR speaker called Bennet a snake. That was verbatim his response to why Bennet should be fired. Incredible! Worst of all, half of the caucus goers (about 70) stood up and cheered. This is where the AR campaign is steering their messaging, this isn’t good for the party and is going to wreak havoc on AR’s future prospects. After the crap race AR’s run, It’s going to take a lot for me to support the guy again. Too bad, oh well lot’s of up in comers in the pipeline

          1. The nasty tone of Romanoff’s campaign has turned many good Democrats off. When he loses this race, he will find many active Democrats not willing to support him in future races.

            As you say though, there are many good Democrats in the pipeline.  

              1. I didn’t say anything about the Romanoff supporters. I said the nasty tone of his campaign. Where did I say his supporters were bad Democrats? Sorry if you don’t like the fact that many good Democrats don’t support him.

                1. for reading a little too fast. It was Devilishly Moderate who mentioned these people.

                  Worst of all, half of the caucus goers (about 70) stood up and cheered.

                  I am not a judge of what makes a “good” or “bad” Democrat. I have only been one for 38 years; I have a lot to learn.

                2. Since you are recommending reading comprehension studies, let me also encourage you to point out where I said this:

                  you don’t like the fact that many good Democrats don’t support him.

                  Stay sweet.

      1. The Republicans were in terrible shape, the economy was in ruins in Sept. Obama should have won by a larger margin.

        Tell me this, are you happy that Norton is in a close primary race?? I’m assuming you’re going to say yes… Now ask yourself why do you feel this way? Now could it be because it’s going to weaken Norton (coffers, increased negatives, wasted time attacking your own party, pulls her to the right)… Now let’s apply this logic to Bennet/AR race, you still think primaries don’t have any impact??? If you still disagree and you aren’t excited that Norton has a primary than you need to get your head examined

    1. Caroman-

      This is a pretty tired talking point.  That national party is already involved in the primary.  You might have noticed all the OFA staff running around for Bennet?

    2. I expect that I’ll be voting for Sen. Bennet come November. But people like you make very angry about that fact. I want to be a happy Democrat voting for the best possible candidate not someone who’s holding his nose to vote for an ASSHOLE because he’s not a Republican.

  5. is over…

    So now the Bennet campaign can stop calling 8 times a day…

    (I am still pulling for Romanoff.)

    Dick Wads agreement does have me feeling a bit woozy though.

  6. Two of the three Romanoff supporters in our precinct supported AR because he was standing on principle on HCR.  My response was “I don’t want to wait until I’m 65 to afford insurance.”

    The next day Kucinich jumped on the pro-HCR float.  The people paying attention to this are many of the people who support AR.  I doubt they will admit it, but this is a serious blow.  It undermines confidence in him as being on the right side of this issue.  We could call it a judgement call, and he came out on the wrong side, or at least that will be the sentiment for the next couple of months.  I think he just dug his hole deeper.

    1. there are some instant benefits to the bill, but most don’t kick in until 2014.

      There is still plenty of grassroots momentum to get public option/single payer enacted, for instance, Grayson’s medicare for all bill has 80 plus signers in 3 days.

      What will be interesting to see is what people like Polis and Bennet who started public option support letters will do after this bill is passed – will they reintroduce a separate bill for public option/single payer?

      those are the types of questions that need to be answered before we know how all of this will play out.

            1. your “proof” is two bennet supporters claiming they heard it at an event.  Since when has that passed as proof on this site (or anywhere else?).  Did they record it?  Do you have any actual evidence besides hearsay?

              Caroman has tried pushing that a few times now…and never been able to back it up.

              1. About the 4th or 5th paragraph

                And News 4 said they have 12 minutes of the debate up on their website.

                http://cbs4denver.com/campaign

                There are no time marks, it’s hard to scroll, but just past the halfway point, talking about the Senate healthcare bill,  Romanoff says it would have “only taken one Senator” to stand up to the special deals before the vote (which Bennet did) and then he says “I wouldn’t have voted for …”

                I know Speaker Romanoff is being more careful since then to not come right out and say it again – Sirota tried to get him to say it Wed morning and he just danced around it the first two times and then pivoted completely away when Sirota said it again.  

