Boulder Democrat Assembly

Our friend at Liberal and Loving It live blogged the Boulder County Democrat Assembly. He has a lot of good stuff in his live blog. This is a Senatorial race blog, so we will let you meander through it.

Here is what he wrote about the Mark Udall reception:

Does Mark Udall exist? He sent his wife to speak for him - at the county that is his biggest base of support. Mark is apparently over at the JeffCo assembly. The speech is all about how we need a Dem as Senator. And how "we all need" to support Mark regardless of what is said. Interesting not a word about what Mark himself would do...

and...

We're over with the Udall presentation. Ow. The second half was 4 people with pretty generic items about Mark. The response to each was pretty perfunctory except for one presenter when he stated he was one of the lost boys of Sudan, and is now a US citizen. He got a strong emotional response - for him.

If this is the response Mark is getting from the Dems in Boulder who are delegates - he may be in a lot of trouble. We'll all vote for him, but I don't know if he is going to get much passion or effort. There were only 2 people waving Udall signs during the speech - out of several thousand here.

It appears that Mark Udall should have gone to the Boulder Assembly with his touchstone speech.

It is beginning to look as though Mark Udall has a lot of support from the checkbook liberals and not a lot of enthusiasm from the rank and file. Keep in mind that this was written by a Udall supporter.

Isn't it interesting that none of this got reported in any newspaper?

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

We have a friend in Boulder, a fellow blogger whom we have never met. He runs Liberal and Loving It. We like him because he is a free market liberal. Too many people consider that term almost oxymoronic. Too many liberals, elected and unelected, simply do not understand that it is the free market which made this country great. LALI does, but that doesn't make him less a wild eyed, impeach em all liberal.

He went to the Boulder County Democrat assembly and wrote about it. He started what he wrote about Mark Udall with the words:

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid.

He ended his comments with:

To win Mark [ Udall ] needs to start actively campaigning on why people should be charged up to vote for him. To get the base energized and to get the middle sold. And he needs to get his ass in gear yesterday.

Democrats and Republicans will want to read what LALI said in the middle.

Answering Our Criticism

Our friend David at Liberal and Loving It responded to our criticisms of his debate questions:

A couple of comments on your feedback about the online debate.

1) I went for a number of questions about the person because the candidates stands on the issues are pretty similiar and well covered on their websites.

2) The problem with questions like that is you don't know in advance which ones will strike gold. I discussed my take on the results of each and some worked better than others. The funny thing is, the bucket list question got the most interest.

3) Looking forward 100 years was I thought one of the best questions. No a person in 1900 could not predict Hitler or the arc of Communism. But German & Japanese militarism was a clear issue (see war of 1870) as was the global economy which was well on it's way then, until WWI pushed it back. And I think the answers they had for this question were incredibly good guesses based on what we know today.

I emailed you about seeing if between us we can set up the online debate. Definitely would be fun.

On Line Debate

David at Liberal and Loving It left a comment two days ago. Since I don't approve comments, I don't see them unless I go looking to see if there are any comments. I just looked a few minutes ago. David is lucky, I suppose. It took me a week to find a comment from someone else.

Anyone who wants to email me already has my email or should be able to decipher it from my Colorado Index site, so if I don't respond to a comment, please send me an email.

Anyway, here is David's comment:

I would love to do an online debate between Udall & Schaffer - do you think there is any way I could get them to agree to it?

ps - what did you think of the questions {your post is clear what you think of the answers :) }?

I know for a fact that staffers from both campaigns regularly read this site. How I might know will be left to your imagination. You've planted the seed. Wait a week or so and let it germinate then ask them yourself.

I don't speak for or communicate with the Schaffer campaign, so they will find this about the same time that the Udall campaign finds it.

I wouldn't mind seeing an online debate that was jointly moderated by you and Ben DeGrow. Each of you come up with six questions. (Ben doesn't know I am writing any of this.)

As to your questions, some were too touchy feely. They pretty much fit the 2d CD and the candidates, but would they fit the whole state? I didn't like the bit bucket one-it was a waste of an opportunity to ask a more serious question. Because of the way blogs work, last in, first out, it made your very serious project appear less serious to readers who don't actually read.

