{"id":798143,"date":"2019-07-31T17:03:53","date_gmt":"2019-07-31T23:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=369366"},"modified":"2019-07-31T17:03:53","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T23:03:53","slug":"opinion-mike-littwin-hicks-invisible-debate-performance-may-well-mark-the-end-of-his-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/opinion-mike-littwin-hicks-invisible-debate-performance-may-well-mark-the-end-of-his-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Mike Littwin: Hick\u2019s invisible debate performance may well mark the end of his campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Mike Littwin<\/strong>
The Colorado Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Before we get to the heart of the Democratic debate, before we blame CNN moderators for a horribly disjointed night designed more for cable TV combat than for actual debate, before we explain how Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and \u2026. John Delaney were somehow the stars of the night, before we even concede that Marianne Williamson, on more than one occasion, made sense, we\u2019ll start with Colorado\u2019s own John Hickenlooper.<\/p>\n

Because if we don\u2019t talk about Hick, I don\u2019t know who will.<\/p>\n

And the obvious question for Hickenlooper is what he\u2019s going to do next. He already had one set of advisers tell him he ought to get out of the presidential race and run for the U.S. Senate. They walked away from his campaign when he told them he wouldn\u2019t quit. I don\u2019t really know his new advisers, but I assume \u2014 if they haven\u2019t already \u2014 they\u2019re trying to find the nicest way to tell him the same thing. Hick has gone from a would-be, at best, second-tier contender to an afterthought.<\/p>\n

On a night when Hickenlooper had to show up big, on a night which the poll numbers and the fundraising numbers fairly screamed in tandem that this could be his last chance to show up, he didn\u2019t show at all.<\/p>\n

The scorekeepers noted that of the 10 candidates on the stage, Hickenlooper talked for the least amount of time. Yes, even a few seconds behind Williamson. Less than half the time Warren and Sanders spoke. If Hick\u2019s greatest challenge as a politician is getting noticed, the biggest splash he could make is by saying, \u201cHi, I\u2019m John Hickenlooper. I used to be running for president.\u201d<\/p>\n

This debate was set up for him, and others like him. The CNN format was basically this: Sanders and Warren have a lot of crazy, lefty ideas, so can the moderates on the stage tell us why Democrats must do better?<\/p>\n

It was an uneven match. Warren was far the best debater on the stage. Bernie was the loudest debater on the stage. Delaney was the fiercest, and, even if he doesn\u2019t make any headway in the polls, he did come out of it with the best gif of the night<\/a> to show his grandkids. It came after a putdown by Warren, in which she said after one of Delaney\u2019s complaints about her policies, \u201cYou know, I don\u2019t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can\u2019t do and shouldn\u2019t fight for. I don\u2019t get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is where Hickenlooper should have had a chance to shine, at the point where he has self-defined his campaign \u2014 the pragmatic, get-things-done guy on the stage, as author of the Colorado miracle, which, let\u2019s concede, isn\u2019t quite miraculous and for which Hick claims far more credit than he deserves. He did have one unintentionally funny moment when he said he was as progressive as anyone on the stage. He wasn\u2019t. But that wasn\u2019t his problem.<\/p>\n

The weakness for all the moderates was that they kept saying that beating Trump is more important than dreaming big \u2014 they may be right \u2014 but none of them really explained what, other than beating Trump, people should rally around. Gov. Steve Bullock, who had his first debate in this campaign, had some moments. Rep. Tim Ryan also had decent moments. Hickenlooper\u2019s big moment came when he and Sanders, at Hick\u2019s request, competed in throwing hands up in the air<\/a>, a Bernie-like wave.  This was around the time Hick was saying of Medicare for All that you can\u2019t simply spring such big changes on people, and Sanders was reminding him this was the anniversary of LBJ signing Medicare, which was  a pretty big change to spring on people.<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve said about a million times, debating is not Hick\u2019s strength. He knows this. But when there are 20 people on stage over two nights, the debates offer the best chance to show yourself. Kamala Harris broke into the top tier on the basis of the first round of debates. Pete Buttigieg hasn\u2019t figured out that he needs a viral moment or two, but he is articulate and demands that viewers pay attention. This is the role that Michael Bennet hopes to play tonight when there will be many more progressives on the stage, and Bennet will, in the best case, attempt to show that he can make the moderate case better than Joe Biden, with whom Bennet will share the stage.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t the CNN moderators\u2019 fault that Hickenlooper spoke so little. They were looking for on-air combat. Delaney was best suited for that. He came out swinging and rarely stopped. Amy Klobuchar, as another self-defined pragmatist, had the same problem, if not nearly as deep, as Hickenlooper, who\u2019s not really a street fighter, and his best line on Medicare For All \u2014 \u201cyou might as well FedEX the election to Donald Trump\u201d \u2014 was obviously rehearsed.<\/p>\n

Maybe the most interesting thing that happened is that old friends Warren and Sanders didn\u2019t challenge the other even once. They tag-teamed in putting down the rivals. I have a feeling \u2014 with no inside knowledge \u2014 that Warren had found herself forced to do a complete buy-in on Sanders\u2019 Medicare for All if she wanted to compete for the progressive vote. You\u2019ve watched Kamala Harris flip-flop on this. But, in any case, with Warren and Sanders making much the same case all night, Warren did the far better job, weaving in anecdotes, explaining her policies better than anyone else. I\u2019m looking forward to seeing her and Sanders on the stage with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, almost certainly in the September debate, for which around half of the present debaters won\u2019t qualify.<\/p>\n

One of those who won\u2019t qualify is Hickenlooper, who will be pressured again to run for Cory Gardner\u2019s seat. Ezra Klein notes that Democrats would be better served in 2020 if Hick, Beto O\u2019Rourke and Bullock each dropped out and ran for Senate. Meanwhile, I\u2019ll give you New York<\/em> magazine\u2019s snarkiest-possible view of Hick\u2019s campaign and his last-place finish in Tuesday\u2019s debate:<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one knows for sure who John Hickenlooper was, as the details of his existence fell out of collective memory ages ago. But scholars who have studied the few fragments that haven\u2019t been lost to time say that he was most likely an older Caucasian man who enjoyed stammering complaints about socialism through a mouth chock-full of marbles.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a while now, Hick has been insisting he won\u2019t give up on the race. But what happens when the race gives up on him?<\/p>\n

Mike Littwin writes the biweekly column \u201cFair and Unbalanced\u201d for The Colorado Independent. He previously worked at The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun. Contact him at<\/em> mike@coloradoindependent.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike LittwinThe Colorado Independent Before we get to the heart of the Democratic debate, before we blame CNN moderators for a horribly disjointed night designed more for cable TV combat than for actual debate, before we explain how Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and \u2026. John Delaney were somehow the stars of the night, before we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-798143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 14:45:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}