                I also am aware that Romanoff has described it as a “…false choice to suggest the only option we have got is to either ‘kill the bill’ or to settle…”  But here’s the thing and there is really no getting around it : on Dec 24th when the vote was called, it wasn’t a false choice.  It was vote for it- flaws and all- or vote against it and kill it.

                The rest is just wishful thinking that somehow if only Romanoff was there, it would have been a better bill, if only Romanoff was there it would have been a cleaner process, if only Romaonff was there, we would have single payer by now. Hooey.

                I’ll get you another link – unless you want hit the google and find it.

                 

                  1. forget the quotes and links for a minute.

                    What if he had just said it plainly?

                    Something like:

                    If I was there I would have voted to kill the Senate bill because of all the flaws in both process and content.  We can do better… etc

                    Would it bother you?

                    Do you think he should say it?

                    I have family and friends in Dennis Kucinich’s district and they’re glad he held out as long as did (he’s a yes vote now). They like that he wants single payer and will vote no on incremental changes, even if they are incremental improvements.

                     

              2. This is a quote from the Denver Young Dems debate.  You can find it yourself on Aaron Harber’s Colorado 2010 site.

                Romanoff: “If I had been in the Senate last year, for example, I would not have voted for backroom deals that benefited some states to the exclusion of others….  It would have taken just one senator in the majority party… to say no.”

                Is That Proof Enough For You???

                (Now, of course, later in the debate he claims it’s a “false choice” to say he would have voted against it.  But, that just proves that Romanoff is a careet politician weasel.)

                1. sounds like he would have fought against all the crap being in the bill.

                  Call him a career politician, spin his statements and ignore the fact it is a false choice, do whatever, but your quote still doesn’t say what you want it to say.

                  1. had voted against on principle, none of the avenues open to Dems such as reconciliation, deem and pass, passing what we have now and trying again for public option  later, a potential big win for Dems instead of a potential big win for Rs would be open to us.  

                    Of course I don’t think he really would have voted against. That’s just campaign blather because he has so few ops to differentiate himself from Bennet on anything of substance. I’m sure that if pigs spout wings and fly and he becomes our senator, we’ll be able to count on him to be the same DLC, centrist, deal making,  practical pol he’s always been. And I’ll vote for him.  He certainly won’t morph into the fire breathing, principle above all progressive many of his supporters have been trying to create out of whole cloth.  

    2. Bennet voted no on cram-down.

      He weakly supported the public option until Romanoff got into the race.

      He said he was worried about “unintended consequencies” regarding banking reform.

      He was appointed by an anti-labor governor and Ritter is despised by many democrats who no longer trust him to make the right decisions.

      And we are in the worst crisis since the Great Depression brought to you by the banks too big to fail and who are contributing heavily to Bennet’s campaign.

      That’s enough for me and many others to worry about from a candidate like Bennet?  

  7. Telling Colorado Springs and Grand Junction to piss off. I guess you all just don’t count unless you move to Denver.

    Toda said the areas Bennet’s team is highlighting include Colorado Springs and Grand Junction, some of the reddest areas of the state.

    “McCain carried them both,” Toda noted. “These locations are not going to help anyone very much in a Democratic primary,” he added.

    http://www.politico.com/news/s

    1. Democrats, any Democrats, are lucky to pull in the high 30 percent range in Mesa County. Occasionally you’ll see one slide into the 40 percent plus range, but it isn’t often.

    2. Regardless, he’s half right: Mesa and El Paso County sure aren’t going to be helping Romanoff very much in the primary.

      Next up, how will Toda manage to insult Boulder, Larimer, Weld, La Plata, Hinsdale, etc. for daring to support Bennet on Tuesday?

