July 27, 2015 11:09 AM UTC

Is Michael Bennet Re-Electable?

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• by: madmike

I don’t know where ColoradoPols gets its numbers for “The Big Line -2016,” but I have a feeling that somebody is way off the mark when it comes to Sen. Michael Bennet’s chances of getting re-elected in 2016.  The most recent Quinnipiac poll showed voters say 40-32 percent that he does not deserve reelection in 2016.  If you go to his Facebook page and read his posts you may note that he spends a lot of time trying to work with Republicans.  There he is out in a wheat field with his pal, Koch-Republican Corey Gardner, touting  “bipartisanship the Colorado way.”  A little further down he proudly proclaims how he’s working with Voucher King, Orrin Hatch, to adopt successful educational programs and “invest in what works for kids,” a Republican code word for giving taxpayer money to for-profit corporations and charter schools.   Just read the comments that Colorado citizens write in response to Sen. Bennet’s posts.  People are angry.  And they’re fed up with being told that as a purple state in a center-right nation, it’s necessary for Democrats like Sen. Bennet to reach out to Republicans in order to get elected and, then reelected.  That’s nonsense.

The folks who publish this website spend a lot of time and energy telling us what we already know – that Republicans in Colorado are out to destroy public education, marginalize women minorities, and feed the rich at the expense of everybody else.  But I rarely see you take a fellow Democrat to task.  And if anybody deserves it, it’s Michael Bennet.  Just this year he has voted for a bill to build the Keystone XL pipeline and to override the President’s veto of that bill.  He has voted to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership bill.  And he has joined Senate Republicans to stifle the Obama administration’s efforts to secure a deal that would stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.  I won’t be a bit surprised if he votes with Republicans again to kill the deal altogether.

Somebody needs to tell Sen. Bennet that he needs to start acting and sounding like a Democrat if he wants to get re-elected in 2016.  And I’m calling on the editors at ColoradoPols to do more, much more, to push him in that direction.  Colorado has already lost one Democratic senator.  We can’t afford to lose another.  But that is exactly what is going to happen unless Sen. Bennet changes his ways.  One can only hope it’s not too late.