It’s the last week of August, only a few weeks until Coloradans begin voting, and second-term U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter (CD-7) doesn’t know what to say.

He doesn’t know what to say about the already failing ObamaCare, Obama Stimulus and other Obama-Pelosi bills that he’s rubber stamped with no respect for the opinions of his metro Denver constituents.

After Perlmutter spoke to about 60 prosperous liberals and a few conservatives at the Denver Forum in the Oxford Hotel Friday, I asked him what he’s learned after going through the financial crisis that began in 2007 and peaked in the fall and winter of 2008 and 2009.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

Now, Perlmutter had just wasted half of his audience’s time recounting in some detail what happened in September, October, November and December 2008. He’d even offered the false spin that Barney Frank had tried to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2004 but was blocked by President George W. Bush. The opposite is the truth.

But Perlmutter won’t admit that he has learned that you can’t spend your way out of a deep recession. He doesn’t get it that you can’t tax your way out of a recession. And he hasn’t learned that wasting taxpayers’ money protecting over-paid teachers and government workers kills jobs for more Americans than such union-backed spending saves.

The business attired retirees, professors, union representatives and young engineers from Lockheed Martin must have gone away disappointed that the only thing they got out of their $30 lunch was a nice meal and bland smoothie from Perlmutter. He spent the first half of his speech filibustering about the financial crisis, trying to excuse the $780 billion stimulus bill and financial reform bill that says nothing about reforming Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

And if they bothered to check out Perlmutter’s web site after the speech, they’d find that while it lists Afghanistan & Iraq and Small Business as important issues, when you click on them, you read “coming soon.” Perlmutter has nothing to say about the men and women who are fighting to protect America or the men and women who would be creating jobs if his job-killing bills and legislation weren’t putting them out of business?

Even more disgraceful, his Veterans button opens to another blank page. “Coming soon!”

The guy has been in Congress for almost four years and he has nothing to say about veterans?

And here’s the irony. Perlmutter spent much of 2009 proposing bills that were designed to destroy Wall Street and make it the former financial capital of the world. Click on his Wall Street Reform button. “Coming soon!”

A bankruptcy lawyer and the son of a man who made his fortune in real estate, Perlmutter has nothing to say about how to help small businesses and how to deal with the depressed real estate markets. 

When I asked Perlmutter in a rushed post-speech conversation whether he understands that Obama’s fiscal stimulus has prolonged the recession and another jobs bill for government employes is likely to send us not only into a double dip but also a triple and quadruple dip recession, he played his tragedy card. He replied that he’s heard of a young person who lost a job and blew his brains out. He won’t let that happen. Then he played the teachers, cops and firemen card. He won’t let them lose their jobs and reduce public safety.

Those are typical, unthinking Democrat answers to complex problems. They try to stoke emotional responses from people who are struggling to find private sector jobs, pay mortgages on once over-priced homes and reduce their mountains of debt.

Instead of trying to stimulate consumer demand that would allow the creation of new jobs and would end the fear and uncertainty that are killing jobs and ruining lives, Perlmutter is looking out for his union backers. More specifically, he’s looking out for the leaders of unions that represent highly-paid government employes who have the best health and retirement benefits in the world.

What Perlmutter and Obama don’t admit is that by hiring more government workers and overpaying them by as much as 100% compared with similar private sector jobs, they are pricing private sector employers out of the market. They are taking so much of our money in taxes that we have nothing less to spend in restaurants, hotels, shopping malls or in the residential real estate market.

When a member of the audience asked Perlmutter about his position on free trade, the liberal Democrat made it clear that he comes down for protectionism. Claiming to be concerned about manufacturing jobs in the U.S., if not Colorado where there aren’t many and never have been, Perlmutter came down on the side of over-paid unionized auto workers. Protectionism would stimulate inflation, freeze demand and kill millions of good jobs, not create them. 

Ed Perlmutter is one of many Democrats who want to make already depressed American consumers pay 30% to 40% more for cars and stuff they buy at Walmart so that members of the United Auto Workers can make $40 to $60 and hour plus expensive health benefits.

Perlmutter strikes me as being well informed and as glib as your average bankruptcy lawyer. In an anti-Bush or Obama-wave year, he could expect to win big. But this is an anti-Obama year, and Perlmutter has done everything that Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi have demanded. Perlmutter has voted against Colorado everytime.

Thus, he and Aurora councilman Ryan Frazier are in a statistical tie. Perlmutter has raised a lot more money than Frazier and has a lot more in the bank. The Democrats have more money than the Republicans, and there probably aren’t enough GOP 527s around to counter the negative ads that hard left unions’ political action committees and 527s will run against Frazier.

So the odds are that Perlmutter will survive this year. But all of the money in the world doesn’t always sell a bad candidate like Perlmutter. 

Frazier is a strong candidate. He’s competitive on the fundraising front. He has the anti-Obama tide going his way. And he still has a good chance to pull an upset over the well-funded incumbent Perlmutter.

Let’s hope Frazier sends Perlmutter packing soon.

LINKS:

Perlmutter for Colorado.

Ryan Frazier for Colorado.