Colorado statesman Gary Hart does not get it, at all. He is calling the Denver Post‘s endorsement of Congressman Cory Gardner in his race against incumbent U.S. Senator Mark Udall the “worst political endorsement by a serious newspaper in my lifetime.”
Hart made his views known in a letter he sent to the Denver Post that the paper decided not to print. But the state news media has taken up the letter, and it was published at Huffington Post-Denver on Tuesday.
“As a Colorado citizen who pays more than ordinary attention to American politics generally and to Colorado politics particularly, I am dumbfounded and appalled by your endorsement,” he writes.
Hart mainly takes issue with the Post‘s characterization of Udall as a sort of upper-chamber wallflower.
“I know for an absolute fact that [Udall] is at or near the center of virtually all serious national security, energy, environment, and economic debate currently occurring. I know for a fact that he is widely respected as a serious legislator by Senators of both parties. I cannot imagine from what sources you are deriving your information, but it is clearly not other United States Senators or anyone with a clear picture of what is going on in our nation’s Capitol.”
The Post‘s endorsement was notable for the sniping tone with which it treated Udall and for the lack of any serious sources or examples it used to make its points. The endorsement authors cited only a Gerald Seib opinion column on the blessings of divided government published in the Wall Street Journal and another opinion column written by onetime Republican Capitol Hill staffer-turned-Republican Party strategist Joe Brettell, in which he called Gardner a “rising star.” The Post editors never mentioned Brettell in the endorsement, simply crediting the quote to “ABC News.”
Hart served in the U.S. Senate for two terms, from 1975 to 1987. He is Chair of the U.S. State Department’s International Security Advisory Council, Chair of the U.S. Defense Department’s Threat Advisory Council, and Chair of the American Security Project.
Hart is the kind of source deeply familiar with the Senate and with national politics that the Denver Post editorial board might have turned to when weighing its endorsement in the race. Hart would have “problematized” the baffling assertions the board members planned to make.
“It is flatly false to say that Senator Udall is not a leader or that he is not at the center of major debates,” Hart wrote in his letter. “It is much more accurate to say that he is not a self-promoter, which seems to have become the coin of the political realm…
“You have chosen to support a conventional partisan over a serious legislator concerned with the national interest.”
Udall is a conservative-libertarian Democrat who has liberal social views. Gardner is a hardline conservative Republican of the Tea Party era.
As FiveThirtyEight puts it: “Gardner is strongly anti-abortion (he got a 0 percent rating from NARAL). He has only a 26 percent rating from the NAACP; he’s earned a 9 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters and a 92 percent score from the NRA.”
That record doesn’t match with the editorial views of the Denver Post and it doesn’t match with the views of the majority of Denver or Colorado residents.
FiveThirtyEight describes Udall as “strongly pro-choice (he gets a 100 percent rating on abortion rights from NARAL Pro-Choice America), and he earned a 96 percent rating from the NAACP on minority issues, a 97 percent rating on the environment by the League of Conservation Voters and a 0 percent score from the National Rifle Association.”
Mark Udall believes in letting women make their own health care decisions, safeguarding equality under the law for all, protecting the environment and closing loopholes on gun-purchase background checks. That is a much closer match with the views of the readers served by the Denver Post.
[blockquote]
Mr. Gregory Moore
Editor, The Denver Post
Denver, Colorado
Dear Mr. Moore:
Your editorial board’s decision to endorse Congressman Cory Gardner for the United States Senate ranks as one of the worst endorsement decisions, not only by theDenver Post but by any serious newspaper, in my lifetime.
As a Colorado citizen who pays more than ordinary attention to American politics generally and to Colorado politics particularly, I am dumbfounded and appalled by your endorsement. Colorado quite possibly has the two best Senators in the United States and you choose to dismiss one of them. It is flatly false to say that Senator Udall is not a leader or that he is not at the center of major debates. It is much more accurate to say that he is not a self-promoter, which seems to have become the coin of the political realm.
I know for an absolute fact that he is at or near the center of virtually all serious national security, energy, environment, and economic debate currently occurring. I know for a fact that he is widely respected as a serious legislator by Senators of both parties. I cannot imagine from what sources you are deriving your information, but it is clearly not other United States Senators or anyone with a clear picture of what is going on in our nation’s Capitol. You have chosen to support a conventional partisan over a serious legislator concerned with the national interest.