Your 100 year question had potential but you made it so broad and so long that you got shallow answers. Most politicians don't think 100 years out on any subject, and none of these three did. But can they? Think back to how three politicians of 1908 might have answered this question and how far off the mark they would have been. They couldn't forsee the 16th amendment, 1929, Hitler, the rise and fall of communism, Sputnik, an oil economy, a global economy, or China and Japan as ecconomic powerhouses. In 1905 the Japanese Navy cleaned Russia's clock with a navy that hadn't existed 20 years earlier, but could any 1908 politician have used that event to predict an attack on Pearl Harbor using airplanes, when flight was a technology that was only five years old?

The questions could have been different, but they were a good first start, and the effort noble. I'm glad you did it.

You ought to talk to Ben and make a proposal.

And my predictions for 100 years out? Why not nuclear powered railroad engines for freight trains?

Skewing the Scoreboard

Our friend at Liberal and Loving It decided to try play games with our scoreboard today. His attempt elicited a belly laugh:

Ok, the schaffer v udall blog is tracking the number of times Mark Udall has been called conservative (presently 0). So here you go - Mark Udall is a very conservative congressman. I base this on his tireless work to conserve the environment and his extensive opposition to change (in our climate).

We make the rules, and we try to keep them rational. Just as we won't count a conservative blog calling Mark Udall a liberal, we won't count a liberal blog trying to claim that he is a conservative or even a moderate.

If you folks want to rack up some "conservative" or even "moderate" hits on the Mark Udall is not a moderate scoreboard, go find a conservative blog to call him conservative. And no, we won't count a faux conservative blog that lacks history.

As for the claim that Udall is a conservative because he claims to be a conservationalist, we think that Mark Udall's biggest vulnerability is his environmental record. Coloradoans who go to the polls this fall need only, as Mark Udall himself said, "picture dead forests in their mind's eye." If there is a big fire and if people die in it, Udall and John Salazar will and should bear a good deal of the blame.

As for opposition to climate change, the environmentalists never seem to be willing to count burned forests as contributing to the atmospheric carbon dioxide load. The left's carbon footprint is enormous, but they pretend it doesn't exist. We had three forest fires in excess of 500,000 acres each last year. Udall's answer as of today: Lets do a study, but lets not build forest roads or clear cut fire breaks.

You folks on the left have painted yourself into a corner and it is going to take one heck of a long time for the paint to dry. The sad thing is that you don't appear smart enough to realize it.

The 2d CD Blogging Debate

Our friend (who we have never met) at Liberal and Loving It pulled off a coup. He got the three candidates for the 2d CD seat being vacated by Mark Udall to debate on the internet.

Because there would be 14 separate links, we will only link the blog and let the reader scan down. The last post is dated January 29th.

One of the reasons that we point readers to that debate is that it is a good window into the mind and motivations of Mark Udall, who went unmentioned.

They all want to get rid of the Bush tax cuts to fund their pet projects. None is admitting that they expire in 2010 regardless, and there is no money to be had from them.

Only Jared Polis among them didn't aspire to be a grandparent, and we would guess that their mention of the subject was a gentile subconscious dig by the other two, but perhaps not.

None seemed to know or want to admit that Ted Kennedy was the major author of No Child Left Behind. They all chafed at the impacts of that law.

There is much more. It is a good read, but if you are a conservative, don't expect much there that will make you happy. On the other hand, if you want to sample the environment that brought us Mark Udall, it is there in full liberal flower.

Losing Favor

One of our favorite liberal bloggers lost some favor with us today when he suggested that:

we are to a large degree sitting back as the administration take us down the road of totalitarianism.

Unfortunately, he is serious as the next quote demonstrates. This isn't just a little over the top. It is paranoia in need of diagnosis and medication.

Yes I write letters to my congressman, which again matters here as it is Mark Udall and he should be out in front on congress flexing it's muscle rather than hiding in the crowd. But in spite of my sharply worded letters, he remains in the crowd (busily running for Senator). And just how hard should we pressure him since winning the senate seat here is important.

It is nice to know that Mark Udall doesn't share or respond to this guy's paranoia. What is scary is someone can suggest that the country is any where near totalitarianism and expect to be taken seriously. It is illustrative of the condition of today's Democrat party.

