I hate you, Colorado Peak Politics
In a bizarre, tongue tied exchanged with MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough, John Hickenlooper could not answer the simple question, “would you consider yourself a proud capitalist?”
After Scarborough complimented the former governor on his successful business endeavors, comparing Hickenlooper to “the American Dream,” and posed the softball question about being a capitalist, Hickenlooper laughed, rejected “labels” and started to nervously babble about methane and climate change.
So is Hickenlooper being dishonest, was he confused, or maybe just nervous about one of his first live television interviews of his presidential campaign? But the question could not have been a simpler one for Hickenlooper to answer. He was a successful restaurant and bar owner for many years, and controlled large amounts of capital. He controlled almost every factor of production: human labor, real estate, capital equipment. How could he not be a capitalist?
Well, by the time Sunday rolled around, he got seemed to have straightened out his answer. During his interview on the CBS show Face the Nation, Hickenlooper said, “I’m happy to say I’m a capitalist.”
This 48-hour episode of bad press for Hickenlooper is disturbing on several levels. First, he clearly was not being honest in his appearance on MSNBC. But why would he want to mislead on such a basic thing? The fact is that there is a meaningful contingent of the Democrat party that believes capitalism is evil, and he was trying to appeal to that demented block of voters – or at least not piss them off. And that’s the real problem with Democrats right now – they can’t decide if they’re socialists or not. How far they’ve fallen from the Bill Clinton days – and that’s saying a lot.