what is striking in the exit polls is the polarization on three lines: gender, race and age. It was dead even with men; but a massive advantage for Clinton among women. The racial difference is obvious as well. But what really leaps out is age. Obama lost every cohort over 40; Clinton lost every cohort under 40. Race also affects the generations in turn: 67 percent of whites over 60 voted for Clinton - a massive 24 point advantage. Among the younger generation, there is much less racial polarization: under 30, whites split evenly. This is a fascinating result. It appears to me as the future struggling to overcome the past… But here’s what she does have: total shamelessness, and an absolute belief that she is the rightful nominee… What sustains her is this deep, deep sense of entitlement and an absolute refusal to let the next generation take over. She will take this to the last day of the convention if necessary. If Obama thinks he has a right to actually be nominated by the Clinton Democrats because he has won more votes, more states and more delegates, he is sadly mistaken. They will never let such a person win without a death struggle. And that is where the Democrats are now headed.

Andrew Sullivan may be exaggerating Hillary’s malevolent mania a smidge, but perhaps not by much. But the generational point is the really interesting one. Of course, inspirational-left candidates always appeal heavily to the young - look at Robert Kennedy. But I sense this is different. After all, the cutoff is supposed to be 30, not 40. While the baby boomers got conservative as they got older and settled down, it’s just possible that generation X and the millennials*, with our never-ending adolescence and our upbringing free from the trauma of Vietnam and stagflation, might not. Or at least, not till much later in life. What does this mean? Well, it means that whatever happens in November, the long-term future looks good for the democrats. While the swollen ranks of aged boomers begin to die off, the most liberal generation in American history will be becoming hugely influential. But this is a long-term play. For now, I’d love to see polling with this level of age detail for Obama v McCain. If Obama v Hillary feels like “the future struggling to overcome the past,” what will that feel like?

* Yes, I know. But “millennials” is - just - better than “generation Y”, which makes us sound like some sort of more masculine version of our Star Wars-obsessed older brothers. I say “us” because the dividing line is, apparently, 1980, putting me just on the right side of history. UPDATE 14/05/08: This is an altogether depressing explanation of our defining characteristics as a generation. Apparently we’re not all being schooled all over the world and redefining work-life balance. We’re fat, poor, and tired.

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Mr Obama has fought a brilliant campaign, out-organising his opponent, raising more money, and convincing undecided Democrats as well as the country at large that he was more likeable, more straightforward and more worthy of trust.

On form, he is a spell-binding orator and holds arena-sized audiences in thrall. He is given to airy exhortations, it is true, but genuinely seeks consensus and has cross-party appeal.

Mrs Clinton’s campaign, in contrast, has been a shambles. She and her team expected to have it all sewn up long ago; they made no plans for a long struggle, ran short of money and had to reorganise on the run.

Her speaking style is pedestrian, when it is not actually grating. Those who dislike her tend to do so with a passion: her disapproval ratings started high and after months of campaigning are climbing still. It is a tribute to her tenacity and to the loyalty she commands in the party that her fate was not sealed weeks ago.

How much the way that a campaign is run tells you about a candidate’s fitness to be president is debatable – but it does tell you something, especially if the candidate with the misfiring strategy is running on a claim of management expertise.

The FT drives in another nail

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Andrew Sullivan (who [a] I’ve never forgiven for not remaining the attractive, slim role model he was when his book, Virtually Normal, was serialised in the Guardian in the 1990s and briefly lit up my gay teenage life; and [b] doesn’t allow comments any more on his blog The Daily Dish, only pingbacks, hence this post) is slightly unfair with his criticism of the inveterate conservative’s gleeful hay-making over Bittergate. Is Kristol, like many conservatives (and Mrs. Clinton*) being entirely disingenuous in pretending that any time a politician, in a private fundraising meeting, makes sweeping generalisations about a section of the electorate and the socioeconomic drivers of their political positions, they’re importuning its collective intelligence? Of course. He goes on to do it himself, a few lines later, by implying that all wealthy San Franciscan democrats are metropolitan snobs (not a generalisation many would disagree with, but then of course that’s the point - many don’t disagree with Obama either). But he doesn’t actually - as Sullivan suggests - cast doubt over Obama’s religious beliefs. Rather, he argues that Obama believes his own religious beliefs to be complex and genuine, but appears not to think that about others.