Boulderite Thinking

Did you know that Boulder has a "Climate Action Plan?" Neither did we. There is a hot race for city council in Boulder this year and all of the candidates were asked to comment on it by the Boulder paper. Our friend, Liberal and Loving it, graded the responses, and he didn't grade on the curve.

His comments are shorter than those of the candidates and provide a glimpse into the mind of Mark Udall and the future of Colorado and the nation if Mark Udall is elected to the US Senate.

Here is the standard he set and his first three comments, and grades:

My answers are predicated upon the economic consensus that the most effective approach is to tax carbon emissions and oil usage. However, I'm not sure any candidate can win in Boulder on that platform as the environmental group endorsements tend to select the winners and those groups generally prefer mandated actions over market pricing.

Matthew Applebaum D+ : Matt definitely takes the "we will force all of you to do these specific things" approach. Under that approach all of Matt's point are good, but the sum total is a significant intrusion into every building in the city (but no vehicles).

Philip Bradley B+ : A decent market oriented approach with the tax credit. And he keeps it simple which is also commendable.

Seth Brigham A- : Seth's comments are not a model of clarity but I think what he is proposing is people & companies (including the city government) are taxed based on their carbon emissions. Good answer.

You are getting an inside look at how Boulderites think, and thus how Mark Udall is forced to think. The hurdle Mark Udall has to overcome, and probably cannot, is that for 10 years he has represented Boulder and this kind of Boulderite thinking in Congress. Do you still question why he supports every hair brained scheme that the Sierra Club throws his way?

LALI gave Applebaum a D+ but as much as admits that he will get elected because the Sierra Club favors mandates.

Keep in mind that one of the reasons that we like LALI is because while he is a liberal, he is a market orientated liberal, which is quite unusual and refreshing. Yes, he has crackpot ideas (favors impeachment), but he is not totally loopy (favors nuclear power).

Local Prognosticator Picks Udall

Liberal and Loving is certain that Mark Udall is a shoo in and says so.

So who loses? Bob Schaffer who is figured the least likely Repub to win in '08. The Repubs don't have the resources or money to fight everywhere. As of today they have probably already cut him lose in their minds.

While our friend at L&LI (and he is our friend) stopped short of calling for an end to contributions to Mark Udall's campaign, it seems obvious that he would like to see the funds go elsewhere.

We don't want him to read Jeff Bridges' comments as discussed by Ben DeGrow below.

And The Triangle Player Chimes In

We wanted to point out that it will be very hard to sell Udall as a centrist when the msm and Liberal blogs themselves routinely refer to him as either "extremist," or "liberal." We started keeping track and created a scoreboard that links to the sources. Recently, we started linking to our most recent scoreboard post so that readers could examine our methodology for fairness.

Today's blog is "Liberal and Loving It," so there isn't much doubt that the guy considers himself a liberal.

He was interviewing Will Shafroth and said about him:

The bottom line with Will is, I think, that he is Mark Udall reloaded. A nice, smart, thoughtful person who would do a good job and apply himself diligently. A reliable liberal vote who is unlikely to push much outside the conventional wisdom of this district.

It doesn't seem likely that anyone will take exception to our observation that he is saying that Mark Udall is a reliable liberal vote who doesn't push much outside the conventional wisdom of his Boulder district.

Our count is now
Extremist 2
Reliably Left Wing 1
Liberal 10
Moderate 0
Conservative (Lol) That's "laughing out loud" in Internet speak.

And no, there isn't any hidden message in the title of this post. It just follows the theme we are using for this scoreboard series.

In the Thrall of the Sierra Club

Liberal and Loving it inadvertently gave away the game plan for getting elected in Boulder. It demonstrates better than anything we could write why Mark Udall is in the thrall of the Sierra Club. The author has ten steps, but we will only repeat three of them:

1. Start sucking up to PLAN-Boulder and the Sierra Club. Most elections their recommended slate wins every seat. (So much for Boulder being a hotbed of independent thinkers.)

3. Continue sucking up to PLAN-Boulder and the Sierra Club.

10. And finally, do whatever you need to do to get that PLAN-Boulder and Sierra Club endorsement.

As a bonus, we will throw in another of the steps, just so you understand how sincere Mark Udall is and intends to be:

9. Find a "media person" who will help you write your position papers, answer questionnaires, etc. This is key because you need to tell each group exactly what they want to hear, in a way that you are not contradicting yourself.