For maybe the first time in Michael Bennet’s political career, he has gone viral. And as quickly as you can say “Ted Cruz’s crocodile tears,” Bennet is, for the moment, a social media star.
All it took was Bennet going on the Senate floor to excoriate Cruz for 25 minutes or so. Sure, Cruz is an easy target — remember Lyin’ Ted? — but this was the kind of direct hit your rarely see from the Senate and you never see from Bennet.
But there’s little you can do to make Democrats more excited than to rip Cruz apart. According to C-SPAN, Bennet’s speech has broken records for views of a C-SPAN video.
Bennet’s shots at Cruz, along with those at Trump and at the government shutdown, certainly looked spontaneous (he didn’t have any notes, anyway), and at least two points have emerged from the speech:
One, the suggestion that Bennet, a senator little known outside of Colorado, was considering running for president no longer seems like a pipe dream. Two, now that Bennet has had his moment, he has to follow it with something to show that his fiery speech (two words rarely used before in that order when referring to Bennet’s oratory) is not a one-off. In fact, Bennet now has Facebook ads up in four early-voting states referencing the speech.
Read the full column at the Colorado Independent.