The process problem

Math. It’s a science, not an art. You combine numbers to get another number that is the definite and only correct answer. Learning the basic principles of the subject begins in preschool, with counting and then addition. There, in the innocence of the classroom, the two processes produce objective answers. But that is, of course, before any of the children learn about politics.

This year, the Democratic Party has managed to turn math into a true art form. It seems every major news outlet has a different interpretation of the number of elected delegates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have, and even the number of pledged superdelegates can vary.

And now, thanks to the Pennsylvania primary, the math has become even more muddled. Since Tuesday, Clinton has been trumpeting an argument that is, to say the least, a bit stronger than, “I’ve won all the big states that Democrats need to win in November.”

She now says that adding up all the votes cast since the primary contests began shows that most of the people who went to the polls have cast their votes for her.

Clinton is winning the popular vote, if you include Michigan and Florida.

But even that claim comes with one important subtraction: all the uncommitted votes in Michigan must be taken away from Obama. They must be considered exactly what they were labeled – uncommitted, and not symbols of votes for Clinton’s competitor. If x=Obama, he’s winning both in delegates and in the popular vote.

Nonetheless, Pennsylvania was a step forward for the Clinton campaign. Mathematically, she made the contest closer, edging herself away from the evidence for her to drop out.

And that’s why Pennsylvania was bad for the Democratic Party. It produced ugly and frivolous sides of both the candidates, and of two debate moderators, and caused a lot of fatigue for those of us looking toward November. But it just gave Clinton more reason to keep the exhausting process going.

She’s still hopeful that she’ll be able to make an argument, mathematical or otherwise, to woo enough superdelegates to override the elected delegates from a man who may or may not have won the popular vote.

Of course we won’t know until May 31 how the artistic Democratic Party is going to count the popular votes in Michigan and Florida. The Rules Committee on that day must choose one of a number of solutions while not appearing to pull the rug out from under one of the two candidates or to be discounting the will of people who went to the polls. But we won’t know if any compromise will make a difference until the superdelegates make up their minds.

And Clinton has pledged to keep fighting until the last primary vote is counted, a scenario that could be the last vendetta for her but the first step toward a Democratic defeat.

It’s hard to ignore all the talk since Pennsylvania of Obama’s magical transformational appeal starting to wear away. He was supposed to be able to bring all types of people together under his umbrella of change, but places like Pennsylvania remind everyone of another hard-and-fast mathematical principle: division.

The lines along which Obama and Clinton voters break have been evident for a while, but Pennsylvania just solidified the divide. It proved that, even with plenty of time to spend with voters, Obama cannot quite “close the deal,” as Clinton has been saying, with those white, working-class voters, a constituency that McCain is planning to contest if he’s up against Obama in the fall.

According to exit polls, 15 percent of Pennsylvania Democrats who voted in the primaries would choose McCain for president in November if Obama was the alternative. Against Clinton, McCain pulls in 11 percent of those votes.

That’s a pretty strong statement in this time of trauma for Democrats. And don’t forget those voters who might just stay home to express their dissatisfaction.

So after Pennsylvania, the Democrats are in a nasty place, where it’s becoming all too evident that neither candidate carries with him or her a full package of voters that can be counted on the win the presidency. I don’t blame it on either candidate or any of the voters.

I blame it on math.

This year is really showing how the Democratic National Committee’s formula for producing a nominee is just inefficient. It may have worked just fine in the past, but that was before anyone studied it this closely. It’s putting too much emphasis and pressure on the last variables, the superdelegates, and it’s dragging the process out too long for the party’s own good.
Notice that no one seems to be questioning the maverick McCain’s appeal to voters.

But for all the negatives Pennsylvania and this extended contest as a whole have brought, I can see a possible positive. Now, the eventual Democratic nominee has indications stronger than just polling of the blocs of voters he or she will need to win over come September. Each campaign knows exactly which variables in the equation they have to study for the final exam in the fall, and this could give Democrats a slight edge over the GOP.

Of course, though, there’s always the chance that the divisions we saw in Pennsylvania will just stay that way, and the Democrat will end up without votes from a huge bloc that just couldn’t be convinced.

Through the matrix of all the political math this election season has seen, there is an answer to one problem that most people can agree with.

A Democratic candidate minus the support of the party’s entire base equals a McCain presidency.

A "leap" of faith

Over spring break, I was at a bar in Philadelphia, near the University of Pennsylvania campus, standing with four people – two of my friends and two people whom I had met about 10 minutes earlier. Upon finding out I was a journalism major, one of them asked if I kept a blog. I told him I did, and we exchanged URLs. Once we all got our strawberry margaritas, we started talking about the presidential election.

