We’ve already touched on the promise of U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., to heal the planet… “for Republicans, too.”
Perhaps we should be grateful that he didn’t threaten to send them to that portion of the earth that may remain unhealed. But his speech at the Democratic National Convention is more notable for passing up what should have been a perfect opportunity for him to talk about entrepreneurial business and job creation. The Democrats, rather than seize an opportunity to show how identity is irrelevant to success, have decided to make identity politics the centerpiece of their campaign.
Polis himself listed his various identities, brushing them aside in favor of the label “American,” then proceeded to revisit and pander to identity groups in the guise of “bringing America together.”
All except for one, apparently. In Polis’s introduction, he identifies himself as, among other things, as an “entrepreneur.” But amid an election that is all about the economy, he never returns to that identity. You would think that a successful Internet entrepreneur, from Boulder, a city that Entrepreneur Magazine rated in 2010 as #1 for startups, would have something of value to say on the subject. Indeed, Polis’s business success was a key to his 2008 election to Congress in the first place.
Instead, in Charlotte, the entreprenuerial case was made by Steve Westly, a venture capitalist, a bundler for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns and former controller of the state of California.
“Since June 2009, four companies in his venture firm’s portfolio have received more than half a billion dollars in loans, grants or stimulus money from the Obama Energy Department, a review by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News has found,” according to a 2011 report titled, “Green bundler with the golden touch.”
So, someone like Polis who could have spoken with authority on private-sector job creation, instead focused on identity politics. And an entrepreneurial defense of Pres. Obama’s economic policies is made by Westly, who has become the Republican’s target for “crony capitalism.”
That makes Westly’s comments on job creation that Pres. Obama is “growing the economy from the middle out, not the top down,” all the more ironic.
