U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet admitted what many on the left don’t want to acknowledge: he’s in for a hard race in 2022.
In comments to the media Thursday, Bennet said he fully expects a difficult race against whoever emerges from the Republican primary.
“In terms of my own race, I think there’s a long time between now and 2022. But midterms are always hard,” Bennet said. “There’s no reason to think this won’t be hard.”
Bennet’s campaign also acknowledged as much in a Colorado Politics story, which drew parallels for Democrats between Virginia and Colorado.
Whether Bennet himself fully appreciates the implications of Democrat losses in Virginia is an open question.
From the Colorado Sun:
Bennet said McAuliffe should have spent more time during his campaign discussing the American Rescue Plan Act and how not a single Republican in Congress voted for it. Bennet is planning to lean on the passage of the infrastructure and reconciliation bills in his campaign.
The “American Rescue Plan” is the same $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed earlier this spring that sent inflation soaring and contributed to a drastic labor shortage for businesses.
Far from “it’s the economy stupid,” Bennet doesn’t seem to understand the perverse incentives and unnecessary spending introduced in that law are precisely why the economy today finds itself in an inflationary mess.
Only clueless partisans like Bennet would be surprised that paying people not to work actually increased the cost of labor for businesses, thereby driving up prices for consumers.
Further, it seems bizarre for Bennet to suggest McAuliffe should have campaigned on national issues that the Governor of Virginia has no jurisdiction over – because that’s precisely what McAuliffe did.
The only discernible message for voters from of the McAuliffe campaign was that Glenn Youngkin was the second coming of Donald Trump.
Local issues, particularly on improving the economy and education, fell by the wayside with predictable results for Democrats.
Bennet also suggested that it would have helped McAuliffe if Democrats had passed the reconciliation bill and bipartisan infrastructure bills currently languishing in Congress.
That too appears to be a pipe dream as socialists pledged again Friday to vote down the bipartisan infrastructure bill unless moderate members acquiesce to a larger reconciliation bill.
Republican candidates, activists, and donors alike have to be licking their chops when they read this kind of stuff from Bennet.
Because as it stands now, we’re hearing from Bennet with regards to doubling down on Democrats’ failed national agenda suggests that Colorado in 2022 could very well resemble what just happened in Virginia.