I suspect some of the hate over that comment is just an excuse to push away a candidate they don’t favour in the first place. I mean, it was a little quip made because he’s sick of people asking him to drop out/run for Senate and now he’s a selfish unpatriotic bastard? Come on.
Fair enough, I overreacted.
I’ve spent most of the past cycle expecting him to end up as the 2020 candidate, and up to now, I’ve been a bit disappointed in how low he’s been polling. But that’s really not a good response to “why aren’t you running for the Senate?”.
There are many good answers even if they are signs of some self-delusion. Off hand snark that completely demonstrated no interest in the good of the country or the world was way not on that list.
Seriously? Why? 
On the subject of Not doing what’s in the best interest of the Democratic Party and therefore the countryit would take several hundreds of Hickenloopers to add up to a Lieberman.
Recall that he insisted on running for BOTH Vice Prez AND Senator in 2000 and that had he won the Vice Prez job, the prevailing situation would have turned the Senate seat over to a Republican. It would be a certain loss of a Democratic Senate seat. Had he let a different Democrat run for the Senate, that D would have been a shoo-in.
Admittedly imagining that Joe Lieberman would care about the interests of the Democratic Party or the U.S.A. is Onion-level satire. Still, I was quite amazed that almost no Democrats bothered to call him out for this crass selfishness.
It’s symptomatic of a problem Democrats have had for 20-30 years, which is focusing too closely on winning the presidency while ignoring everything else down the ballot. But in Hickenlooper’s case, he has plenty of time to run for the senate if that’s what he wants, and it might be that running for president gets him additional name recognition that he wouldn’t get otherwise, so I really don’t understand why, at such an early stage in the campaign (really the pre-campaign), everyone’s giving Hick such a hard time.
For me it’s not as much for the running as for the shitty answer that is completely self-centered. At least pretend you care about the good of the country and the planet.
That lousy answer also makes a successful Senate run harder if it comes to that. Lp
Pffff, it’s just a comment. I think people will get over it. Hickenlooper is a pretty popular governor in Colorado, last I checked. He’s got approval ratings that are significantly stronger than his disapproval ratings, which is easy in a partisan state like Alabama but not as easy to do in a moderate/centrist state like Colorado.
He’s a popular Democratic governor from a swing state in a region of the country that Democrats need to be seen to care about.
That explains why he would be a formidable general election candidate, not why you expected him to be the nominee.
I’ve always been of the opinion that if someone is really a good general election candidate, they have to win the nomination. Bernie Sanders’ supporters have been saying for the last 3 1/2 years how effing great he would have been in the general and there’s not a damn bit of evidence to support it. If Clinton had fallen ill and the DNC had selected Sanders at the last minute, I have little doubt that Trump would have kicked his ass and the election would have been called by 11 PM, if not sooner.
Hickenlooper would not be a good general election candidate; otherwise he would been polling a wee bit higher than 1 percent. OTOH, he could be the kind of candidate who could balance out a ticket of someone like Elizabeth Warren, and his endorsement could mean something in Colorado, helping to keep that state safely in the Blue column.
At the time he was thought of a serious and ethical man, chosen by Gore to further distance himself from Clinton’s sexual impropriety. Yeah, assessments changed along the way.
There was some noise made then about the decision … but it had been done that way before and what with its having Gore’s blessing it was hard for too many to go too loud about it.
Differences between then and now are several but mostly that there is much more reasonably high expectation that Senate control will come down to one or two seats in the balance and that the partisanship has ramped up even more over the last decades.
As to Hickenlooper … in most cycles a popular swing state governor would be a real contender. This is not one of those cycles to be sure, but it would not had shocked if he had. Who was expecting Buttigieg to get into the pack?
Was it self centered or was he merely pointing out that maybe you should be riding the ass of current Senators who are running for president instead of him?
But it matters which senators. If Harris, say, wins the Presidency, she’ll be replaced by another Democrat. Her running makes no difference to the composition of the Senate. By contrast, Sherrod Brown would have been replaced by a Republican, and he opted to stay in the Senate.
Which I’m sure is something that Hickenlooper knows, because it’s really obvious.
Beto says he supports reparations:
Go, Beto!
I am not saying Hickenlooper is not a serious, plausible candidate. But it’s a long way from there to actually expecting him to be the nominee when there are so many others who are better known etc.
Well, OK, say rather that I thought that he had a higher chance of ending up as the nominee than did any other single individual. In any event, I’m not just saying that that quote looks terrible because I don’t like him and I’m looking for excuses why: Up until that, I mostly did like him.
That’s still a bold perspective. Do you live in Colorado?
BTW, trust me: I wish someone with a resume like him would come in and be taken as a top tier contender. I feel like we’re not learning from history, in what should be really obvious ways. Popular governors of decent-sized swing states are good! (See also Inslee.)
Crazy talk means I cross him off my list. Does he also support going back on the Gold standard? :rolleyes: