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Americas is unmistakable.
He speaks movingly of how this division has affected his home state: "While the folks living in the densely populated counties along Colorado's Front Range have prospered over the last decade, those living in the state's 50 rural counties are struggling to survive. Their schools are not getting the attention they deserve, they are losing health care providers and access, they have been losing agricultural jobs, and no manufacturing jobs are locating there."
Salazar's opponent is Pete Coors, a political greenhorn. So far, this brewery heir's main contribution to the national dialogue has been his full-throated advocacy for lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, arguing that such a move would encourage more sensible teenage drinking. Just the kind of altruistic leadership we need more of in Washington.
Given Oklahoma's unabashedly conservative bent -- Bush carried the state by 22 percent in 2000, and currently leads Kerry by even more -- it's nothing short of a miracle that Carson, a 37-year old, two-term Congressman, is running neck-and-neck with his Republican rival. Carson, a sixth-generation Oklahoman who turned down an opportunity to go to law school at Yale in favor of the University of Oklahoma, then devoted a third of his practice to providing free legal services to impoverished clients, has attracted the small town support essential to pulling off a major upset in this decidedly red state.
"Too many working Americans," Carson told me, "are seeing their jobs shipped overseas without enough of our elected officials in Washington fighting on their behalf. We've got to stop pursuing policies that leave behind middle class families -- such as stripping workers of overtime pay, the pay that often makes the difference between a family having groceries for the last week of the month or doing without."
And it doesn't hurt that Carson's opponent, former Rep. Tom Coburn, is a shoot-from-the-lip extremist who favors "the death penalty for abortionists," supports the right to buy and use a bazooka, has called state lawmakers "crapheads," disparaged Indian treaties as "primitive" agreements, and claimed -- in the midst of the war on terror -- that the "gay agenda" is "the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today." Nothing like having your priorities in order.
Most experts agree that, in the end, the balance of power in the Senate will turn on what happens in the presidential race -- particularly on the effectiveness of the key messages being put out by the Democratic nominee. So I asked Sen. Jon Corzine, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, what Kerry should be emphasizing to help Democrats win their races.
"Kerry should hammer away at 'the middle class squeeze,'" he told me, "the crisis of economic security brought on by Bush's domestic policies. He needs to keep pointing out how the president has failed the American people when it comes to jobs, health care, education and the environment. Millions of people are suffering -- and it's because of Bush and the Republican Congress. That's a winning argument -- for Kerry and for our Senate candidates."
And it could also turn out to be the recipe for an Election Night Democratic two-fer -- taking back both the White House and the Senate.
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