The Get More Smarter Podcast - A Weekly Show About Colorado Politics

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Ian is/was coming in from Our Nation’s Capitol, Washington DC, where the GOP Micro-Majority is getting sick and tired of threats and shenanigans coming from…other members of the GOP Micro-Majority. Then, we check in on the smaller, more golden-domed capitol building in the centennial state where lawmakers only have a few weeks left to finish a big ol pile of bills; we ask the perennial question everyone else is asking too, “HOW WILL THEY GET IT ALL DONE IN TIME!?!?!” We also have an unfortunate amount of flatulence-related political content to squeeze out.And finally, we’ll take a look at the Colorado congressional races that are finally starting to take shape (sort of). We’ll get a report from Best Friend of the Pod and unofficial guest host, Christy Powell, who's back to deliver the good, the bad, and the broke from the first quarter fundraising period!

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME LAUNDRY, or something; Democratic members of Colorado’s congressional delegation fight back against some of the silliest stuff we’ve ever heard of -- six or seven months before the most important election of our lives (again)We have a final update from the absolute clown show that is the Colorado Republican House Micro Minority whose attempted impeachment of Secretary of State Jena Griswold went exactly as we said it would. Then, a member of the same micro minority caucus that I never heard of until 10 minutes before recording this episode left a loaded gun in a bathroom in the State Capitol, and no, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, unfortunately. Also, we may FINALLY have proof that Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dave Williams is a plant by Democrats akin to the plot of the Scorcese film "The Departed" because once again we cannot think of a way we could have done more damage to the State GOP ON PURPOSE than Williams has done by happenstance.

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, we’ve got a longer episode because there's lots to discuss. First, there are more than a few problems for Colorado republicans in more than a few congressional districts, and one of them was so bad he lost to Heidi  Ganahl in 2022. It’s Budget, Guns and Mental Health down at the State Capitol; we update you on some big fights and some big crazy going down under the gold dome. And...CHEMTRAILS! Seriously.But before all of that, you know him as Colorado’s 29th Attorney General because he is Colorado’s Attorney General! Phil Weiser is back on the pod to chat trust-busting, regulating social media, county-level gerrymandering, bad gas, and much more.

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, the Second Regular Session of the 74th Colorado General Assembly is about halfway over: Democrats are taking big swings at big bills and Republicans are making utter fools of themselves. In other words, it’s a day that ends with “y.” Not-billionaire and not president and not gonna be president former host of NBC’s "The Apprentice" is broke as shit and can’t pay $464 million dollars he owes to the people of NY State for being a criminal fraudster. Who could have seen that coming?  And with the U.S. Senate Majority in the balance, it’s looking like Republicans could blow their chances at a majority once again. But first Congressman Jason Crow from Colorado’s 6th congressional district stops by to talk about the Space Force National Guard; the VA in Aurora; Ukraine; gun violence prevention; and saving democracy. 

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast...we have a special interview-only episode with the man who was the first guest on the original show way back in May 2016. You know him as Denver's Mayor, Colorado's Governor, and now a United States Senator: John Hickenlooper is back on the pod! You don't want to miss this interview... 

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast...Christy Powell is back on the podcast, and we’ve got a whole Christy-only special on the halfway point of the Colorado legislative session as a bonus episode! Our unofficial third cohost drops by again to give us an update on what’s going on under the gold dome and to confound us once more with her legislative game "What the F*** are They Talking About?" 

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Super Tuesday came and went and left us with the same situation we had beforehand; that’s right, it’s a Biden-Trump rematch, and no, there’s nothing you can do about it. But Dark Brandon is back: President Biden absolutely overcame incredibly low expectations for his State of the Union speech, and (formerly) rising Republican star Dark Katie Britt from Alabama vastly underperformed her basically average expectations.Later, the Colorado House Republicans catch “nopeachment fever” from their colleagues in Washington DC; this time, they’re going after a friend of the pod, and most likely a Fox News hit! They also tried and failed to make abortion and maybe also IVF illegal in Colorado right after even ALABAMA realized the error of their ways and carved out an exception for IVF in their heinous anti abortion law. Next, Colorado Democrats’ favorite Republican Copy Machine Masochist is back! What genre of office equipment will Ron Hanks exact his revenge on in his latest electoral endeavor? And finally, we did it yall: Democrats are finally killing off Colorado’s oil and gas industry -- for the fifth time -- once and for all. Or whatever. 

