Colorado Politics profiles Attorney General Phil Weiser’s underdog campaign for governor against U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, noting that the two are friends and share mostly similar progressive Democratic views. That pretty much frames the whole race. This is not a choice between two radically different visions for Colorado. It is a choice between two polished members of the same governing class arguing over who should manage the machine next.
The piece walks through Weiser’s résumé: CU Law dean, attorney general, lawsuits against opioid companies, antitrust work, consumer protection efforts, and roughly 65 lawsuits against Donald Trump or his administration. It also notes that Bennet has more name recognition, while Weiser is trying to build momentum with old-guard Democrats, progressive activists, and the anti-Washington mood. Fine. But the question remains: if Colorado is already struggling under this same basic philosophy, why sign up for another round?
The Bullet Point Brief
- Weiser and Bennet are described as sharing mostly similar progressive Democratic policy views. So, yes, this is basically a menu with two kinds of kale.
- Weiser is running as the experienced Colorado-focused alternative to Bennet’s Washington résumé, while Bennet argues Colorado needs fresh leadership. Fresh, apparently, now means another longtime Democrat with the same operating system.
- Weiser emphasizes his record as attorney general, including opioid settlements, consumer protection, antitrust work, and lawsuits against Trump.
- Both Weiser and Bennet criticized Governor Polis over the Tina Peters commutation, which is convenient because Democrats have suddenly discovered executive overreach when it irritates their own tribe.
- The real issue is not whether Weiser is smart or Bennet is experienced. The issue is whether either one represents a meaningful course correction for a state that badly needs one.
My Bottom Line
Weiser and Bennet are cut from the same cloth as Polis, only maybe worse in one important way: they seem to lack even Governor Gaslight’s occasional libertarian twitch.
And yes, I will give Polis that much. Every now and then, somewhere behind the wall of East Coast Democratic donors and progressive pressure groups, a small libertarian streak peeks out, waves awkwardly, and reminds him that government does not need to regulate every human activity into a committee-approved paste.
Not often, mind you. But occasionally.
I do not see much of that in Weiser or Bennet. What I see are two very standard, very credentialed, very predictable big-government liberals. More taxes. More programs. More regulation. More lawsuits. More government management. More faith that the right people with the right degrees can centrally plan Colorado into prosperity if the rest of us would just stop noticing the results.
And that is the problem. Colorado has already been living under this worldview.
Housing has become unaffordable. Energy costs are climbing. Businesses are leaving or thinking about it. Rural Colorado feels ignored. Young families wonder whether they can stay here. The state budget keeps getting squeezed. The regulatory state keeps expanding. The Gold Dome keeps inventing new ways to make normal life more expensive, then acts shocked when normal people complain.
So someone please explain to me why the cure for all of this is more of the same.
I am not saying Weiser is unintelligent. Clearly, he is not. I am not saying Bennet lacks experience. He has plenty of it. That is exactly the point. These are not outsiders riding in to challenge a broken system. They are products of it, beneficiaries of it, and defenders of the assumptions that created it.
Colorado does not need another polished Democrat promising to “show up,” “listen,” “innovate,” and “fight for working families” while supporting the same policy framework that made life harder for those working families in the first place.
At some point, voters have to stop grading politicians on résumé polish and start grading them on results. Colorado used to be the envy of the country. Now too often we are lectured by the people who helped drag us from first toward the middle, or worse, about how they deserve a promotion to keep managing the decline.
That is not leadership.
That is continuity with better stationery.
Source: Colorado Politics
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