Colorado’s two Democratic presidential candidates took the stage in Detroit the last two nights in what may have been do-or-die opportunities for their campaigns.

Did the nation sit up and take notice? We’ll know when the post-debate polls come out. But a quick sweep of pundit commentary on the candidates’ performances unveiled mixed reviews for John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet.

To be sure, most day-after reviews focused on the front runners — former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sens. Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. But several also zeroed in on Colorado’s 2020 hopefuls as they assessed how well various Democratic moderates did on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in the CNN-televised debate.

Hickenlooper drew significant internet notice for his throw-your-hands-in-the-air contest with Sanders on Tuesday, and for saying policies like Medicare for all and the Green New Deal will make it harder for the Democratic nominee to win next fall: “You might as well FedEx the election to Donald Trump.”

And the former Colorado governor drew a Twitter snap-back from young progressive superstar U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, for calling the “Green New Deal” program she backs a “distraction.”

ABC’s John Verhovek cited Hickenlooper’s “back-and-forth with Sanders on health care” and for touting his “track record as a small business owner, as a mayor and as a governor.”

Anthony Zurcher of BBC News credited the former Denver mayor for “noting that the 40 Democrats who won seats in the House of Representatives didn’t share the views of Warren and Sanders.”

Susan Jones at conservative CNSNews gave Hickenlooper credit for being “one of the few candidates to lay out a strategy to defeat [President Donald] Trump in 2020.”

“I think we’ve got to focus on where Donald Trump is failing,” Jones quoted the Coloradan as saying. “Donald Trump is malpractice personified — we’ve got to point that out. Why is it soybean farmers in Iowa need 10 good years to get back to where they were 2 years ago? Where’s the small manufacturing jobs that are supposed to come back? Why are we lurching from one international crisis to another? All things that he promised American voters, we’ve got to focus on that — and the economy, and jobs, and training, so that we can promise a future for America that everybody wants to invest in.”

On the other hand, several commentators opined that Hickenlooper on balance made little impact in Tuesday’s debate.

The Vanity Fair Hive piece on Tuesday’s debate was sub-headed: “Hickenlooper who?”

Progressive commentator Cenk Uygur of YouTube’s “The Young Turks” dismissively lumped Hickenlooper among moderate Democrats at the debate who “gave a lot of Republican talking points and talked themselves out of the race.”

Closer to home, Colorado Independent columnist Mike Littwin said Hickenlooper was “invisible” on debate night, adding that his performance “may well mark the end of his campaign.”

“On a night when Hickenlooper had to show up big, on a night which the poll numbers and the fundraising numbers fairly screamed in tandem that this could be his last chance to show up, he didn’t show at all,” Littwin said, noting that of the 10 opening-night candidates, Hickenlooper “talked for the least amount of time.”

Hickenlooper threw that back on the moderators in a post-debate interview with Fox News: “I thought the moderates didn’t get as much air time as the more idealistic progressives.”

Westword’s Chase Woodruff sounded the same note as Littwin: “It’ll take some time to fill out the paperwork, but John Hickenlooper’s campaign for president ended Tuesday night in Detroit. Like so many of the answers given by the former Colorado governor during the second Democratic presidential primary debate, Hickenlooper 2020 wasn’t cut off or drowned out so much as it just kind of faded away, as if the candidate had suddenly forgotten why he was there in the first place.”

As for Bennet’s Wednesday-night showing, some outlets noted that he was at the receiving end of a blast from Harris, who advised him to stop using “Republican talking points” on health care over their differences on “Medicare for All.”

Fox News political anchor Bret Baier observed that Colorado’s senior U.S. senator “showed himself to be capable of assuming former Vice President Joe Biden’s place as the more moderate Democrat in the 2020 presidential primary field — if the Delaware Democrat backs out,” the network said in its debate coverage.

The Atlantic’s Adam Harris proclaimed in a headline: “Bennet steals the moment from Harris and Biden on school segregation,” quoting the former Denver Public Schools superintendent as saying in the debate that “our schools are as segregated as they were 50 years ago.”  (But Harris also noted that Bennet and other candidates who have focused on the issue don’t “have a plan listed on their campaign website to deal with segregated schools.”)

The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake gave Bennet low marks on delivery, saying the Coloradan — along with Biden and Harris — “kept stumbling over their words.”

Blake also hit back at what he called the “‘Republican talking point’ talking point” accusation that Harris hurled at Bennet, saying: “Bennet is not exactly some conservative Democrat.”

On the pop culture front, the Colorado-set cartoon series “South Park” noted on Twitter that many of its fans had compared the sound of  Bennet’s voice to that of the show’s guidance-counselor character, Mr. Mackey.

As for pundits who evaluated both Colorado candidates, Palm Beach (Florida) Post politcal editor Antonio Fins said Hickenlooper “elicited push back for his criticism of socialism, and he took aim at the Medicare for All proposal. But he lagged in air time and didn’t seem to get traction in the banter of the stage.”

Bennet, he said, “faced off with Harris on Medicare for All and landed the most convincing blow noting the high cost and questioning the need to ban private health plans that people embrace.”

Slate had it both ways with the Coloradans.

Slate’s Jim Newell called Hickenlooper “the least articulate and interesting of the 7 to 10 versions of the same candidate – Joe Biden’s white male moderate understudy-and he’s already had staffers quit because they recognized the pointlessness of the escapade. His brand of Colorado center-leftism is more effectively represented in the debate by Michael Bennet.”

Newell’s Slate colleague Jordan Weissmann was less laudatory toward Bennet, calling the senator “a human beta blocker, a one-man antidote to anything that might resemble excitement or drama. When he talks, one’s pulse slows, the eyes grow heavy. …  Theoretically, Bennet could have played an interesting and important role in this race’s policy discussion; in the Senate, he’s been a key advocate for a child allowance that would give at least $3,000 a year to every child under 17 in America. It’s the sort of idea that once would have seemed overly ambitious, but thanks to his work could conceivably pass under a Democratic administration. And yet, he doesn’t talk much about it. It’s not clear why he’s on the stage, and he should leave.”

College debate coach Todd Graham, writing for CNN, gave Bennet and entrepreneur Andrew Yang his highest second-night grade of B.

“Bennet is an odd one to figure out,” Graham said. “Just when you think he’s too boring or plain, he shifts gears and throws out some quality answers. His positions were well defended on the high costs of Medicare for all (30+ trillion dollars) and why its defenders need to level with the American people on the issue. Bennet was also the best debater on stage on civil rights, the need for a fairer education system, and on how to address criminal justice reform. I know, it shocked me too.”

But he gave Hickenlooper’s first-night performance one of his lowest grades, a D.

“He didn’t stick to his strongest arguments like he did in the previous debate when he constantly pointed to examples of his successful governorship,” Graham said. “Hickenlooper was unfocused in many of his answers, from saying ‘there is a way of looking at trade that is therapeutic,’ to mumbling something about ‘big, you know, noisy hangars’ when discussing American military foreign policy. Plus, his lack of energy was noticeable compared to others on stage.”

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