Colorado Politics is treating Colorado’s primary season like the political priesthood just discovered the congregation has been sneaking out the back door for years.
Paula Noonan’s framing, from the title alone, is that Colorado progressives “prevailed” over the machine. Fine. But the weird little swerve into GOP anxiety over Victor Marx, Barbara Kirkmeyer, and Dick Wadhams-style establishment conservatism makes the whole thing even better: both parties are standing in the wreckage of their own control rooms asking why the voters stopped saluting.
The Democratic version is familiar. The establishment believes nominations should move through the proper plumbing: insiders, endorsements, donor networks, activist nonprofits, and consultants who say “community-led” while meaning “approved by the same twelve people in Denver.”
Then the progressive flank kicks in the door, calls it grassroots, and everyone pretends this is some pure uprising of the people instead of a grant-funded oxygen tank with yard signs.
Still, the machine lost. Or at least got bloodied. And that matters because Colorado Democrats have spent years acting like voters are just precinct cattle: tag them, sort them, send them mailers, harvest their approval, and get back to governing like the Front Range is a social experiment with property taxes.
But the Republican side is not exactly a monastery of strategic genius either.
If the GOP establishment is panicking about Victor Marx against Barbara Kirkmeyer, and if Dick Wadhams-style conservatives are warning that one nomination could torch the party’s credibility, then congratulations, boys: you built the dry kindling pile and now you’re yelling at the match.
These are the same professional “serious people” who spent years explaining electability to voters while losing, shrinking, apologizing, triangulating, and turning the Colorado Republican brand into a museum exhibit labeled: “Here Lies a Party That Once Had a Pulse.”
Now some voters look at the marble-mouth consultant class, the recycled endorsements, the stale coffee backrooms, and the campaign advice that smells like 2004 printer toner, and decide maybe they’d rather throw a chair through the window.
Is that always wise? Hell no.
But acting shocked is the funny part. The old guard helped hollow out trust, then clutched pearls when voters started shopping in the flamethrower aisle. You cannot spend a decade treating your base like an embarrassing cousin at Thanksgiving and then act personally victimized when they stop asking permission.
That’s the real through-line here. Democrats are getting mugged by the activist wing they fed, flattered, funded, and mainstreamed. Republicans are getting haunted by voters who no longer believe the old establishment can fight its way out of a paper bag with polling tabs.
Both machines still think politics is a velvet-rope event where voters wait outside until the important people finish arranging the menu. But Colorado politics is becoming a bar fight, and the bouncers are confused because the customers finally realized they paid for the building.
Normal Coloradans are tired of being told the “serious” candidate is whoever got pre-approved in a back room by donors, consultants, former officeholders, and people whose main political talent is surviving every failure they caused.
This state is expensive, crowded, overmanaged, under-listened-to, and buried under fees, housing chaos, energy lectures, broken trust, and institutional smugness. Voters are not mood boards. They are people watching Colorado get remodeled into something they didn’t order and can’t afford.
So no, the machines are not dying because voters got stupid overnight.
They’re dying because Colorado’s political priesthood spent years being arrogant, useless, and allergic to reality — and now the precinct cattle are kicking down the damn fence.
Source: Colorado Politics
Just Stop It
Add comment