Powerful or Pitiful: Jared Polis

At Inside Edge we've been so busy with other stories that we've been ignoring 2nd CD candidate Jared Polis recently. We feel bad about it too. In our opinion, dollar for dollar there is more comic gold in his campaign than anyone else running for US Congress in Colorado.   

For example, what if Polis gave an anti-war protest and nobody came?

We'll that exactly what happened to Jared last week.

"On the fifth anniversary of President Bush's infamous declaration of ‘Mission Accomplished' in Iraq," wrote the Polis campaign on April 30th, "Jared Polis will hold an open event tomorrow in Denver with veterans of the Vietnam, Desert Storm and Iraq Wars on the lack of and long wait for benefits for Colorado veterans."

Besides the two invited veterans, David Mann and Rick Duncan who were invited in order to share their experiences, and the staff from the Polis campaign, only one other person was in attendance on May 1st. And that person was our reporter from PolitickerCO.com.

We're not sure why Polis chose to speak only about "Vietnam, Desert Storm and Iraq Wars," while neglecting the wars in Bosnia and Afghanistan. We guess that those veterans don't suffer from the "lack of and long wait for benefits" in Jared's opinion. Although if you asked veterans who fought in Bosnia and Afghanistan, you'd probably hear the same complaints about VA bureaucracy that other veterans, from other wars complain about all the time.

Then again, maybe Jared was just, gosh, um, pandering for votes and thought Afghanistan and Bosnia were just way too swell as wars go to include them on the list.

Our verdict: Pitiful.