Not that this is true, or fair, of course. Obama’s choice of verb - he said that people “cling” to religion - was not, as Dan Schnur argued on Left, Right & Center on Friday, the heart of an offensive slur on small-town, working-class whites’ ability to think. Rather, it was entirely the correct word to identify the phenomenon Obama was describing - the phenomenon, unique to America, of religion becoming one of the primary wedges between political parties, despite every significant politician belonging to the same religion. White working-class voters, who believe in God, have been convinced again and again to vote (against their economic interest) for Republican candidates, who believe in God, and to vote against Democratic candidates, who believe in God, because they’ve been persuaded that the Republicans believe in God more strongly than the Democrats do. You don’t have to be a snob, an athiest, or even an arch-liberal to believe this to be at least partly an emotional reaction borne of anxiety and fear - clinging, in other words.

If the presidential candidates were actually from significantly different religions, as in 1960, then you might expect belief to become the primary guide to people’s votes - although the result of 1960 suggests, even then, people might put policy and personality before pulpit. But for this to have happened in a politics entirely dominated by protestantism is bizarre, and somewhat irrational. You could say the same about down-the-line gun-rights voting, when no Democrat has seriously threatened the second amendment for a decade (abortion, where another four years of Republican rule could feasibly lead eventually to the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, is a little different).

A century after Freud, to recognise that people’s voting decisions aren’t entirely rationally based isn’t snobbish, it’s adult. And to deny in public (while, I suspect, acknowledging freely in private) that the phenomenon of the working-class “values voter” owes more than a little to the manipulation of people’s emotions - their anger, their anxiety, and, yes, their bitterness - is duplicitous in the extreme.

So Kristol is innocent of denying the depth of Obama’s faith. But he’s guilty, as usual, of a host of other sins: insincerity, hypocrisy and faux-naivete, for a start.

*I’m having trouble knowing what to call her. To keep using “Hillary”, when I never say “Barack”, seems clearly sexist; but “Senator Clinton” is too pompous and “Clinton” obviously unclear. “Mrs. Clinton” seems the simplest identifier, similar to “George Bush, Jr.”, my preferred name for the current President.

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Well, this is not a good sign:

Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, and the Family and Medical Leave Act to name a few…We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one). “They” are Howard Dean and Jim Dean (Yup! That’s Howard’s brother) who run DFA (that’s the group and list from the Dean campaign that we women helped start and grow). “They” are Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women’s money, say they’ll do feminist and women’s rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America’s future.

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Daughter-of-John Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg:

Over the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

Brother-of-John-and-all-round-good-egg Ted Kennedy:

With Barack Obama, there is a new national leader who has given America a different kind of campaign, not just about himself, but about all of us. A campaign about the country we will become, if we can rise above the old politics that parses us into separate groups and puts us at odds with one another.”

So far, so good. But uh-oh!

I respect Caroline and Teddy’s decision, but I have made a different choice. At this moment when so much is at stake at home and overseas, I urge our fellow Americans to support Hillary Clinton. That is why my brother Bobby, my sister Kerry, and I are supporting Hillary Clinton.
-Daughter-of-Bobby Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

Where will it all end? Will Mrs. Schwarzenegger be able to hold her peace?

UPDATE: No.

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Pundits want to know what happened in New Hampshire. Why didn’t the polls see it coming? Well, the truth of the matter is…women get it! That’s why, when women in New Hampshire could vote in private, they came out in droves for Hillary. They’d seen more Hillary bashing than had Iowa’s women… women stood up and said “We’re fed up and we’re not going to take it anymore! We won’t sit idly by and watch, while you gang bang one of us.” One woman told me she didn’t even want to vote for Hillary because she feared that her campaign would be the most dreadful blood bath in the history of politics. I asked her “if Hillary is willing to stick her neck out for us, should we not be brave enough to stand strong behind her?” She agreed and said of course she would vote for Hillary.

Who’s banging who? 

NOW-New York State Press Releases

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Update: Oh. Clearly not everyone thinks so.

Update 2: But thinking about it, surely this makes it more likely she was putting it on?

Update 3: See! Even she thinks so!

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