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.