As I write my Sunday column on Thursday instead of the usual Friday — thanks, Founding Fathers and Mothers for the, uh, July 3rd holiday — I’m sure things will be so much clearer by the time most of you read this.
We’ll know what the fireworks looked like — or if we had any at all. We’ll know if Donald Trump’s apparently corrupt Freedom 250 celebration continued to be a humiliating flop. We’ll know how the Taylor Swift nuptials came off and whether even Madison Square Garden was big enough for the most colossal wedding of the century.
We may not know who won the nail-bitingly-close race between exorcisms-by-phone Victor Marx and relatively sane — for a one-time secessionist —Barbara Kirkmeyer in the GOP primary for governor, which might be approaching mandatory recount territory. (Full disclosure: I haven’t bitten a single nail and don’t intend to.) But we already know the race is another disaster for the deeply troubled state GOP.
Even if Kirkmeyer wins, that still means that Marx, who looks every bit the part of the nut case/con man, and Scott Bottoms, who accuses Dems of running a pedophile ring at the state Capitol — will have combined for 60% of the Republican vote.
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I’m hard pressed to think of something more embarrassing, unless it’s Donald Trump’s ballroom project or, to keep it local, Jared Polis’ decision to fire two members of his clemency advisory board for publicly disclosing that the board had twice unanimously rejected Tina Peters’ clemency application. More on that later.
But here’s what we did know as of Thursday: When looking back on the shocking news from Tuesday’s Colorado Democratic primaries, the results may be both more and less surprising than you might have imagined.
Despite what you may have heard, the commies are not coming to Colorado. I promise. They’re not going to take over the state Democratic Party, either.
Something else — significant, but not earth-shattering — is happening instead. There is an emerging civil war between progressives and moderates in the Democratic Party. We saw evidence with the Mamdani coalition victories in New York City. And now we see it with Melat Kiros.
But self-described democratic socialists, like Kiros, who pulled off the huge upset in the 1st CD in taking down 15-term incumbent Diana DeGette, are quite different from the OG socialists. Their socialism meant government control of the means of production, as Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate in economics, explains here. I mean, has anyone seen Kiros carrying around a dog-eared copy of Das Kapital?
Democratic socialists are on the left wing of the Democratic Party — the Bernie Sanders, AOC, Elizabeth Warren wing — and they tend to be young, aggressively anti-establishment, very much for real expansion of America’s shrinking safety net and very much opposed to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. But still Democrats. Even Bernie, the independent, is a Democrat. You may well have voted for him in several Democratic presidential primaries.
But where we see democratic socialists winning primary upsets against liberal Democrats in deep blue districts, the explanation is simple enough — the failures of the mainstream Democratic Party, which are evident.
Voters see Dems in Congress flailing in their spineless fight against Trump’s unprecedented corruption and, of course, his war on U.S. democracy and his literal wars, or threats of war, across the globe. If the party is turning leftward, it’s because the too centrist, unaggressive Democrats in Congress — Chuck Schumer, anyone? — have held the door open.
Interestingly, though, 9News’ Kyle Clark in his coverage of the primary night compared Kiros to Lauren Boebert. In an interview with Clark, Boebert called Kiros a commie. Of course she did.
But she also agreed with Clark that, like Kiros, she came to office as a charismatic, anti-establishment political newbie — if from the far right — who would pull off a huge upset of a longtime incumbent. It’s certainly not an exact match, even beyond their conflicting politics. I mean, Boebert stands alone in Colorado as a canoodling carpetbagger. But you can see Clark’s point.
There was another interesting congressional race — in the 8th, a tossup district held by the GOP’s Gabe Evans, who is considered quite vulnerable. For Democrats to retake the House — as they’re slight favorites to do — they have to win races in more centrist, heavily Hispanic districts like this one.
And yet Democrats nominated Manny Rutinel, a young progressive who became somehow less progressive late in his primary campaign against moderate state Sen. Shannon Bird. That he’s Hispanic in a 40% Hispanic district must have been a factor in his easy victory.
But Rutinel had reversed his earlier positions on such issues as banning fracking, canceling all student debt and supporting Medicare for all. He called Israel’s actions “genocide,” but now says he would continue financial support for Israel.
He is also a longtime critic of the production and consumption of meat and dairy products, saying animal agriculture is “horrific” and “exploitative” and that the “globe must dramatically shift away from animal products and toward fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains and nuts.”
What does he say now? That “Colorado ranchers and farmers are the envy of the world and we need to be supporting them every step of the way.”
He also says — because I guess you have to in places like the 8th CD, or Texas — that he’s no longer a vegan.
You know what it all sounds like? In one word, politics. At least two significant Democrats showed up at Rutinel’s victory party — Ken Salazar and Wellington Webb. I don’t think you’ll find either of them manning the barricades come the revolution.
The most important race in the state was, of course, Phil Weiser’s shockingly easy win over Michael Bennet in the Dem primary for governor. Weiser, like Bennet, is a moderate liberal whom no one would ever think to link to the democratic socialist movement. That race was decided by the notion that AG Weiser, in filing all those lawsuits against Trump, is more of a fighter. I think you can safely say that positioning yourself as a fighter, particularly one with overwhelming grassroots support, was the winning strategy across much of Colorado. It’ll probably work in November, too.
And although Weiser, like Bennet, is an establishment-leaning Democrat, he was able to essentially make Bennet — a three-term senator— look like the incumbent. You can ask DeGette how well incumbency is working in 2026. The funny thing is, Bennet has made the case since Trump’s reelection not to blame Trump for winning, but the Democratic Party for losing to him. Twice.
Before we go, I want to get back to Polis, as promised, and his decision to fire clemency board members Hannah Seigel Proff and Azra Taslimi, who knew they’d probably be removed from their voluntary positions for releasing confidential information about Tina Peters’ bid for clemency.
I think of Proff and Taslimi as worthy whistleblowers, who should be praised for their courage. Polis, who had to be embarrassed by the op-ed the two wrote in the Denver Post, has a different idea.
In dismissal letters to Proff and Taslami, Polis advised them: “You breached the required duty of confidentiality by publicly divulging board members’ votes.”
In response, Taslimi told the New York Times, which broke the story, that Polis is “saying the public doesn’t have the right to know his own advisory board told him no — twice. He’s not protecting a process. He’s protecting himself from scrutiny.”
Meanwhile, I’m guessing Taylor Swift did her best to protect her Madison Square Garden wedding to NFL great Travis Kelce from public scrutiny, too. After all, she could have held it at Yankee Stadium.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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