The Return of Mr. X
Early last spring, I spoke with a veteran Democratic operative I called “Mister X,” an individual with more than twenty years’ experience on national political campaigns, then consulting for one of the remaining presidential hopefuls. (See “Inside the Democratic Race, Part 1 and Part 2.”)
That interview from March 2020 now reads like it could have been conducted in 1820.
At the time, with Super Tuesday looming, the big question was whether it would be Bernie or Biden, with great anxiety among the center-left that it would be the former (indeed, a significant part of that interview was devoted to how the Democratic Party could go about winning if Bernie were the nominee), and great anxiety on the left-left that Mike Bloomberg was going to step in and buy the nomination.
That’s right (not a typo): that interview was from an epoch when Mike Bloomberg figured in the national conversation.
Obviously, neither of us knew at the time that the entire world was about to be turned upside down. So I thought now — 15 days out from Election Day, with more than 20 million early votes already cast — would be a good time to circle back. I spoke with Mister X, who is currently consulting on the Biden campaign, by Zoom from my own quarantine location (a former Minuteman missile silo, deep beneath the Rocky Mountains).
