Outside the nerve centre of Bernie Sanders’s Colorado campaign, volunteers puffing on cigarettes have a view from downtown Denver to the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies.
Their hero’s path to the White House looks to be as distant and as formidable, yet those inside still hope that Mr Sanders can pull off an underdog victory over Hillary Clinton and keep alive his challenge for the Democratic nomination.
Denver’s American football team pulled off a shock victory against the Carolina Panthers in the Superbowl last month and campaign volunteers are hoping that the ensuing feelgood factor will work in their favour.
Colorado looms as a make-or-break test of Mr Sanders’s ability to win beyond his native northeast after a battering at the ballot box in South Carolina on Saturday. He packed a 8,745-seat arena at Colorado State University on Sunday night, his fourth such rally in the state in recent months.
The 74-year-old senator from Vermont has already made more of a fight than most expected. A year ago it was widely presumed that Mrs Clinton would be processing towards a coronation at the Democratic National Convention by now. Instead the former secretary of state and first lady has had to scrap for every inch of electoral territory in a primary season that has revived uncomfortable memories of her defeat to Barack Obama in 2008.
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However, in the past week she has begun to regain momentum, and on Saturday won almost three quarters of the vote in South Carolina. It was a third defeat in four early state contests for Mr Sanders’s insurgent campaign
In a sign of Colorado’s strategic significance — it will also be a potentially pivotal swing state in the general election — both campaigns have been spending big there for months before Super Tuesday today, when 11 states pick a candidate.
Mr Sanders’s candidacy caught fire here with a barnstorming speech to 5,500 people last June. This month 18,000 flocked to see him in Denver. He has four offices targeting the big metropolitan centres and an undisclosed number of workers.
His campaigners believes that they have a winning grassroots operation and a message that resonates with Colorado’s independent spirit. Drug policy could also play a role. The legalisation of marijuana in Colorado is powering an economic boom and has drawn in pot entrepreneurs and smokers who tend to support Mr Sanders.
