Local Democrats and their allies in the media are at a loss for words when it comes to explaining why the CORE Act this week failed yet again to get congressional approval.
Despite total Democrat control in D.C. this year, the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Act was stripped out of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The Democrats’ prized bill also failed to be included in the same spending bill last year.
The Colorado press corps largely spared Democrats like U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse the humiliation of explaining why they were unable to push their signature bill across the finish line.
Why? Because reporters spent the better part of the 2020 U.S. Senate race and into the Biden administration openly rooting for the CORE Act.
There’s no easy way for Bennet or Hickenlooper to admit they got absolutely rolled by leadership.
And reporters who ask those questions just might cause voters, especially liberals, to start asking why Colorado Democrats apparently exert so little influence in Congress.
Even worse, left-wingers would be forced to acknowledge former U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner delivered far more for environmental conservation than the Democrats who hitched their wagon to this extreme land-grab.
The fact the CORE Act went out barely a whimper also leads one to wonder whether this was really just a “messaging” bill the whole time for Democrats to use on the campaign trail.
Should that be the case, if you were a reporter giving the CORE Act free airtime then you got absolutely played.
There’s reason to believe that is precisely what’s going on here.
Republicans don’t have the votes to stop anything right now, so if the CORE Act was really a priority for Democrats they could have included it in the NDAA without any problems.
The fact negotiators stripped it out behind the scenes suggests that Bennet, Hickenlooper and Neguse couldn’t even get all Senate Democrats on board with the massive federal land seizure.
Bennet had to have known this would be the case when he lied to told reporters and said all he needed was Hickenlooper in the Senate to pass the CORE Act.
Even this year there has been indication for months the CORE Act was facing tough-sledding in the Senate.
Earlier this summer the Denver Post preemptively called for Biden to use executive authority to reclassify much of the land in question as “wilderness” should the CORE Act fail in Congress. How prescient.
Should Biden elect to proceed with executive action he could have some problems on his hands.
Liberal mountain towns like Vail and Avon surprisingly refused to officially back the CORE Act, much to the chagrin of some Democrats.
In retrospect, that too probably should have been a warning sign and caused journalists to ask some tougher questions.
Local officials in Vail reportedly privately fretted the CORE Act could imperil the town’s ability to conduct wildfire mitigation.
Langmaid said the expansion of wilderness near Vail had the potential to interfere with some of the town’s goals regarding wildfire preparedness, citing the 2017 Vail Intermountain Fuels Project, a $1.1M helicopter logging project, as an example. Logging projects are not allowed in wilderness areas.
“The boundary is very close to town, and we’re just trying to really be responsible in terms of our wildfire planning,” Langmaid said.
As fate would have it, more than a few left-wing mega donors have vacation homes in and around the Vail Valley.
If Biden wants to bypass Congress and effectively make these mountain towns more susceptible to wildfires, the White House could be looking at intense internal pushback from their own donors. How’s that for irony?
You’d be hard pressed to find a single story anywhere that took anything beyond a superficial look at these obvious landmines for Democrats.
But above all, the bottom line is the CORE Act’s failure is another instance of increasingly common Democrat dysfunction on Capitol Hill these days.
The CORE Act should have been a layup for Colorado Democrats. If they can’t even execute their own campaign promises under unified Democrat government, then why should anyone – left, right, or center – take any of their promises seriously?