You can see it in neighborhoods where kids count political signs on their way to school.
You can hear it outside office buildings where co-workers shill for candidates on cigarette breaks.
You can feel it throughout a state where most everyone has a dog in the fight.
This is what a battleground looks like.
“I’m guarding it with my life,” Denverite Cece Gutierrez said of the ballot for which she transferred two buses Monday to hand-deliver to the county. “This is too important to trust to the mail.”
Colorado long has suffered a political inferiority complex, griping that our caucuses were too late to matter and that candidates would merely fly over to states that really counted.
This year the hype started in February when Coloradans lined up in the bitter cold for the busiest caucuses — by a factor of 20 — in state history.
Then came Barack Obama’s 84,000-person rapture at Invesco Field at Mile High in August.
And since have followed weekly stops by Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden or Sarah Palin. Not to mention reams of national news stories about Colorado’s anticipated swing from red to blue, and cable-news chatterers zooming in on us nightly with their magic maps.
This year alone, McCain and Obama have each stopped here 10 times.
“It’s like someone told Colorado early on that we were going to be important, and we believed it,” said one of my co-workers, reporter Allison Sherry.
Faced with one of the country’s longest ballots, a Park Hill book group put down its reading and convinced even its shyest member to knock on doors registering neighbors to vote.
Women like homemaker Michele Frew had never attended a political rally until they lined up in September to get a look at Palin.
An Aurora high-schooler hasn’t spoken with her dad since he voted for McCain.
And the waiters at my favorite Vietnamese joint have been arguing for days over whether Obama is a socialist.
Along East Hampden in Denver, someone stole McCain signs from yards in a Jewish neighborhood. And in Superior, Obama signs were so hot that a not-so-stealthy supporter swiped one from a neighbor and planted it in his front yard.
Trick-or-treaters handed out McCain stickers in Littleton. And on my own Denver street, a group dressed like the cast of “High School Musical” reminded us grownups to vote.
Business owner Paul Archer gathered his 21 employees for a recent breakfast meeting to expound on why they should vote Republican.
“It’s my company, so I figured why not,” said the owner of Automated Business Products in Lakewood. “It’s time to stop being silent about politics.”
Obama volunteer and mother of two Stefanie Clarke was moved to tears Sunday at the sight of homemade cupcakes with “Hope” written in icing.
“At this point, after all this work, I’m just inspired by every little thing that people are doing,” she said.
At age “40, plus or minus,” Gutierrez had never voted before and didn’t know much about politics. Then she lost two jobs in two years, and her son announced he was signing up for the Army. Finally, she figured, it’s time to weigh in on who leads the country whose flag is tattooed on her ankle.
“This is my (blue) book,” Gutierrez said, showing me her dog-eared voters guide with her notes handwritten in the margins.
This is what democracy looks like.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
