Sen. Michael Bennet blames Democratic Party's failures for fueling President Trump's rise

Sen. Michael Bennet says the Democratic brand is in the toilet nationwide because it has failed to prove it can address voters’ challenges.

Mr. Bennet, Colorado Democrat and gubernatorial candidate in his home state, said President Trump would not be in office if his party were more respected and offered a “positive vision.”

“He has been sent to Washington twice to blow the place up because, among other things, people are sick of what they see as the self-interested partisanship there,” Mr. Bennet said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think they are sick of a Democratic Party who hasn’t been able to show how we are going to address an economy where the middle class continues to shrink and where, over the last 20 years, we have actually lost ground in terms of the achievement of our kids in school.”

“We need to address those things,” said Mr. Bennet, a former school superintendent whose short-lived bid for the 2020 presidential nomination was a flop.

He said many of his supporters are furious with the movies Mr. Trump has been making since he took office. He said it is “very important for us to stand up against the insanity that Trump represents and the chaos that he represents and show there is something better.”

“But we should understand that there are a lot of people that voted for him for a reason, and that is because they wanted to blow up Washington, D.C.,” he said. “They are not surprised by his corruption, that is sort of a ratification of who he is, and we need to show people something different.”

Mr. Trump lost Colorado to Vice President Kamala Harris by more than 10 percentage points in the 2024 election.