It is advisable for Colorado pundits to refrain from speculating on the presidential election and its imminent outcome. We may live at the top of the Rockies and, even though our waters flow out to our neighbors, we have no real idea what transpires in that handful of swing states where our national campaigns are actually waged. As far as Colorado is concerned, there are political hydraulics that indicate Democrats will continue to hold their majorities in both chambers of the legislature. (And Cory Gardner will prove a dead man walking.)

A skillful and popular politician can run six or seven percentage points ahead of his or her national ticket, occasionally winning even when it suffers a narrow defeat. So called “wave” elections, which have become more frequent in recent decades, are driven not so much by an abiding enthusiasm for the winner as they are by visceral loathing for the loser. When this antipathy rises to a fever pitch, it only makes sense to vote against every Democrat or every Republican found on the ballot. When candidates at the top run 10 or more points behind, they predictably tank their entire team.

This winner-take-all reality contributes to the growing nastiness of campaigns. Opponents are no longer simply called out as misguided but are brutally attacked for not loving their country or being too extreme for Colorado. Millions of dollars are pouring into legislative races that pay the winners little more than $30,000 a year. If taxpayers are unwilling to provide salaries that can justify such extravagant expenditures, someone — somewhere, somehow — will step up and offer commensurate compensation. No amount of spending can reverse political hydraulics, however. A “wave” election only lifts some boats and swamps others.

For more than a century Colorado’s economic fortunes have oscillated between periods of boom and bust. This reflects our historic reliance on extractive industries that rise and fall with the whims of the commodity markets. By the end of the 20th century we had sufficiently diversified Colorado’s economy so that the state weathered the dot.com crash at the turn of the century with only modest discomfort. For nearly two decades since then we have enjoyed steady growth and relatively stable prosperity.

Barring a national economic collapse we could not evade, it’s worth considering whether a locally sourced economic bust might be stirring. Tourism’s vulnerability following intermittent COVID-19 lockdowns has drawn attention and concern. Nor have we wrapped our heads around the tech industry and its evanescent assets that rely on what Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake have described as “Capitalism without Capital.” These firms swiftly pull up roots and take their workers with them. Colorado has benefitted from several such relocations. These firms manufacture little and are even beginning to question whether they require office space. Remote and home offices are working well.

Who would have predicted that Jeff Bezos would pocket $90 billion dollars while the rest of us remained at home? Amazon is, after all, merely a network of warehouses that broker sales for retailers. Yes, it offers a few products designed to further entrap customers in its ecosystem of ancillary services. A growing reliance on ZOOM and online meeting services has only grown Amazon ‘s cloud computing business. Rural America chafed as Wal-Mart strangled Main Street shops. Now, suburban communities are watching the departure of department stores, malls and specialty retailers. Small businesses are blowing away like tumbleweeds.

As late as 1980 nearly 70% of workers enjoyed some kind of retirement support through their employer. With the emergence of the gig economy this portion has dropped to just 8% of the workforce 40 years later. Child care is hard to find, often so expensive when found that work becomes a losing proposition, and few employers offer and only grudgingly tolerate unpaid family leave. You don’t have to stretch your imagination to picture more U-Hauls leaving Colorado than arriving — reversing a half century of home building and economic expansion.

It seems a good time to consider some anticipatory democracy at the legislature next year. Whatever voters decide about the various tax questions on this year’s ballot, there is better than a 50/50 chance that the fiscal knots written into our state’s constitution will only be pulled tighter. Nothing has been done to provide relief to a higher education system losing students while transportation funding remains a mess as revenues continue to shrink. A $375 one-time payment for unemployed workers, while welcome, is unlikely to keep the youngest workforce in the nation sitting at home if Colorado cannot provide it with jobs.

We have reached the point where it is better for the Legislature to make a few mistakes — they can be corrected later — rather than fail to attempt anything new. Decisions postponed, policies unchanged, risks avoided can never be fixed.