“It’s all rigged, the whole conversation’s rigged,” Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) complained today on the Senate floor — without realizing that someone had left the C-SPAN microphones hot. An aide quickly alerted staff and had the mics shut off, but not before viewers heard Bennet’s disembodied voice griping about the top-down management of the lame-duck agenda. The Daily Caller first reported it without identifying the Senator, but Bennet later stood by his remarks:

Bennet Chief of Staff Guy Cecil stood by the senator’s comments.

“It’s something he’s been talking about from day one,” Cecil told The Daily Caller in an interview outside the Senate chamber. “The whole process being rigged against having a real conversation about tax cuts, the estate tax and the defense authorization. We’re not having a lot of those conversations. It’s just a symptom of Washington being broken.”

Well, that’s not Washington being broken.  That’s a symptom of Democratic leadership.  Harry Reid runs the majority caucus, and if he’s “rigging” the agenda, then the blame should fall on Reid and everyone who put him in the leadership position, not the geographical location of the capital.

But there is more irony to be mined in a complaint from Bennet on rigging conversations.  Just five weeks ago, Bennet’s campaign tried to get radio station KOA to rig an interview leading up to the midterm election.  At that time, the only conversation Bennet wanted to have was about how great he was, and how much of a sacrifice it was to actually campaign for office.   He wasn’t having a lot of those other conversations then, either — at least not by choice.