A while back, during the first Trump administration, I went to lunch with a fellow I knew from our time together as “finger-on-the-button” ICBM launch officers up in Cheyenne. My friend was quite conservative yet had always been a good friend and was a kind and reasonable fellow. We didn’t agree on politics, so mostly never talked about that stuff during our roughly monthly lunches.

Except for that one time…

We had been chatting about what was going on, and I happened to mention under President Barack Obama unemployment fell from 10% to under 5% (4.7% to be exact). My friend hated, really hated, Obama, and his simply stated “that’s not true.” He said my numbers were wrong, and unemployment had, in fact, gone up, indeed soared during the Obama years. I was dumbstruck. I said, but those are the official government numbers, from the Department of Labor that collects lots and lots of statistics, and what I said is just a fact. He replied, “no, unemployment went up under Obama and is going down under Trump.”

I had no response.

A fundamental basis for having any kind of informed political discussion or debate is the ability to accept certain facts as true and therefore can be the basis of a reasonable policy discussion. The sky is blue. The oceans are wet. And unemployment went down under Obama.

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My friend, again, a good guy, was deep into the far right (or what today we call a typical Republican) “news” and had seen way too much Fox faux news and other crazy media outlets. He said the Department of Labor simply lied under Obama, and Donald Trump, thank heavens, has corrected the lies.

We had to agree to disagree, me with him and him with reality. And that lunch was an early peek into the Trumpian miasma that has enveloped the Grand Old Party today. To be a loyal GOPer these days, you must commit to accepting any lie, any exaggeration, from the bone spur fellow, and any conflicting information, verified in reality or not, must be discarded. Oh, and you must be okay with profound hypocrisy, such as railing against former President Joe Biden for an alleged payoff of a few million dollars from Ukraine (spoiler: didn’t happen), while being just fine with Trump making $600 million in just the last year, while president, from crypto, golf, and other licensing fees

I was thinking about my friend when I read a recent Colorado Politics story about the annual gathering of Colorado Democrats, and in particular the thoughts of current Democratic Party Chair Shad Murib. I don’t know Mr. Murib, but I am pretty impressed by his message.

Remember Colorado is a bright blue dot in a west that is pretty red. There are lots of reasons for this, and it reflects the work of a lot of people over the years, but we haven’t elected a Republican to statewide office since 2014, and though there are a few cracks in the Democratic wall (cough… CD8… cough), by and large, the Dems would seem to be in pretty good shape in the Centennial State.

That said, I applaud Mr. Murib for not sitting back and taking it easy. Indeed, he seems intent on revising and updating the party in ways to help ensure it remains viable and in office for years to come.

I used to go to the annual Dem meeting (before my Sept. 11, 2001-related PTSD made such large group gatherings too difficult) at which Murib spoke recently, a yearly get together and I noted all too often how I felt I was one of the younger people in the room, and that’s not good. Things appear to be changing though. A quick glance at the Colorado Democratic Party leadership page shows faces far younger than my 67 years, and that is very good indeed.

Frankly, people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer need to retire to allow a younger and more connected generation to enter into power. Heck, I still regularly get asked to run for Congress again, and I always say no, because of two reasons. First, I live in the deep red CD5, and no Dem is going to win here, and secondly, I ran already, back when I was 50. Future success of Dems here and elsewhere will rely on younger folks. Us older pols should step aside with some grace.

Another example of what Murib is talking about in terms of energizing the party for the future is his statement that he wanted to “dramatically redesign our (party) platform” to go from a document more than 50 pages long to something that fits on a business card. This struck home with me, as 15 years ago, I was the chair of the platform committee, as I noted in a previous essay. Too many people, often older folks, had become deeply committed to a lengthy and detailed platform. I proposed we reduce it from then-60 pages to roughly three, with core principles only. The room exploded in rage and my idea was voted down overwhelmingly, and that year our platform included critically important ideas like endorsing rock and roll. Seriously. I hope Murib does what is needed to fundamentally alter that process and does, in fact, end up with a business card sized statement of principles.

One face I am delighted to see active at that meeting and in Colorado Democratic politics overall is my old friend Jason Crow. Jason is of an age, 46, which makes him old enough to be well seasoned in life, but young enough to see a different way forward than us old guys. U.S. Rep. Crow, a combat veteran and just a terrific guy, will, I hope, run for the Senate seat my old boss, and I hope our next governor, Michael Bennet will vacate.

The very worst thing the Colorado Democratic Party could do right now is become complacent and to assume since the GOP has been largely routed statewide, it can be ignored. That is especially dangerous when the current GOP is not tied to facts, or fundamentally, reality. I’m relieved to see a 38-year-old state chair, and a breath of fresh air made up of other younger leaders coming in. The future of the party is bright, I believe, and this could not come at a more critical time for our nation.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.