March 4, 2019

"I think I'm going to switch over to Hickenlooper."

I say out loud, as I'm reading "John Hickenlooper, Former Colorado Governor, Declares Candidacy for President" (NYT). Last December, as you may know, I suddenly said — also out loud — "Why aren't the Democratic candidates better? I'm just going to be for Amy Klobuchar."

But I've been worried about Amy. There was that comb-as-a-fork business, and just yesterday I was thinking there are too many Senators in the race, and I think we need a governor. There's Jay Inslee, but I'm thinking he's all about the Green New Deal. So I welcome Hickenlooper:
John Hickenlooper, the two-time Colorado governor and former brewpub owner who has overseen Colorado’s remarkable economic expansion, declared his candidacy for president on Monday.

Mr. Hickenlooper, 67, a socially progressive, pro-business Democrat who has called himself an “extreme moderate”...
Extreme moderate — I like!

Here's his video:



Best line: "As a skinny kid with Coke-bottle glasses and a funny last name, I’ve stood up to my fair share of bullies."

Hickenlooper was term-limited out of his governorship, but he seems to have been a very successful governor with what the NYT calls "a careful, consensus-building approach that won him praise from both sides of the aisle and helped him guide Colorado out of a recession and through a series of floods, wildfires and mass shootings...."
Gary Hart, the former Colorado senator and Democratic presidential candidate, predicted that Mr. Hickenlooper would appeal to primary voters because “he does not have a lot of pretensions.” But Mr. Hart noted that the candidate would have to harden his stances fast, in order to attract the most passionate party activists in the run-up to the primaries.
Eh. Too many Democratic candidates have hardened up stances. I'm for the radical moderate who wants to bring people together and to get things done. There needs to be someone for those of us who loathe "the most passionate party activists."
Mr. Hickenlooper moved to Colorado in 1981 to work as a geologist in the oil industry. After a layoff, he opened a downtown Denver brewpub, eventually expanding to 15 pubs and restaurants, mostly in the Midwest. Soon, he was helping to reshape Denver’s dilapidated core. By 2003 he was mayor; in 2007 he won re-election with 87 percent of the vote...

By 2011, he was governor. In that position, Mr. Hickenlooper pushed through Medicaid expansion under a divided legislature, and signed the gun control package, a major shift for the state. Colorado also gained national attention when Mr. Hickenlooper helped the state establish a national model for recreational marijuana regulation, despite his personal opposition to legalization....

But progressives in the state reserve much of their criticism for his environmental legacy, arguing that he has not gone far enough in regulating the state’s powerful oil and gas industry. In recent years, some residents have faulted him for failing to push well projects out of their neighborhoods. (Mr. Hickenlooper has been so eager to promote the industry that he once drank fracking fluid.)
I guess there's something disgusting about every candidate. Amy Klobuchar ate salad with a comb, and John Hickenlooper drank fracking fluid. I like his brand of disgusting. It's pro-business. And he's a geologist who worked in the oil industry. He must know something. What other Democratic Party candidate has any wide-ranging business experience and has worked at multiple levels of the executive side of government? Hickenlooper was mayor of the 19th biggest city (Denver) and governor of the 21st biggest state. That's a lot of executive experience, and he seems to have handled it well. He's worked as an employee in a scientific field, and he's been a successful entrepreneur making the beloved American product, beer.
The governor, a lanky, guitar-playing, twice-married father of a teenage boy, has long been considered the state’s geek in chief, often running gimmicky advertisements in which he makes himself the butt of a joke. As governor he showered in a business suit for a political ad in which he swore off dirty politics.
Geek in chief. That's what I want.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Hickenlooper, Lauren Hitt, said that the governor learned long ago how to make bullies feel uncertain, and she compared a potential Hickenlooper-Trump election to “a 'Revenge of the Nerds’-type situation.”
Excellent positioning!

209 comments:

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rcocean said...

Hickenlooper?

No one wants a President that sounds like a W.C. Fields comedy character.

Gahrie said...

Garhie, he probably meant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Seawolf_(SSN-575), our second nuclear sub, and the one originally designed to use a liquid-metal reactor.

That's the one I was talking about.

1946 - Carter graduates from the Naval Academy with a B.S. in Physics.
1948 - Carter trained to serve as a submarine officer.
1948 - 1951 - Carter served on diesel subs.
1951 - Carter begins working in the Navy nuclear program for Rickover. He was sent to Washington D.C. as a staff officer.
1952 - Carter was sent to the site of a reactor meltdown. He lead a Navy team that helped dismantle the contaminated reactor.
March 1953 - Carter goes to school to learn how to operate a nuclear reactor. The course lasts six months.
Sept. 1953 - The USS Seawolf(SSN-575) was laid down.
October 1953 - Carter leaves active service and returns to his home to take over the farm after the death of his father. He entered the inactive reserve, and thus was the true end of his service.
July 1955 - USS Seawolf was launched.
March 1957 - USS Seawolf was commissioned.

When Carter ran for president it was implied that he was a nuclear engineer that ran powerplants on nuke subs. He never served on a nuke, never ran an operating reactor and certainly never had anything to due with the crew of the USS Seawolf.

Leora said...

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

as Mr Yeats said in The Second Coming poem.

Ralph L said...

Carter did serve under Rickover, which was no picnic.

I don't know about Carter, but my dad was drafted into the Army when he turned 18 in Oct '45 (in his third year of college), went to Fort Bragg for 3 days of pre-induction, and decided the Navy could not be worse. Carter managed to avoid combat by going to USNA, but of course he didn't know that.

walter said...

Seems like a fracking stretch.
But he could get Warren a beer.

DeepRunner said...

Meh...he'll get the weed vote, and maybe the vote of people like Ann Althouse...he'll be Morry Taylor, just an asterisk in an otherwise bland field of candidates.

#They'reAllTheSame

GDI said...

Standing up to bullies is what Trump does which triggers their mental discomfort.

mtrobertslaw said...


The trouble with geeks is... well, they're geeks.

iosef said...

meh He should go back to his brewpub and leave everyone alone.

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