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, the United States Supreme Court voted unanimously to let Donald Trump appear on the Colorado ballot in 2024; Democrats and Republicans alike weep and rejoice in equal measure. Kevin McCarthy may have been the shortest-termed speaker in modern history, but MAGA Mike Johnson may go down as the least capable person to ever hold the job as he kicks the can down the road and forces the federal government to live paycheck to paycheck. Next, Real President Joe Biden and Pretend President Donald Trump both visited the Texas Border this week, but only one of them wants to do anything to solve the problem. With the Colorado legislature well underway, one powerful legislator is picking fights with the media about objectively accurate reporting -- where have we seen this before? And our 8th favorite member of congress from Colorado is having a tougher and tougher time these days. May we politely suggest suspending your campaign and spending more time with your family? Finally, the fallout from the overturning of Roe v. Wade continues as Republicans recognize the effects of their own policies; maybe they should stop trying to interfere in private medical decisions altogether so this kind of stuff isn’t a problem anymore? And the most corrupt, contemptible, and batshit crazy chair of the Colorado GOP in modern memory -- if not all of history -- is using Nikki Haley’s money to go after Phil Anschutz, Jeff Crank, and Nikki Haley, all while trying to bolster his own campaign for Congress. Is there any line this guy won’t cross to promote himself?

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, the incredibly cynical and evidence-free impeachment attempt against President Biden is failing, and now even Republicans are noticing; as it turns out, when the leader of your party is a 91-time indicted twice convicted obvious crook, trying to play both sides against a guy like Joe Biden just isn’t going to work. Next, we discuss how an egg isn’t a chicken, a sapling isn’t a tree, a seed isn’t a flower, and no, a frozen embryo isn’t a person. A southern Colorado Republican con artist gets targeted by the feds in an investigation; we're glad that federal law enforcement is finally figuring out what so many of us in Colorado knew for so long. And finally, the namesake of the very first episode of this podcast has emerged from his hole; former U.S. Senator Cory Gardner has an endorsement to make! Will this be the normie establishment kiss of death, or just what the incredibly crowded field in his former congressional district needs to make their mind up?

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast: Democrats keep winning, Republicans keep losing, and we predict whether these two trends will continue! Congress finally found the votes to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security, even though the Senate wants nothing to do with this ridiculousness. And can four GOP state lawmakers running for higher office break the "Republican Caucus Curse" and get elected to Congress? But first, Kyle Clark of 9News, Colorado’s most popular evening news anchor, joins us once more to talk about what the hell is going on in Lakewood, if local and national journalists are failing to meet the moment on political extremism, and what the balance is between fighting bigotry and platforming it.  

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Republicans have managed to break both chambers of Congress as they refuse to not only accomplish their most basic constitutional obligations, but fail to accomplish even their real bad political objectives. Then, Gabe-ish Evans -- the half-term state representative running for the GOP nomination to lose to Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo in November -- gets Speaker Mike Johnson’s endorsement; no word on whether or not he also got Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s endorsement, but we’re betting against it personally. Next, we come closer to home with some good old fashioned chaos at the State Capitol, and the disgraced convicted felon who wrote the worst law in Colorado may be running for Congress now that a criminal record is apparently something to be proud of when running for the nomination of the party of law and order. BUT FIRST semi-returning podcast champion Andrew Baumann, Partner at the legendary Democratic Polling Firm Global Strategy Group joins us to review the latest edition of the ProgressNow/GSG quarterly-ish survey, "The Rocky Mountaineer"...

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, we learn that all persons are persons from our coverage of the ClusterBuck in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District...which continues with the results of a debate, a straw poll, and some partial campaign finance reports that are coming in as we record. While nobody’s really breaking fundraising records here, this race may be breaking the record for “most candidates with arrest records in a primary election in Colorado History.” There was also a GOP debate in the 8th congressional district which is a must-win if Colorado Republicans want to crawl out of their cavern of irrelevance and if national Republicans want to keep their now-one-seat-majority. But the candidates there are...not the best. And we check in on the second regular session of the 74th General Assembly where GOP leadership has transitioned from worse to bad -- and a brand new kind of microminority infighting has just begun.

