How the West Was Cursed

John Hickenlooper dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination campaign. The former Colorado governor just could not get enough attention in an overcrowded field as this one.

I'll get to the specific reasons for Hickenlooper's departure later.  But for now, I just want to comment on how Hickenlooper is only the latest in a series of Democratic presidential candidates from the West - defined as any state west of the 102nd meridian - who couldn't get the presidential nomination.  Party elders and political experts have been looking at the West as an opportunity for Democratic growth to compensate for their eroding base of support in other regions, and they've made progress there in the past couple of decades, but the parry still doesn't seem to be interested in tapping talent from these twelve states to stand for the highest office in the land or even the Vice Presidency.  No Democrat from the West has ever been on a national ticket.

Gary Hart came the closest.  When he announced his candidacy for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, he did so on April 13, 1987, on a big rock in a park outside Denver with his wife and daughter by his side.  The symbolism was twofold - he was making the announcement on the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson, the President who bought Louisiana and promoted westward expansion all the way to the Pacific, and he made it in a landscape that exuded Western culture and values as a way of sending the message that states like his own Colorado were the future.

Alas, the West had as bright a future in presidential politics as Hart did.  Democratic dominance on the West Coast would actually help make the West less relevant in presidential politics; California would become solidly Democratic after 1988, and Washington and Oregon, as well as Hawaii, would go so firmly in the Democratic column as well that no one was going to fight over any of these states in a general election.  Today, Democrats don't seem to be able to communicate with average voters from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevada or seem to understand their concerns on the economy or local issues like water rights and the like.  Democratic competitiveness in Arizona and Idaho have been a tough go, and Democratic successes in Montana and New Mexico have been qualified at best.  Alaska, Utah and Wyoming are solidly Republican, redder than the rock Gary Hart stood on while announcing his 1988 presidential bid.  And while Colorado, as well as Nevada, has to some extent, become competitive, no one in the Democratic Party thinks enough of Colorado to nominate someone from Colorado for President.

That includes Michael Bennet (above), who not only holds Gary Hart's old Senate seat and shares a birthday with Hart, he also shares the stigma of being a well-coiffed white guy who seems too perfect for women and people of color to trust.       

But even women of color like California's Kamala Harris (below, left) and Hawaii's Tulsi Gabbard have a problem.  It's not that a lot of bigoted people wouldn't vote for them.  It's that, judging from the Democratic presidential debates, they wouldn't vote for each other.

Man, did some sh-- go down in Detroit! 

Meanwhile, Washington State governor Jay Inslee (below, left) and Montana governor Steve Bullock are trying to be heard with their presidential campaigns, but people are so busy ignoring Tim Ryan that they don't even know they're running.   

Democratic presidential candidates from the West are candidates that members the Washington establishment of the party simply don't take seriously, just as they don't take the ranchers and farmers out there seriously and just as they take for granted that the contiguous Pacific coastal states and Hawaii will always vote Democratic in presidential elections.  The list of Western Democratic presidential also-rans is a list that also includes former Arizona congressman Morris Udall, former Arizona governor Bruce Babbitt, two-time California governor Jerry Brown, and former New Mexico congressman Bill Richardson, as well as non-candidates like former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer.

If the West is the future, Democrats, judging from their obsessions with the Midwest and with demographic voting blocs, seem to be living in their own past.

As for Hickenlooper (and perhaps Bennet later), I come to praise, not bury, which is why I salute his presidential efforts with one of my favorite songs from the first album from Stephen Stills' group Manassas.

Anyone Can Be a Senator

But not everyone can be President.

The Democrats have fewer U.S. Senate seats to defend in 2020 than Republicans - 12 versus 22 - and the only need four seats to win back control of the chamber, but as TV producer and political activist Brian Taylor Cohen recently pointed out, the most attractive Democratic prospects for the Senate are all running for President.  Most of them have no chance of winning the White House but are so fixated on Trump that they all think that they can take out Trump in a mano-a-mano match-up.  Ironically, the reason there are more then twenty Democratic presidential candidates in the first place is because they all saw Trump get elected and decided that, well, if a politically inexperienced businessman can get elected to the highest office in the land, any one of them certainly can.

