Reply #76: Democratic Party elites' days are numbered By David Sirota [View All]

[Demeter]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/08/13/elites_days_numbered/index.html

Michael Bennet's narrow victory in Colorado is further proof that the Democratic establishment's grip is slipping...

Call me an '80s junkie, but when I saw the results of this week's closely watched Colorado election, I immediately thought of "Spaceballs." In that Mel Brooks masterpiece, a Darth Vader spoof named Dark Helmet says, "Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." Make it "dumb and broke," and you have a powerful explanation for incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet's narrow victory over former state legislator Andrew Romanoff.

In the 20 months since being appointed to fill the vacated Senate seat of now-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Bennet became one of Congress' top recipients of corporate cash. A wealthy businessman who had never held elected office before, he ultimately raised and spent almost $6 million on his campaign — more than any other primary candidate in the history of Colorado. He was additionally aided by the Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America’s phone banking, by President Barack Obama’s full-throated endorsement, and by the built-in advantages that come with a taxpayer-financed Senate office.

Romanoff, by contrast, swore off special-interest money from the beginning. As a former state House Speaker with a deep grass-roots network throughout Colorado, he constructed a scrappy campaign on less than $2 million of mostly small-dollar, in-state contributions. In the relatively few ads he was able to afford, he juxtaposed his own progressive economic platform against Bennet's odious Senate votes to protect the big banks, oil firms and health insurance companies that Americans despise and that financed Bennet’s campaign.

Alas, it wasn’t enough. The Bennet campaign’s ads obscured the incumbent’s true record, and because those ads were backed with so much money, Romanoff's spots were like a pin dropping at a Metallica concert, and the challenger lost...Considering Bennet's wealth, corporate fundraising, incumbency and presidential support, it is astounding that a whopping 46 percent of this bellwether state's Democratic voters cast their ballots against him, against their own party's establishment and against their own party’s president...

FIGHT FIERCELY, DEMOCRATS!