Malloy, Wyman, Murphy, Blumenthal, Courtney, DeLauro, Esty et al got Berned
It was just a few months ago, in November, when Gov. Dannel Malloy was tweeting away the joys of his support for Hillary Clinton for president.
"I am confident @HillaryClinton will be a strong partner for #Ct as we work to move our transport system & our economy forward. #ImWithHer," the governor chirped in a tweet Nov. 30.
I wonder if Malloy, already then feeling the fingers of Connecticut's worsening budget tightening around his neck, was daydreaming too about an escape chute that might end on a new seat in a Clinton White House.
Indeed, all of Connecticut's Democratic establishment have been giddy supporters of Clinton, the early front-runner, tone deaf to the gathering steam of Sen. Bernie Sanders' populist campaign.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal was on the Clinton endorsement bandwagon early, touting the virtues of his former Yale Law School classmate in the spring of 2015.
"She has a passion, a sparkling penetrating intellect, a real sense of right and wrong that I think will impress the American people," Blumenthal said then.
Alas, not so true for too many Americans in New Hampshire this week.
Both Malloy and Sen. Chris Murphy made more than one trip to New Hampshire to campaign for Clinton. They madly tweeted from their campaign stops, like a picture of the senator in red fleece and jeans knocking on doors.
They were joined on the Clinton campaign trail in New Hampshire by Connecticut Reps. Joe Courtney, Rosa DeLauro and Elizabeth Esty.
Should we wonder how much worse the former secretary of state would have done in New Hampshire had not Connecticut's Democratic elite turned up to help?
Or were they no help at all, tired establishment pols in a state where voters were hungry to upset the status quo?
I checked, and none of the Connecticut Democrats whose tweets have been full of Hillary praise the last few months made a single tweeted peep Tuesday or Wednesday on the crushing Clinton defeat just two states away.
Curiously, the first elected Connecticut Democrat to get on the Sanders bandwagon was Daryl Finizio, who endorsed the Vermont senator before he lost his own re-election mayoral campaign in November.
Maybe it will be Finizio who nabs a Washington job from the 2016 elections.
Clearly part of what made Sanders' win in New Hampshire this week so stunning was the fact that it was done without much help from the national party establishment.
And yet that phenomenon was magnified here in Connecticut, where few prominent Democrats even made suggestions of fence sitting.
I find it hard to believe that the politics of New Hampshire is really that different than here in a state close by in New England.
If anything, I would suggest Connecticut voters would tend more to the liberal, Sanders end of the Democratic spectrum.
Maybe Clinton will push Sanders back as the race moves to the South. But does that make the office-holding Connecticut Democrats more in tune with Southern voters than New Hampshire residents?
One thing seems clear, if Sanders continues to do well, Gov. Malloy and Connecticut's U.S. senators will need to begin to worry about having their phone calls to the White House returned after November.
And never mind those daydreams of cabinet seats.
This is the opinion of David Collins.
d.collins@theday.com
Twitter: @DavidCollinsct
Comment threads are monitored for 48 hours after publication and then closed.