No, they can't.  And right now, there's a bunch of Democratic presidential candidates who are better suited to win a Senate seat in 2020 . . . and they're all polling in the low single digits in their presidential campaigns.  As Taylor Cohen tweeted, you have Beto O'Rourke of Texas only getting two percent in the polls, John Hickenlooper of Colorado getting one percent in the polls, Steve Bullock of Montana not getting anything in the polls and having officially declared for the Presidency just yesterday, and Stacey Abrams of Georgia not even running for President yet and already having ruled out a Senate run.  All of them, Taylor Cohen noted, could defeat the Republican incumbent senators up for re-election in 2020 - John Cornyn of Texas, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Steve Daines of Montana, and David Perdue of Georgia.  And I would add that Cory Booker of New Jersey, who's already a Democrat in the Senate and is up for re-election in 2020, is concentrating on a presidential run. 

With the possible - possible - exception of O'Rourke, these candidates are unlikely to get out of the single digits in the polls.  Defeating Trump is only part of the challenge; the Democrats also have to hold the House, but it's especially important that they take back the Senate.  Because even a post-Trump Republican Party, with a Republican Senate led by Mitch McConnell, will be as obstructionist and as illiberal as the Trump-era Republican Party has been and as the pre-Trump Republican Party was.  A Republican Senate under a Democratic President will only block judicial appointments, delay Cabinet confirmations, and stymie international treaties that the rest of the world realizes are common-sense approaches to solving global problems but American industry hates because they're bad for business.  People like Bullock, Hickenlooper, and others are so focused on the big picture of the fight against Trump that they've lost the sight of the more local political competitions necessary for the Democrats to control Washington in order to govern.  It's not that they can't see the forest for the trees; they can't see the trees for the forest.

Focusing more on the Presidency than on state and local races is the reasons Democrats declined and fell from their lofty perch in 2009 when they controlled everything, and this mass rush to run for the White House is just another example of that.  The silver lining is that there's still time for these no-shot long shots to abandon their presidential ambitions when they see that they can't win - most likely you too, Beto! - and switch to a Senate run instead.  At least Cory Booker, who, to the best of my knowledge, is the only incumbent senator up for re-election in 2020 who's also running for President, is able to hedge his bets on his own political future.  The New Jersey state legislature passed - and Governor Phil Murphy signed - a law allowing Booker to run for both offices at once.

As Caitlyn Jenner once said of athletes back when her sex was still male and his forename was still Bruce, they're all good but only one can be the best. Likewise, the twenty-odd Democratic presidential candidates may all be good, but only one of them can be the presidential nominee . . . but that hasn't stopped long shots who have a better chance at running for something else from trying to win the Presidency.  It reminds me of what H.L. Mencken said to a friend of his while at the 1936 Democratic National Convention, looking at all of the politicians in attendance . . . "Every one of them thinks that he can be President of the United States."

John Hickenlooper: His Name Is His Smallest Liability

John Hickenlooper should be a strong dark-horse candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination after relatively successful stints as mayor of Denver and as governor of Colorado.  So why do I have a problem with him?

Mainly because he supported fracking in Colorado.

Yes, I know he had hydraulic fracturing in his state follow strong, tough regulations to capture waste and methane emissions, which prevented 95% of volatile organic compounds and methane that leaked out.  That's as may be; he still supported fracking.  And five percent leakage is five percent too high.

Then there was his most recent comment about male presidential candidates being asked if they would pick a woman for a running mate.  Hickenlooper rhetorically asked why female presidential candidates aren't being asked if they would pick a man for a running mate.

Because the one female presidential candidate of a major party that we've had did just that?   

Hickenlooper seems to be interested in what's been called "woman issues."  He made his sexual history with women a focal point of his memoir, describing a sordid sexual history that would embarrass David Crosby and would have embarrassed Wilt Chamberlain. Say what you will about his fellow Coloradan Gary Hart; Hart believed that his own history with women was his own business.

You've probably heard accusations of male privilege unfairly leveled at other male Democratic candidates for the Presidency.  In Hickenlooper's case, they're well deserved.  It's a shame that Colorado has never produced a President, but the one thing worse than Hart's failure to win the White House would be Hickenlooper succeeding at that effort. 

Democratic presidential candidates: They come, I take a swipe at them, they go.  Who's up next?