For you to conclude that Mr. Gardner will be anything other than a consistent vote for a Tea Party dictated agenda on the major social and economic issues of the day is confounding. Simply because one source called him a “rising star” does not qualify him for Senate membership. I had the privilege of serving with serious Senators of both parties. Mr. Gardner has a very long way to go before even coming close to their standard of statesmanship. Senator Udall, from a distinguished public service family whom I have known and with whom I have served, has the gravitas concerning the future of our nation that a partisan such as Mr. Gardner will never have in his lifetime.
I will leave it to my wife to decide whether to continue her subscription to the Post. I have lost confidence in the seriousness of your editorial judgment.
Sincerely,
Gary Hart
Kittredge, Colorado
[/blockquote]
I know I canceled much subscription.
I canceled my subscription.
Sir, I have two words for you to explain this nonsense: KOCH BROTHERS. They have sunk a HUGE amount of money to get this scumbag elected, which is reason enough to NOT vote for him. But that is, I’m pretty damned sure, the reason for the Post selling out the citizens of this country.
The Post, along with all kinds of other papers, is up for sale. The Kochs made a play for it a couple of years ago, and they got foiled. Do you REALLY think they gave up after that? Not a chance. I’d look seriously into ANY group that wanted to buy them to find out where the money REALLY came from.
The Post has gone off it’s rocker. It seems to think that the “change” needed in congress is from 50% gridlock to 100% gridlock. These people are 100% irresponsible. And they haven’ never been all that concerned with Colorado, not since I’ve been here (and that’s 1962). This really isn’t a huge surprise, but it’s a huge disappointment. And they wonder why every time I see them hawking their paper, I tell them no thanks, I don’t have a puppy.
It’s imperative that people vote in this Election. Of the 11 competitive seats in the Senate the GOP are ahead 8. They only need 6 to take control of the Senate. The TEA Party is also threatening to Shut down the government for the 3rd time, when President Obama uses his EXEC Power to finally do something about Immigration Reform.
DOES MAINSTREAM MEDIA REALIZE IT’S COMPLICIT IN MASS MURDER?? GOP-BIG OIL ARE NOW KILLING AT LEAST 5 MILLION/YEAR IN DISASTERS RELATED TO CLIMATE CHANGE. THEY ALSO HAVE AT LEAST 7 HORRIFIC ACCELERATIONS THAT PUT THE PLANET OVER A CLIFF 2015. (“The Thinking Person’s Guide To Climate Change” by Robert Henson)
We could be growing GDP by 158% with MILLIONs of Renewable Energy Jobs, leave THE DEBT in the dust, save $5 TRILLION dollars, and get a Sustainable Future. Instead the GOP have at least 4 “DEATH SPIRAL” policies in motion. 90% of the GOP are either owned or easily bought off by their “MURDER FOR PROFIT” alliances worth TRILLIONS–BIG OIL which has already killed TENS of MILLIONS, BIG FINANCE which has 16 million children homeless on the street with their families after 47 million people lost their homes when derivatives stuffed with junk damaged the economy for the 3rd time because of 30 years of lies about deregulation.50 MILLION people in the U.S. live at or under the poverty line and another 50 MILLION live slightly above the Poverty line. That’s 100 MILLION US citizens, or 30% of the population, thanks to the last 30 years of the GOP with a corrupt conservative lobbying group called ALEC, intentionally stacking the deck to the top percent. BIG AG as Monsanto and the rest of the chemical companies destroy the crops by putting genes from bacteria into the corn, soy & canola aka GMOs so they can resist Round Up, while they also destroy micronutrients, biodiversity in the soil and patent all the seeds so farmers are forced to buy from them. (“The World According to Monsanto”, “Seeds of Death” by Gary Null, “Seeds of Deception” by Jeffrey Smith, “Poisoned For Profit” by Philip & Alice Shabecoff) BIG PHRMA, BIG TOBACCO, BIG HEALTH CARE who has paid the GOP off with more than $400 MILLION to trash the Affordable Care Act which was created by Conservatives in 1989, introduced into congress in 1993 in opposition to Hillary Clinton’s Plan adopted by Mitt Romney for MA in 2006. Then there’s the NRA & BIG GUNS–the only reason assault weapons are in the Civilian market is because the Gun Industry had waning profits (“The Last Gun” by Tom Diaz who has also written “Making a Killing–Guns In America”, NPR’s Fresh Air interviewed him 12-20-12), etc.
We need to get this rampant GOP corruption out of positions of power period. Humans have roughly a decade to stop Climate Change. The planet is on a trajectory to become uninhabitable, people under 50 will no longer have a future, and TENS of MILLIONS have been murdered since 2010 from sea level rise, severe weather events, and especially food crop failures which have shoved over 500 MILLION people into starvation.
It’s 6:20 am, the denver post delivery man just went down the street; he should be cited for littering.