John Morse shields his eyes from the sun as he points to the red rocks rising above. “You see that strange formation there,” he says, “that’s known as ‘the Kissing Camels’.” So, are camels allowed to kiss around here? “Just so long as they are opposite sexes — there would be trouble if they were both boys,” he replies. “The scenery is beautiful and the politics is ugly.”

This is Colorado Springs, just an hour’s drive south from where the Democratic convention begins today, and a city with a reputation as one of America’s most conservative.

Sprawling out from under the high peaks of the Rocky Mountains, it is home to the headquarters of Focus on the Family and myriad other groups in the vanguard of the Religious Right. There are five US military bases including the US Air Force Academy and Norad, a Dr Strangelove-like facility built to withstand a nuclear blast. And then there are thousands upon thousands of so-called “McMansions” — developments that are rapidly transforming this wild landscape into suburbia-with-a-view.

Even here, at the apex of Christian moralism, khaki-clad patriotism and economic liberalism, change is stirring. Mr Morse is a Democratic state senator who two years ago beat an incumbent black Republican who had proposed the abolition of affirmative action. “Everyone was surprised — shocked — that I won and the conservatives absolutely hated it,” he says, with some satisfaction.

Democrats are on a roll across the Rocky Mountain region — a vast expanse of gun-toting, God-fearing, free-riding cowboy country. They have swept five Republican governors from office in five western states, while in Colorado they have seized control of both houses in the state legislature and congressional seats that were once regarded as irredeemably Republican.

Barack Obama’s aides now talk excitedly about “redrawing the electoral map”. If they can win Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, it would be sufficient to offset losing traditional battlegrounds such as Ohio and Florida. So what, they say, if Mr Obama has problems winning over voters in the eastern Appalachian Mountains? He can still win the White House by looking west to the Rocky Mountains.

John McCain, his Republican rival, acknowledged last week in Aurora that he has to win Colorado “if I’m going to be the next President of the United States”. The latest polls show that he is leading by only 1 per cent — and that was before a bounce from the Democrats’ staging their first convention in Denver for 100 years.

The political transformation of the West is often attributed to the influx of new voters from the coasts — someone has to live in all those McMansions — and a rapidly expanding Hispanic population. Mr Morse, 49, suggests that there is also real disenchantment with the “zero-gov-ernment guys” or an overreaching Religious Right. He cites their reaction to legislation that protects gay people from discrimination. “They say it’s now legal for transvestites to assault women in rest rooms — they always go too far.” The Republicans have become ridiculous. Janet Rowland, their candidate for lieutenant-governor, spent much of the election two years ago comparing same-sex marriage to bestiality. “Do we allow a man to marry a sheep?” she asked, insisting that she had profound respect for her “many gay friends”.

The Democrats beating them in the West over recent years, though, are far from typical. Mr Morse claims that he is the most fiscally conservative legislator in his party, while Mon-tana’s Democratic Governor, Brian Schweitzer, boasts about his pistol-packing habit, saying that gun control where he comes from “is hitting what you’re shooting at”.

Lori Weigel, a Denver-based Republican pollster, predicts that the “influx of trial lawyers and union members” to the convention this week will prove that the Democrats nationally are “not in keeping with how the West perceives itself”.

No one could accuse Ken Salazar, Colorado’s Democratic senator, of letting his state or party down in that regard. At a press conference on Saturday he was resplendent in bolo tie, cowboy boots and hat. Asked by The Times if a skinny black man can strike a chord with the Rockies’ rugged individualism, he hung his thumbs from his jean pockets and said that Mr Obama’s humble origins meant that “he is not going to be beholden to anyone — I think those values will translate here”.

John Hickenlooper, Denver’s Democratic mayor, said that Mr Obama had been “pretty rugged” to weather Hillary Clinton’s onslaught during the primary. Then, with slightly less plausibility, he compared the nominee’s organi-sational skills to the wagon trains that “really opened up the West”.

There will be a lot of organisation at the Democratic convention this week, where 50,000 people have credentials and 75,000 have tickets for Mr Obama’s big speech on Thursday. But, for all his stellar power, he is still not as big a draw as the National Western Stock Show in Denver this year, attended by nearly 674,000.

Forget about kissing camels or marrying sheep. Colorado loves cows.

The bloggers’ verdict

Markos Moulitsas
DailyKos.com: “If Obama’s core message is ‘change’ and ‘judgment’ based on his prescience on the Iraq War vote, well then, Biden is the exact opposite of those things. [But] it should be fun having a real pitbull in the number two position to do some of the necessary dirty work.”

Todd Beeton
MyDD.com: “Biden: the fighter we’ve been waiting for.”

Marc Ambinder
Atlantic.com: “It’s easy to float on gossamers when the world is safe, but when it’s burning down, a guy like Biden is just the ticket . . . Sure, he talks a lot. But he gets things done.”

Jonah Goldberg
Corner.NationalReview.com: “How can Joe Biden run against a broken Washington when he’s such an integral figure in it? He’s been there since he was 29 years old.”

Chuck Todd
FirstRead.MSNBC.com: “If you believe, as I do, that VP candidates matter most on three days, the first day, debate day and election day, then the Obama campaign has to be ecstatic about today. One goal down, two to go.”

Matt Stoller
OpenLeft.com: “He’s not from our world . . . he’s kind of a blowhard and dislikes the blogs. In other words, he’s perfect for the Obama campaign, reinforcing their key frame of ‘change, but not scary liberal change’.”

Andrew Sullivan
TheDailyDish.com: “I’d say it suggests a serious, adult attitude toward the enormous burden that the next presidency will be, especially in foreign policy.”

James P. Rubin
HuffingtonPost.com: “Senator Joe Biden's foreign policy experience and wisdom are unmatched in American politics.”

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