With the 2012 results, are VA/CO slowly becoming D leans and not 50/50?

[Vosem]

Concerning CO, if the GOP couldn't win a statewide race two years ago in a very strong GOP year with weak turnout (as expected), then the party in-state has big, big issues.

The Republicans won the statewide congressional vote, and also Attorney General (by double-digits), Secretary of State (would've been double-digits if not for a Constitution Party candidate sucking away votes), and Treasurer that year. Of these, only the race for Treasurer was close enough that it could be attributed to the wave. By comparison, it lost the race for the Senate, where it ran a very bad candidate, and the race for Governor, where it ran two very bad candidates. A 4-2 record isn't that bad.

[Vosem]

Blaming bad candidates for losses isn't a one way street. Who were the Democratic candidates in the Attorney General and Secretary of State races? Were they bad candidates or not?

The Democratic candidate for Atty Gen was Stan Garnett, who was Boulder County District Attorney -- here's his Ballotpedia page: http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Stan_Garnett

The Democratic candidate for SecState was the incumbent Secretary of State Bernie Buescher, who had been appointed by unpopular incumbent Bill Ritter.

Googled 'bernie buescher gaffe' -- nothing. Googled 'stan garnett gaffe' -- he's a prominent supporter of marijuana legalization, but I can't imagine that'd be a big problem in Colorado. Both of them seem to be well-qualified, good candidates who were soundly defeated in a swing state in a year bad for their party.

You're right that bad candidates aren't a one-way street, but Democrats were the beneficiaries of bad Republican candidates in 2010 in Colorado, not the other way around.