Back in mid-October, I noticed that the Colorado Democrats twitter feed was full of attacks on GOP gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl, but rarely mentioned GOP Senate candidate Joe O’Dea. A tweet here and there touted incumbent Democratic senator Michael Bennet, but the feed was curiously quiet about O’Dea. I wondered if that was subtle form of respecting O’Dea for being a distinctively non-Trump-supporting Republican this cycle. And maybe Colorado Democrats didn’t see much need to take shots at O’Dea; for most of autumn, Bennet appeared to be enjoying a solid lead of six to eleven points over O’Dea.
But something changed around October 20. All of a sudden, the Colorado Democrats started tweeting and retweeting attacks on O’Dea, including some fairly ridiculous charges that he is “taking a page out of Trump’s playbook,” that he would give “MAGA Republicans the majority they need to pass a dangerous agenda,” that he “wants to help build Trump’s border wall.” Meanwhile, Bennet’s Twitter account had a similar transformation — sunny tweets about policy and events until the third week of the month, when it suddenly turned into attacks on O’Dea for “wanting to extend the Trump tax cuts” and for voting for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
All this is happening while Trump still rages against O’Dea on Truth Social.
Maybe this is nothing significant: just a sign that as Election Day approaches, parties and candidates start throwing the kitchen sink at each other and ignore glaring ideological differences, using any attack that they think will be effective. But up until October 20, Bennet and the Colorado Democratic Party were comfortable taking the high road. Now they’re furiously attempting to tie O’Dea to Trump — even though the former president denounces O’Dea as “this RINO character” and insists that “MAGA doesn’t Vote for stupid people with big mouths.”
Is it possible that being denounced by Trump made O’Dea more appealing to all of those soccer moms in the suburbs? Does something have Colorado Democrats worried about Bennet?