The Hot Shot Democrat You've Never Heard Of

October 29

No need to have worried last night. Joe Wilson, with whom I’ll be staying in Santa Fe, always knows everybody wherever he is, and between him and the campaign staffers, I am quickly put at ease. Joe moved out to New Mexico with Valerie Plame and their twins just over a year ago, and he has adapted well: Bearded and dressed in casual Western gear, he looks more like a teddy bear than the fearsome, sleek-suited brawler who took on the Bush-Cheney White House and won a measure of vindication when Scooter Libby was indicted and convicted. The candidate introduces Joe to the small crowd; Joe, the Democratic hero, says some lovely things about me, and I try to return the favor, then launch into an excursus on the end of the age of Reagan and the historical imperative of electing Heinrich, and end with all I can muster about the immense challenges of the uncertain era that is dawning. The audience mainly seems relieved at my not exactly risky prediction that Obama will win big on Tuesday and that Heinrich is well on his way to Capitol Hill, though a few people afterward do thank me for the free history lesson.

The Santa Fe aura lures a quirky mix of artists, would-be artists, successful professionals who have forsaken the rat race, nuclear scientists who work at nearby Los Alamos, and genuine 1960s counter-culture survivors. The crowd utterly lacks pretense but not, apparently, money, as open checkbooks abound even at this tail end of the campaign.

After a pleasant day off, wandering through Santa Fe’s rustic shops and museums, I go back to Joe’s place in the hills for an evening with his kids (Valerie is on the road, lecturing, back East), watching the Phillies finally win the Series (happy omen?), before tuning in CNN for the great Barack and Bubba rally in Orlando. Wilson and I were among the few liberal writers who, during the primaries, not only spoke up on behalf of Hillary Clinton but were daring—or reckless?—enough to criticize Obama and his campaign. We’ve long since bonded over that dark and lonely work, just as we’ve long since made our separate jumps to Obama. But we can’t help noticing how Bill seems to dominate the Florida event, how much in his element he is.

October 30

I must have passed the audition the other night in Santa Fe, because the Heinrich staff has asked me to put in another performance, at a final gathering of the faithful, maxed-out donors in Albuquerque, in a penthouse atop the city’s tallest building.

It’s looking to me more and more as if Heinrich can pull out a victory. I’m told that two of the premier national political handicappers, Stuart Rothenberg and Charlie Cook, have moved the race from the “toss-up” column to “leaning Democratic.” Martin, arriving right behind me, chats amiably, if guardedly, about going to Washington, and tells the assembled, in a final goad into the breach, that the Republicans don’t know what has hit them.

The penthouse view is magnificent, as a softening New Mexican glare cups the peaks of the mountains bordering the city. I linger at the window, taking a last long glimpse. Then I’m drawn to a picture on a wall near the makeshift wine bar: a faux-traditional retablo icon depicting, of all people, Johnny Cash, and inscribed with a line of Cash’s about how heaven and hell are separated not by a fence but by a gulf, a chasm where no man ever wants to be.

Now I’ve found my speech’s lede—and after Martin hushes the gathering, delivers his goad, and introduces me before rushing off to another event, I gesture to the painting and allow that, though I can’t say much about heaven or hell, I can say we’ve all landed in a chasm these last eight years, but that it looks as if we might just be starting to climb out of it.

It isn’t the cleverest way to begin a campaign speech amid the rousing enthusiasm of these hopeful final days, and I don’t think it went over terribly well, but I meant every word.

Sean Wilentz is a History Professor at Princeton University. He is the author of numerous books, including The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln and The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008. A contributing editor at The New Republic, and historian-in residence at Bob Dylan's official website, he writes widely on music and the arts as well as history and politics.