No question about it, Colorado’s political trajectory has favored ruling Democrats for the last several elections and likely will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Republicans can blame in part their own state party’s disarray as well as a former, one-term Republican president who, for all his appeal in some climes of the country, repels Colorado’s dominant unaffiliated voting bloc. Particularly unaffiliated women. Poll after poll shows it.

As for the overall political orientation of those unaffiliateds – their ranks swollen by an influx of transplants from other states – they may well lean more left than right with or without Donald Trump serving as a lightning rod on the ballot. Veteran GOP political sage and Gazette columnist Dick Wadhams believes young, unaffiliated newcomers in places like Denver are “really liberal Democrats” by a different name, he recently told a Gazette reporter.

The real question for now, as we noted here only recently, is what will come of the growing rift within the ranks of Democrats? They hold all of Colorado’s statewide elected offices and overwhelmingly control both chambers of the legislature.

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Will prominent Democratic moderates, who seem to have been on mute for the past several years, at last speak up and try to move their party’s policy agenda back toward the middle? Doing so could shore up unaffiliated support for Democrats amid an epic crime wave that stands to draw rank-and-file voters to tough-on-crime Republicans.

Or, will the Democrats’ growing and increasingly restive radical fringe – augmented by the appointment last month of Denver Democratic activist Tim Hernández to fill a vacant seat in the state House – continue to tug the party and the rest of the state ever further down the progressive path?

The question is all the more critical as the next election approaches. As Colorado Politics reported this week, the 2024 election could put Democrats at the Legislature in an unprecedented position – holding a supermajority in both the state House and state Senate.

As the report noted, Democrats are certain to retain their hold on the Senate, where they currently enjoy a 23-12 advantage. They additionally are targeting several Republican-held Senate seats that are likely to be close calls in next year’s election. They could win a 24th vote in the upper chamber and thereby a supermajority. Meanwhile, Democrats already have a supermajority in the state House, where they have 46 of the chamber’s 64 seats.

Gov. Jared Polis, a reputed “liberal Democrat from Boulder,” seemed downright moderate on some key policy issues this legislative session compared with more radical Democratic lawmakers. He even swatted some of their bills down. He vetoed progressive bills that would have wreaked havoc in the rental-housing market; meddled in his prerogatives for commuting sentences, and padded the case for further drug decriminalization, among others.

We’d have preferred that he vetoed many more, but the point is he had the power. And there no doubt were other times Polis’ veto pen was dangled in negotiations to rein in the scope of leftist legislation.

But if Senate Democrats acquire a veto-proof supermajority to match that of their House counterparts, the party’s power will be formidable. How will they wield it?

As Spider-Man fans know, with great power comes great responsibility.

Can Colorado expect even more recklessly radical overreaches on business regulation, landlord-tenant statutes, labor laws, and the like – and ever more spending on social programs? All unchecked by the governor’s veto pen?

More to the point, how far will the state’s Democratic establishment allow the radicals to go before Colorado’s unaffiliated voters view it as a wakeup call – and decide to shift tack.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board