Diana DeGette, the longest-serving member of the Centennial State’s congressional delegation, was bounced from her seat by Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros.
Behold the rugged mountains of Colorado, a land once reliably Republican (in that “Western state” way) in a long-ago faraway era known as “my childhood.” Now? It is a state so predictably Democratic and run by its urban left-wing core in Denver that even the black bears distinctly smell of weed as they lazily paw through suburban garbage cans in the Centennial State.
And the left is angry right now, my friends, particularly in blue states where the general election is perceived by radicalized partisans as a “free kick.” So it was completely unsurprising to see Representative Diana DeGette, the longest-serving member of the Colorado congressional delegation, get narrowly but unceremoniously bounced from her seat by Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros in Colorado’s first district. (DeGette’s seat covers basically all of Denver, i.e. the beating heart of whatever local power the DSA can wield in a Democratic primary. Little surprise that after years of semi-anonymously occupying the seat, she was turfed out during a year of activist furor at incumbent Democrats for not “fighting hard enough.”)
It was equally unsurprising to see Colorado Senator Michael Bennet denied in his bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination to replace outgoing Governor Jared Polis. Instead, state Attorney General Phil Weiser won the nomination and will sail to victory in November without breaking a sweat. This was no battle between “the establishment” and a wild-eyed DSA radical: Weiser has a similar level of experience and the same left but not communist politics as the veteran senator, who led in initial polls until voters remembered that he’s as uninspiring as a base model 2018 Toyota Camry.
No, all eyes were on the Democratic race for the Senate Tuesday, especially after well-sourced Democratic commentator Joshua Micah Marshall tipped a possible upset of incumbent Senator John Hickenlooper. It’s important to understand that this race had been on nobody’s radar until now — Hickenlooper, the former mayor of Denver and two-term governor of the state, is a well-liked Democratic institution in the state.
But the activist left’s revanchist thirst for power remains unslaked during the second Trump era — it is not hard to see why — and their primary voters regard Colorado as conquered territory to be done with as they please: Why shouldn’t it go to the hardest-left candidate possible? Hence the otherwise unheralded candidacy of Julie Gonzales, an ex-DSA member who challenged Hickenlooper. (She quit the DSA at the beginning of this year so she could claim distance from them.)
It wasn’t enough. Hickenlooper won renomination with roughly 57 percent of the vote (as of this writing), and the seat will be an easy hold for Democrats come November. But the fact that an unknown challenger garnered 43 percent of the vote against a scandal-free, well-known, and well-liked incumbent remains a telling indication of the wild mood of the Democratic electorate this year.