Episode 180: Every Person Listening to this Podcast is a Person

Thanks to threads user hooligan_studios for the image summing up the 4th Congressional District Primary

What a ClusterBuck

If you absolutely must see the entire fourth congressional district debate, we went and hunted it down for you. The full video is below, but we don’t recommend watching the entire thing because it could very well destroy your entire brain. John Aguilar of The Denver Post wins the headline award with his piece Boebert Finishes 5th in the 4th (that’s the newspaper headline, we don’t know why they make it different for the online version of the story, especially when it’s so, so good).

But the debate can really be boiled down to just a few points, because let’s face it, we’re not exactly talking about intellectual giants here:

• Lauren Boebert tried to suck up all the oxygen in the room and got called a carpetbagger a ton of times because, well, she is one

• Boebert also appears to not be able to count to 9, claiming that there are 12 candidates on the stage

• DeborahFlora™️ claimed that people at the border said “Joe Biden told me that I could have a phone, a car, and a job today.”

• Ted Harvey has not one, but two Black friends, from the “inner city,” from when he served in the Colorado Legislature ten years ago.

• Harvey said he “believe[s] our nation is in the middle of a second revolutionary war,” totally normal shit

• Convicted DUI offender and former House Minority Leader Mike Lynch with the quote of the night “every person here is a person.”

• Richard Holtorf literally said we should round up every “fighting age Middle Eastern male and deport them back to their terrorist countries,” which is….holy-shit-level-racist-and-bad!

• The rift between Douglas County (which contains 49% of the population of the district) and the other 20 counties in the district is gonna be a thing.

• Also Doug Phelan exists! Go ahead, look him up before he drops out!

This thing was a real mess, but it’s emblematic of what we’ve been saying for a pretty long time: Colorado Democrats recruit terrific candidates who run high quality campaigns and win on the merits, but man, Colorado Republicans doing exactly the opposite of all those things certainly help.

All this has led us to the conclusion that there are three tiers of candidates in this race at the moment. But first, here’s how the straw poll shook out:

1. Jerry Sonnenberg: 22 Votes

2. Mike Lynch: 20 Votes

3. Richard Holtorf: 17 Votes

4. DeborahFlora™️: 18 Votes

5. Lauren Boebert: 12 Votes

6. Other Candidates: The Rest of the Votes (really we don’t know)

So, here’s the Official Get More Smarter Substack Internet Webpage Colorado 4th Congressional District Clusterbuck Power Ranking Tiers as of February 6 2024:

Tier 1

1. Lauren Boebert: She’s got a HUGE cash on hand advantage, residual name ID (and yes, the baggage that comes with it), and a fanbase that seems content with funding the grift.

2. Jerry Sonnenberg: Former State Representative, Former State Senator (actually you never say “former” Senator for some reason) and current Logan County Commissioner who has the credibility, the profile, and the actual conservative bona fides to make this a real race, but, we don’t love that he’s pandering to the MAGA crowd because that…hat is being worn.

Tier 2

1. DeborahFlora™️ - Flora could potentially graduate to Tier 1, if she’s able to capture the book-banning Moms for Hitler Liberty vote, but with Lauren Boebert already in the race, let’s face it, her lane is…not currently super duper open.

2. State Rep. Richard Holtorf - Holtorf loves 9News’s Kyle Clark and Jason’s blog ColoradoPols.com so, so much he screams about them on the radio. He probably listens to this podcast and reads the newsletter too! If he didn’t admit to paying for an abortion, change his story about it, and then go on a media tour talking about it, he might be in Tier 1, but, here we are.

3. Former House Minority Leader State Rep. Lynch - A DUI (TWO TIMES the legal limit), a gun charge, a coverup, and a resignation from House leadership under the cloud of it all puts Lynch pretty low down the list, but since he got 2nd place in the straw poll, which is currently the only non-fundraising datapoint we can go on in the ClusterBuck, we’ll let him hang out in Tier 2 for now.

4. Former State Rep. & Former State Senator Ted Harvey - Ted Harvey sounds and appears as if he crawled out of a cryogenic chamber he was sealed into right after Donald Trump won in 2016. He was last relevant in the Colorado Legislature after serving in the State House from 2002-2007 and the State Senate from 2007-2015. He loves Trump and guns, hates liberals, and has been elected before unlike a lot of these other candidates, but we think “Has been Harvey” may have reached his shelf life.

Tier 3

• The Rest of Them.

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