“Who do you like, Hillary or Obama?” my fellow blogger asked.

Everyone, including him, said Obama. Then it came around to me.

“I don’t know,” I began, and then explained how conflicted I was about the two Democratic candidates, about how I felt when I was filling out my absentee ballot prior to Super Tuesday.

I went on until I was interrupted by the guy who got me going in the first place. He cut across the circle, nearly putting his finger in my face.

“Did you blog about this?”

“No,” I responded, cocking my head and falling silent.

Well, now is my chance, so here it goes.

***

When I was sitting at the bar in my kitchen, the long ballot spread on the cold faux marble, I stared for at least 20 minutes at the empty bubbles next to the names “Hillary Rodham Clinton” and “Barack Obama.” I knew I would have unwavering support for either candidate in the general election; this was just a battle between what I wanted and what I thought the country wanted – and needed.

In February, I had, more or less, the same debate I have with myself now as the fight barrels on toward Pennsylvania.

It’s just my vindictive, angry and jaded self talking, but I really would like to see Hillary as the Democratic nominee. I think she is the candidate with the most solid policies and the most determination to get them into practice.
Plus, Republicans really hate her.

So when I think about Hillary’s winning the nomination, I’m vengefully happy because if she can win the presidency, I cannot wait to stick it to the GOP.

I imagine myself getting the same rush as when I’m honking my car’s horn and displaying my middle finger to someone who had cut me off on the freeway. It’s not exactly a flattering picture.

But that is the climax of the story. Before I can get to that feeling, Hillary has to win the White House, and thinking about her path there makes me nervous.

I’m scared that with the help of the superdelegates she will disenfranchise too many Democratic voters by stealing the primary. I’m scared that so many of the people who stood in record-length lines at Democratic primaries will simply stay home in November. I’m scared McCain will get away with nearly all the independents.

Looking at my ballot back in February, I really felt Obama had a better chance at winning in November, and I feel even more so now that Democrats will be running against McCain.

But I’m much too jaded to buy into all this talk about uniting the country and bipartisan approaches to this country’s problems.

I may be a lost cause, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe Obama’s rhetoric can have a profound effect on many others. He would bring a much-needed aura to the presidency; his inspiration can get people involved, can get people to care.

So when I think about Obama’s winning the nomination, I’m happy because I think if he can win the presidency our country is really turning a new leaf, even if I am in the corner stomping my foot and sulking because I think Republicans got off easy.
But, again, I am nervous.

To me, having Obama as the Democratic nominee is like buying a really good fake Louis Vuitton bag from a street vendor in New York – it looks great and attracts a lot of attention, but it might fall apart faster than the real thing.

Hillary’s road to the presidency is visibly rocky, while it appears Obama could coast along nearly without a bump in sight.

I will admit he does have a way about him that lets slip-ups or potential disasters roll off his back. But I can’t help but feel at least some weaknesses are hidden, and I’m scared of what I don’t know about him. Hard as I try, I cannot shake the feeling that he could be flimsy, that he could be crushed under the Republican attack machine.

Maybe I have bought in too much to the Clintons’ dirty games, but I can’t help but think Obama is a question mark, a gamble. And I am not one who tends to take a risk just on faith – especially when Karl Rove has a fresh chance to label the personality that built that faith as out of touch and elitist.

***

Back in February, I took a pencil and marked the bubble next to Hillary’s name. After I licked the envelope, I laid it on my desk, ready to be notarized and sent to the battleground state of Missouri.

But, as I looked at it sitting there, I felt that sending it off would have been a betrayal of everyone who, unlike me, could put their bitterness aside and dare to believe in change.

My ballot is still sitting on my desk – a reminder of the closest I could come to a leap of faith.

The McCain message

In a year when Democrats are making history – putting out two possible candidates for president who, if elected, would represent an important progressive milestone for America – the Republicans are presenting voters with more of the same. A white male. A war veteran. A Republican who talks of lowering taxes.

It doesn’t get much more typical than that.

Yet somehow, despite his typical surface, John McCain has an atypical reputation and image with voters, which might be the only thing that will keep him afloat come the general election.

This is a year of particular unrest and dissatisfaction with the current Republican administration. It’s a year when we are spending billions of dollars and have marked the loss of thousands of lives in an unpopular war. It’s a year people are blaming the president and his cabinet for an economy sinking toward recession.

It’s a year when a presidential candidate of the incumbent party facing one of two historic and vibrant candidacies of the other side should be dead in the water.

But McCain is not.

