Although many of Obama’s recent supporters have been surprised by signs of political opportunism, Preckwinkle wasn’t. “I think he was very strategic in his choice of friends and mentors,” she told me. “I spent ten years of my adult life working to be alderman. I finally got elected. This is a job I love. And I’m perfectly happy with it. I’m not sure that’s the way that he approached his public life—that he was going to try for a job and stay there for one period of time. In retrospect, I think he saw the positions he held as stepping stones to other things and therefore approached his public life differently than other people might have.”

I didn’t want to leave Denver without posting a link to the New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza that had created a stir when it came out a couple of months ago. Also see this and this. Tomorrow morning, I’ll post my final dispatch and catch a plane out of town.