DENVER—Former President Bill Clinton said Monday that electing tea party Republicans would be like returning to the 19th century as he rallied Colorado Democrats to stick with their rookie senator.
Clinton pleaded with some 2,000 Democrats in a Denver high school to stick with Sen. Michael Bennet, who is locked in a tough contest with Republican Ken Buck.
Clinton poked fun at tea party candidates, then turned serious and said that Buck, who is staunchly conservative, would be to elect someone who is backward. Clinton criticized tea party views on the economy.
“Some of these positions people haven’t held for 110 years, seriously,” Clinton said.
Clinton said Buck wants to mislead voters by having them focus on their frustrations with the economy, not what he’d do if elected.
“Buck wants this election to be a referendum, a referendum on your anger,” Clinton said.
Clinton is traveling the country stumping for vulnerable Democrats such as Bennet, who is locked in a tight contest with Buck. The former president’s Colorado stop came on the day early voting started here.
Clinton spent most of his talk defending Democratic policies on health care and the economy and laid out gloomy predictions if Republicans return to power in Congress. He took up the Democratic drumbeat that Republicans caused the economy to falter and shouldn’t be returned to power.
“For goodness sakes, don’t go back to what got us into trouble in the first place,” Clinton said.
Bennet and other Democrats who preceded Clinton laid out similar arguments.
“The very same people that burned the house down want their matches back,” Bennet said. “We are not going backward.”
One thing Clinton and Bennet did not mention: The fact that Clinton endorsed Bennet’s primary challenger, Andrew Romanoff. Romanoff was invited to the rally, but couldn’t attend, Bennet campaign staffers said.
But Romanoff was on the minds of a few Democrats in the crowd who were careful to point out they were drawn to the rally by Clinton, not Bennet.
“Honestly, I’m very undecided on Bennet,” said Denver software installer Paul Jepsen.
A Democrat sitting by Jepsen, out-of-work Denverite Tom Rodman, said he finds Bennet too centrist and simply wanted to hear Clinton.
“If I vote for Bennet, it’ll be because I have no one else to vote for,” said Rodman, who said he couldn’t vote for Buck.
Clinton acknowledged that some Democrats are frustrated with what they’re seeing from the current Congress, but he urged them to remember how fired up they were in 2008 and urged them not to abandon Democrats.
“Everything you voted for could be thrown away,” Clinton said.