Real Clear Politics, which averages poll numbers taken by various organizations, currently has McCain tied with Barack Obama in a general-election match up (McCain with 44.6 percent and Obama with 44.8 percent). A McCain-Hillary Clinton match up yields a McCain win, 46.6 percent to 44 percent.

Of course we have to keep in mind that this is just a snapshot of feelings right now, when the Democrats are still fighting each other while McCain is free to travel the country on a simple biography tour. But, with these kinds of numbers, it could go either way in the general, depending really on which side brings out most effective attacks.

It might be easy for Democrats to attack someone who represents all the traditional Republican ideals. But McCain is a maverick, someone who doesn’t collect blanket hate from one large group (like Clinton does).

The 2008 Almanac of American Politics summed it up: “It appears to be [McCain’s] view that members of Congress, like members of the military, should serve the national interest honorably and without reference to political considerations.” That’s something voters like to see.

Because he is different and somewhat unpredictable, McCain can, theoretically, turn the conversation about him in any direction he wants. And of course the GOP machine has a reputation for its mastery of public relations; Karl Rove is already out there saying Obama is someone only rich, snotty, elitist liberals like.

I could already see the strategy forming when I spoke with Dan Schnur, the national communication director for McCain’s 2000 campaign.

McCain’s party is blamed for the bad economy. But, that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing on the campaign trail.

“Voters are particularly wary of having their taxes increased,” Schnur told me.

A Pew poll found that the most popular word to describe McCain among respondents was “old.” He will be 72 years old on inauguration day, the oldest president ever to be sworn into his first term in office.

Not to worry.

“Particularly in a general election against Obama, age might not be as big of a disaster for McCain,” he said, “because he can turn a talk about age into a talk about experience.”

But, I countered, the experience argument didn’t work for Clinton against Obama.

“That might not translate to the general election,” Schnur said. “American voters are definitely looking for change, but they are also looking for reassurance.”

McCain is an enthusiastic and faithful supporter of the Iraq war. Even with his March 26 speech on foreign policy, are voters really going to believe that he’s not four more years of the same?

“There was no shortage of change in that message,” Schnur contended. “If you couple that with positions on torture, on global warming, I think you have a much more popular agenda on foreign policy.”

There you have it.

Is McCain as bad as Bush? No. But I have no doubt that he is four more years of this administration’s most failed policies – more war, a worsening economy, ineffective attitude toward the health-insurance crisis…the list of a typical Republican agenda goes on.

But because McCain has adopted an atypical persona despite his typical surface, he has empowered himself to be whatever he wants to be to voters – and, unlike the hated Mrs. Clinton, he’s moderate enough to attract those ever-important independents.

McCain’s strength will depend on how he can control the conversation. Can he put into context his 100-years-in-Iraq comment? Can he define victory there? Can he turn a discussion about age into an effective examination of experience?

Will he attract his party’s base and woo enough independents to put him in the White House?

I suppose it all depends on how successful McCain and his cohorts from the Grand Old Party are in manipulating this country into four more years.

The war and the media

During one of my rare trips home to my native Kansas City, Mo., I remember riding by an Iraq war protest, as I would label it, in someone’s richly green and expansive front lawn. There were white crosses, one for each American soldier killed in battle, lining a stretch of land between the property owner’s wooden fence and the road. A sign at the beginning of the stretch with a number in black writing announced precisely how many crosses the passing viewer would lay eyes on. I was riding in the passenger’s seat, giving the display my full attention. I kept wondering when it would end.

I was struck by the power of the display. But it was a novelty – certainly not part of my daily routine.

Something that is part of my daily routine is reading and watching the news, which this past week included my reading about declining media coverage of the Iraq war that has been going on for five years now.

It seems to me that people in the media and people who study the media have agreed on three basic reasons as to why stories about the war have dramatically declined since about the end of last summer – danger, money and public interest.

Danger is perhaps the most understandable reason. Journalists who risk their lives are certainly admirable, but anyone can see why news organizations don’t subject the same people to fatal violence year after year after year.

Of course it costs a lot to cover the war, and in today’s struggling journalism market we recognize that there have to be cuts nearly everywhere.

But the money factor bleeds somewhat into the third, more complex reason – public interest. The experts essentially reached a consensus that stories about Iraq have lately been competing for time and space with stories that are currently more captivating to the public – mainly, those about the presidential race and about the flailing economy.

Iraq is also a subject people are sick of – it has, after all, been around for five years now. And absent any major policy debates, like those that took place before and at the beginning of the surge, people don’t seem to want to hear it.

“This is a story people want to go away,” Marjorie Miller, foreign editor at the Los Angeles Times, said recently on PBS’s NewsHour, “and so we are constantly looking for new and interesting ways to tell the story and keep people engaged.”

