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

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, your hosts Jason Bane and Ian Silverii talk with legendary Colorado politico Alan Salazar and coin a new term from his vast experience. Currently serving as Chief of Staff to Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, Salazar has been a top adviser to Congressmen, Senators, Governors, and even Presidents -- for familiar names such as Roy Romer, Mark Udall, John Hickenlooper, and Bill Clinton. We discuss the traits that these successful politicians all have in common (other than hiring Alan Salazar). Later, Jason and Ian also dive into the debt ceiling and try to understand why Colorado Republican lawmakers refused to co-sponsor a resolution honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Republicans say they want to make government smaller, but what happens when they blast it into microscopic pieces? Republicans claim they won a slim majority in Congress because they were talking about issues like inflation, crime, and the southern border, so why are the first things they’re doing trying to ban abortion and launch meaningless partisan investigations you’ll only understand if you subscribe to Tucker Carlson’s newsletter? Meanwhile, Colorado Democrats in the State Capitol have gotten to business in the 74th General Assembly, with an agenda that is laser-focused on the issue that are top of mind for voters; state legislative Republicans, unfortunately, have the same problems as their Washington DC counterparts.

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, it’s the last episode of 2022 -- you know, the year that brought the biggest Blue Wave Colorado has ever seen! Our soon-to-be-8th favorite member of Congress from Colorado nearly lost her seat; has she learned a damn thing from it? With the retirement of the worst party chair to ever lead the Colorado GOP now a sure thing, who is crazy, dumb, or unlucky enough to lead the red team into a Presidential Election cycle? The one place where Colorado Republicans HAVE seen a modicum of electoral success is a total disaster; will they find a way to lose power there too? Donald Trump is still around, but how "dead" is Trumpism on a scale of 1-8 Freddy Krugers? And finally, we revisit an old Colorado story to try and process the George Santos shitshow.

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Ian Silverii is on vacation, so the other guy (Jason Bane) found two different people who were willing to talk to him about politics. Settle in for an entertaining discussion with Jason and returning guests Christy Powell and Alan Franklin for a deep, deep, deep dive into the big electoral questions of 2022 and what Colorado's political future looks like from here. 

We talk about how Republicans completely hosed themselves in 2022; whether or not the Colorado GOP is even salvageable; and what Democrats need to be careful about with their new super-duper majorities in Colorado. We also touch on some news about exporting QAnon and whether failed Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker was tanking all along. 

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Congressman Jason Crow returns to discuss Election Day jitters; his first time as a member of the minority party in Congress; and why an Assault Weapons Ban is good policy. Later, we discuss the "Infinity War" within the Colorado Republican Party and how sore losers in the GOP -- throughout the country -- keep whining about being on the opposite side of the majority of Americans when it comes to common sense ideas and governing in general.

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Congresswoman-elect Brittany Pettersen joins her husband and podcast host Ian Silverii (and Jason Bane) to talk about traveling to Washington D.C. for a whirlwind week of orientation for newly-elected members of Congress. We'll take you behind the scenes for a look at everything involved in starting a new job at the United States Capitol.

Later, we discuss another mass shooting in Colorado -- this time at "Club Q" in Colorado Springs -- and how lawmakers need to do more to ensure that local elected officials aren't ignoring tools that are intended to prevent such a tragedy. We'll also talk about Rep. Lauren Boebert's narrow re-election in CO-03; leadership elections at the State Capitol; and Donald Trump's very sad announcement of another Presidential campaign. 

Happy Thanksgiving! We're particularly grateful for all of our listeners.

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on The Get More Smarter Podcast, your hosts Jason Bane and Ian Silverii sit down with Seth Masket, Director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, to break down the 2022 election results in Colorado and the massive Bluenami that swept through our state.

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, we make our final prognostications of the 2022 election cycle! We also talk with pollster-extraordinaire Andrew Baumann of Global Strategy Group so that you'll know what to watch out for -- both nationally and in Colorado -- as election results start trickling in on Tuesday. Your friends will be really amazed at how smart you are when you tell them what it means when the first batch of results are reported in [checks notes] eastern Indiana. 

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, the 2022 election is nearly here! Get that ballot off your table and into a dropbox! There have been A LOT of debates this cycle, and that’s probably a good thing for democracy; we'll talk about some of them. Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl, or someone on her campaign, gets outed as the brains behind one of the most vile and racist twitter accounts in #copolitics; with Election Day around the corner, Ganahl just lets her freak flag fly. The 2020 election was not riddled with fraud, and yet, a large portion of the GOP still believes it -- will they accept the results of an election they'll probably lose? The Colorado Springs Gazette editorial board decides to "well, actually" Adolf Hitler and the Nazis; and we have a new segment that is both informative and (we hope) entertaining. But first...Democratic State Senator Kevin Priola joins us to talk about switching parties from red to blue, what issues he’ll break with his new party on, and why democracy is still worth defending. 

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Election Day is less than 3 weeks away! Will it be a red ripple, a blue wave, a green tsunami, or another color and a different meteorological event? Our guest, Andrew Baumann of Global Strategy Group, takes us through the latest "Mountaineer" polling for the answers. Later, the Colorado Springs Gazette only endorses Republicans, but their news team does great journalism, so how should we think about this news outlet? There are 11 statewide initiatives and many, many more local questions on this year’s ballot, we’ll talk about…some of them. And Colorado Republicans seem to think that you must be winning if your opponent is running a real campaign but you are not; we make an effort to understand this bizarre logic.

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!