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, there was so much news between the last time we recorded and today that we had to throw out a whole episode and start over! First, the ClusterBuck in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District gets more cluster-er as the Colorado House Minority Leader cops to a DUI and one of his caucus members/leading opponents for the nomination admits to paying for an abortion for his college girlfriend during a speech he made opposing the recognition of Roe v. Wade. Our 8th favorite member of congress from Colorado -- who is soon to be our first favorite former member of Congress from Colorado -- lays low as she finishes unpacking after moving into what she hopes is her new district, but it won’t be, really. The economy is rolling, and Americans have finally noticed! And the "Fat Lady" is warming up, because Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for President after Ron DeSanctimonius dropped out and Nikki Haley got her clock cleaned in New Hampshire. 

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, absolutely nobody has done more for Democrats in Colorado than Republicans in Colorado; it's not remotely close, and it's about to get worse. With ZERO statewide offices, total irrelevance in the Colorado legislature, and now zero-out-of-three incumbents running for re-election in their own congressional seats, the Colorado GOP is undeniably at their lowest point in modern history...perhaps all of history! We dance on the ashes of a once politically competitive organization that is more worried about infighting than any other sort of political battle. The Colorado House and Senate kick off the second regular session of the 74th general assembly; we do a preview of a preview of some of the big fights, the little fights, and the medium fights. 

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, it’s a special interview-only episode! Will Marshall, president of the legendary center-left think tank Progressive Policy Institute, joins us to talk pragmatism versus performance, how Democrats can start winning working class voters again, and what the 2024 election is going to look like. 

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, we almost made it through 2023 with another podcast episode, but then Lauren Boebert announced late on December 27th when LITERALLY NOBODY WAS TRYING TO THINK ABOUT HER that she was going to carpetbag her broken campaign down to the 4th congressional district. So, in this special episode of the Get More Smarter Podcast: What the Buck is our 8th Favorite Member of Congress from Colorado Doing in the 4th District?

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast...the Colorado Supreme Court held that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prevents the Secretary of State from placing Donald Trump on the Presidential ballot in Colorado, setting up a constitutional showdown with national implications. Mario Nicolais, one of the attorneys for the six electors who brought the case to the State Supreme Court, walks us through how it all went down and what he expects might happen next.

We were so excited to be invited back to the excellent City Cast Denver podcast to talk about our 8th Favorite Member of Congress from Colorado, Lauren Boebert's 2023: from Beetlebert to facing a legit primary threat to George Santos being her grandbaby sitter to...well, all the rest. 

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast: Bidenomics? Bidenflation? Bidenpeachment? What portmanteau can’t we create with the President’s last name? Our 8th favorite member of congress from Colorado is living it up in the Big Apple! Has Rep. Lauren Boebert given up on winning reelection or has she just not realized that New York City isn’t in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District? Speaking of which, Barbora Hurd’s Husband has an ad, and it actually features him? It also happens to feature the same damn floor stompy guitar twang as every other Republican TV Ad in Colorado. And if you thought the Supreme Court of the United States was done taking away abortion rights, you were unfortunately probably wrong; we break down the mifepristone case headed to SCOTUS and hope we pronounced that correctly.

This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Republicans from Colorado to Washington DC to North Carolina, to South Carolina, to California, and probably everywhere else too, in between are a big, big mess. We ask the question on everybody’s mind, how the hell does anyone still vote for them? The rats are fleeing the ship of our 8th favorite member of congress from Colorado, will it be enough to help Barbora Hurd’s Husband return the third congressional district to the red team?Just because you deny the results of an election doesn’t mean it didn’t happen (we’re talking to you, entire Colorado Republican Party); while we were out, the Colorado Legislature had a special session on property taxes and boy are our brains tired; and we announce the series finale of our segment on our 7th favorite member of Congress from Colorado -- What the Buck -- as CNNKenSNBC makes way for the CD4 primary clown car to really get rolling down to Yuma.