Anyone trying to identify the common thread providing a tidy explanation for this week’s primary election results around the state is going to have a rough time of it. In some contests incumbency was an asset, in others it appeared a liability; in certain races financial advantage proved a decisive factor, in others it seemed not to matter; pragmatic political concerns won out in places, populist irrationality elsewhere.

In other words, there is no dialectical analysis that will wrap the whole thing up into a neat, tight package. So let’s just look at some of the more salient parts:

The most watched contest of the evening was, of course, the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. “Most watched” doesn’t necessarily translate into “most exciting.” John Hickenlooper’s primary victory was never realistically all that much in doubt; but there is no question that the race had unexpectedly tightened up in recent weeks, with Andrew Romanoff mounting an impressive challenge to Hickenlooper from the left.

Romanoff had two main things going for him; first, the leftward trajectory of his party suggested that his ideological alignment was attractive to a growing number of Democrats in the state; and second, was Hickenlooper’s well-landed punches on himself.

In the end though, none of that mattered much to the Democratic primary voters. It could be that the Jacobinical leftism so attractive to the noisy and disruptive ideological fringe does not parlay cleanly into electoral victory — partly, perhaps, because a growing segment of that wing dismisses Western democratic processes as archaic relics of an oppressive, racist, imperialist system, or something like that, and have come to the conclusion that threatening to burn neighborhoods down is a quicker and more reliable avenue to revolutionary success.

A bigger part of the answer is more traditionally political and pragmatic — more people recognized Hickenlooper’s name, and in the cold calculus of political reality even those ideologically predisposed against Hick for whatever heresies he committed were preternaturally inclined to vote for him, judging that his odds of beating Gardner were better than Romanoff’s.

So now Hickenlooper advances to the main round, but he does so having sustained significant damage, most of it self-inflicted. His ethics violations alone were an unforced error, and his mishandling of the hearing process, earning him an additional contempt charge, was an inexplicable blunder. The senate race will still be a prime-time battle, but Hickenlooper is not entering it unscathed, or unsullied.

Turning to the legislative primaries, initial reviews suggest that money played a more traditional role, perhaps usually so for statehouse races. On the Republican side, massive sums were pumped in for and against candidates in some key seats, with more moderate (or practical) conservatives generally edging out firebrands. On the Democratic side, the most competitive race was HD 6, a 3-way contest between three attorneys, each of whom flooded their own candidacies with thousands of dollars. The quasi-incumbent Rep. Steven Woodrow’s many more thousands eventually won the day.

And that brings us to the oddest outcome of the night: Lauren Boebert beating five-term incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton in the 3rd Congressional District. Here, the election hinged not on money (Tipton far out-raised Boebert), or philosophical fealty (Tipton has been a reliably and consistently conservative House member), and certainly not on practical political calculation; whatever accounted for Boebert’s win — her bubbly personal appeal, effective ballot harvesting, an influx of Democratic-leaning independents voting for the weaker candidate, or simply the frustratingly regular Republican habit of cannibalization — there is no question that the result made the possibility of a Democratic House pick-up in CD-3 far more likely.

This one bears the unmistakable shades of 2010, when Colorado’s Republicans foolishly relinquished both the governorship and the U.S. Senate to weaker primary victors, in a fit of anti-establishment fever. Zeal has its place, and holds a certain beguiling charm over ideologues — on both the left and the right — but can come at a steep price.

I wish Boebert all the best in what will be a brutal, ugly, serpentine, high-profile circus of an election which is already getting the salivatory glands of the media flowing. I only note, with more than a tinge of regret, Boebert’s own words from her statement Tuesday night: “Colorado deserves a fighter who will stand up for freedom, who believes in America and who is willing to take on all the left-wing lunatics who are trying so hard to ruin our country.” Western Colorado had that, reliably, in Scott Tipton, and elected to risk it; one wonders, for what?