      He already managed to disrespect 42% of Colorado Democrats for exercising their right to choose–supposedly the raison d’etre of this entire process:

      “With results nearly complete, the official tally was Main Street 51 percent, Wall Street 42 percent,” said Romanoff spokesman Dean Toda.

      http://www.politico.com/news/s

      Stay classy, Team Romanoff.  

      1. Even if accurate in the relative impact given the size of Dem registration in those areas, Toda’s comments are just stupid. Here’s a suggestion straight out of PR for for Dummies: Don’t insult people you need to win over!

        But the stupid comments came out on both sides with Craig Hughes’ dismissal of all of the caucus goers as an insignificant group that isn’t representative of the Democratic Party or Primary voters. Craig may be right that the caucus is attended by the most hardcore of the activists and tend to be further left than the general Dem voters. But they are the ones who get active, talk to neighbors, knock on doors and work the phones. Just like Today shouldn’t be insulting the counties his boy lost, I don’t think Hughes should be dismissing the 22,000 who showed up (which is almost 3x 2004 & 06).

        Somebody also might want to clarify just where Bennet’s “backyard” or “hometurf” is since Hughes has been quoted in a dozen papers as dismissing the loss as Romanoff winning in “his own backyard” or winning a caucus “on his hometurf.” Mr. Hughes, either inform Senator Bennet that he is no longer “an East Coaster through and through” (as his wife described him) OR maybe suggest he run back in Connecticut on his own hometurf. I’d suggest DC where he really grew up but they don’t get a Senator and CT seems to like his brand of Dem.

        1. I know some folks here think I am nuts, but I think this is good for both parties.

          The threat of corporate, free market influence hasn’t been greater since the turn of the 20th century. As the world struggles to deal with the conversion of a global economy based on the Cold War into a world “Free Market” economy, the US runs a very serious risk of becoming a completely dysfunctional nation.

          From Europe to the Far East, economies seem to be held together with cellophane tape. Naomi Klein ( the Shock Doctrine ) has explained the dynamics, but in order to understand and hope to anticipate both our near and far horizons, we must apply that understanding to the global market.

          In order for any economy to make the transition into Milton Friedmans’ wet dream, a painful transition must take place. There is no world government to inflict the shock, so it is being handled by the corporate government. According to Janine Wedel in “the Shadow Elite” the work is being done in large measure by people she calls “flexians” working through “flex-nets. These people do not represent the governments, but they work within and around it, using the media to build their bona fides.

          I know I sound like a broken record on this, but I believe it is vital that we think long term and globally to find the dierction that will prevent the USA from decending into political chaos and, dare I say it, anarchy. The most important thing to realize though is that the left/right political playing field is losing significance, while class warfare is increasing. The distribution of wealth is more important to most people than who sleeps with whom.

          We simply have to start thinking outside the box in which the box is packed.    

          1. I really appreciated your comments in this thread. Thanks for being here. You remind me of the Romanoff supporters in my caucus who were passionate without being nasty. There are posters here for both sides who have shown that silly season really is here.

            There’s no shortage of nastiness in this primary, and it’s only going to get worse as the summer wears on. I just hope that as we get through August and near closer to November, people will remember the civility and not the nastiness.

        2. From their “victory” email the day after the caucus:

          No one ever thought this was going to be easy — when you’re challenging career politicians on their home turf, it never is.

          And:

          Competing against a political network built over nearly two decades is never easy…

          No, it’s not easy to come into Colorado and beat a Colorado guy on his home turf when all you have is a pot of gold and a vacancy appointment.  

          And the Bennet campaign trotted out the old “outsider” bs.  From the 3/17/10 Denver Post:

          “As someone who isn’t a political insider, tonight’s support is especially meaningful,” Bennet said in a release.

          As I’ve said before, it would be harder to find someone who is more of an insider than Bennet.  In fact, that’s one of the reasons we are supposed to like him so much.  He’s an insider with all those East Coasters so he can get us stuff.  Which is it?

          Colorado Democrats needed to see they really do have a choice and now they know they do.  Colorado Democrats will no longer be giving Bennet the blind pass-through that the Democratic power structure was demanding.  

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