Today, Colorado’s junior senator, Cory Gardner, of Yuma, a small town on our Eastern Plains, thought he did a wonderful job in his 90 minute debate against your solitary reporter’s neighbor,
former Denver Mayor and former Centennial State Governor John Hickenlooper.
Cory surely thinks so, but on November 3, or later, the good voters of Colorado — Republicans, Unaffiliateds, and Democrats, will surely learn that John, not Cory, will be Colorado’s Junior
Senator.
Even though John, at 68, is older than Cory, who is 46.
During the debate this evening, with panelists Anne Trujillo of Channel 7, Justin Wingertner of The Denver Post, and Caitlyn Kim of
Colorado Public Radio’s Washington Bureau, Gardner smiled much more than Hick did, but he told endless half-truths and lies, speaking about three times faster than Mr. Calm (Hickenlooper).
Gardner never once explained why he voted, as a senator, nine times against the provision of the Affordable Care Act protecting pre-existing conditions; never once did he explain why, according
to Donald Trump, Cory has voted with Trump one hundred percent of the time.
Gardner — bankrolled by the National Rifle Association, among many, many others — kept flailing away at Hickenlooper’s purported misdeeds as Governor, as found by Colorado’s Independent Ethics
Commission — errors that Hick admitted to this evening, yet Hickenlooper explained most cogently — namely, the Colorado GOP adopted, years ago, a strategy to catch Governor Hickenlooper with
Republican Dark Money, when the Governor was essentially promoting the Centennial State in matters of international trade, while Gardner, this evening, was trading on misinformation, deception, all the while smiling as he bulldozed his way through,
not kidding any of the panelists, all of whom did a superb job of maintaining order while Gardner repeatedly motormouthed his way through, hogging the time that was really Hickenlooper’s.
All this was happening as African American Jaime Harrison, a Democrat, in South Carolina, is, according to reliable polls, running even with incumbent senator Lindsey Graham, the Chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, which is in the process of ramrodding through the very ill-advised confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, who has already indicated that if she should become a Justice of
our Supreme Court, she would promptly rush to judgment and toss the Affordable Care Act out, when the Republicans in Congress have never ever come up with a Real Plan to provide adequate health
care to Americans, especially the millions of underserved Americans.
The Denver Post has endorsed Hickenlooper. Surely this is a good thing, because in 2014, the Post endorsed Gardner over Democratic Senator Mark Udall, then the incumbent. Though Udall did
not really have a great campaign, it was Gardner’s boyish optimism that hoodwinked Colorado voters in 2014 to put a man in the Senate who would, as it turned out, support Donald Trump, come Hell
or High Water.