Michael Bennet, Mad as Hell
Picture it: Michael Bennet, the insurgent.
It’s almost a journalistic requirement to use mild-mannered to describe the 54-year-old senator from Colorado. Bennet comes off as the standard guy in a suit with the standard guy-in-a-suit haircut. He has a calm smile and a voice that creaks through conversations about provisions of bills he’s helped write. He’s sober. He’s serious.
But now, the prep-school and Yale Law graduate—and the man who is in elected office only because of a surprise appointment to the Senate—tells me,“I gotta live off the land.” He wants to be part of a revolution, he says: Make the presidency normal again.
Last Saturday, Bennet and I ducked into the coffee shop of the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. Bennet sipped tea and nibbled on a croissant. (He couldn’t believe that the two items together had run him $12.96.) The day before, he’d trashed the Democratic National Committee and what he referred to as its “stupid and self-defeating” rules about polling and online donors for qualifying for the September debates. He’s one of the 11 candidates who failed to register at 2 percent or higher in four different polls and hit