With this statement, Miller has put a huge burden on the media’s shoulders – they must keep the public interested in hugely important topics. She also reflects the reality of journalism – increased public interest equals more sales (or today, more clicks), which equals more money.

But with something as important as Iraq, where people are dying every day, is it acceptable to bow to the pressures of simply engaging, with whatever news the media think will work best, a society that can often be so distracted?

And if it’s unacceptable, what is the best way to cover the war effectively?
Covering Iraq is different than covering World War II or Vietnam, as The New York Times’s March 24 story on war coverage pointed out. There is no daily narrative and no draft of young citizens. So daily Iraq coverage would pretty much amount to, as Alex S. Jones of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy put it, “more of the same grim news, day after day.”

However, I think there is a pretty compelling argument that any news, as grim as it may be, that is accurate reporting on a war Americans are paying for deserves daily, if monotonous, coverage. But is monotony – not letting people forget we’re at war – the best way to be effective? Or is it novelty – not allowing people to become jaded by continual war coverage?

If I lived near that house where the crosses were on display, if I passed it every day, I might eventually cease to take notice. I might drive by chatting on my cell phone or singing at the top of my lungs to the song playing from my iPod without even realizing what I was passing.

But I might also notice it every, single time. And I might become more and more and more outraged with every passing by. The path of crosses would grow longer and longer, and I would be reminded of the war and its consequences every day, at least thinking about part of what is happening in the world.

The attention on declining media coverage of the war near its fifth anniversary really brings to the surface the debate of media’s role in our society and how they should best execute that role. The issue really asks us whether editors and produces or readers and viewers should be making the calls about what we see in the news when it comes to a topic of such grave importance.

On my next trip back home, I drove back by the house where I remembered the white crosses had been displayed. They were gone.

Perhaps, without the reimbursement from everyone passing by the protest, buying each individual cross just began to cost too much.

The Web and the presidential race -- not just a lesson in technology

Bill Boyarsky has done his share of political reporting. He’s covered presidential campaigns since 1968, when Nixon was first elected to the White House, and worked for The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times.

So I was a bit surprised when the 73-year-old, who now writes for the liberal political blog Truthdig, admitted that his current gig has, this late in his career, boosted his confidence.

No longer working for an organization that has the money to finance travels with the press pack on the campaign buses and planes, Boyarsky has had to figure things out for himself.

“Being alone, I had to think all the time,” he said of his experiences following candidates around the country to find stories to write for Truthdig.

An interesting way to put it, I think, considering stereotypes of an echoing press pack traveling with somewhat of a mob mentality.

Technology has undoubtedly changed both how people are following the campaign and how reporters are covering it, but not necessarily for the better, Boyarsky noted. The urgency of the Internet has pressed the press to value speed over good judgment.

“I’ve never seen so many wrong calls as there are today,” Boyarsky said. “And I’ve never seen journalists with such need to make these calls.”

The days of the “boys on the bus” are over; no longer are reporters drinking and laughing together after they finish their stories of the day. Now there is pressure to keep working, with reporters lacking human contact with each other when they are instead absorbed in their BlackBerrys – emailing sources and editors, and getting instant access to the work of their competitors. And perhaps this reading alone has become a new form of the media’s echo chamber.

But technology has also allowed sites like Truthdig to flourish – often offering perspectives from people who are covering the race “alone.”

All the hard work and obsession on the Internet by reporters working for major outlets has inspired seemingly has done little to lend originality or credibility to this election cycle’s coverage. The media were given a blanket criticism for getting it wrong on John McCain over the summer, and for getting it wrong on Hillary Clinton and New Hampshire, to name a couple prominent examples. And many call the post-mortems on Clinton’s campaign before the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas premature.

But even after her wins those all-important states, a strain of similar stories is still appearing, mostly by those who seem to have more freedom in what they are covering. And so, now, some press accounts are avoiding the echo – stories can’t seem to agree on how seriously to take Clinton’s race against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination.

What are mostly more conventional daily stories seem to take her extremely seriously, portraying the horse race between her and Obama as one where he is only a few paces, instead of a few laps, ahead.

And then there are the stories that take pains to point out what the authors see as a cold, hard fact: mathematically, Clinton has little chance to catch up with Obama, barring any history-changing (and outrage-provoking) overturn of the popular and/or delegate vote by the superdelegates.

So which storyline should we, the audience, pay attention to? It seems strange to have a choice about the state of a candidate’s campaign after hearing so much of the same lines from all the press so far in this race.

Although an anti-conventional-wisdom aspect of the press has always existed, technology, for the damage it may have done to the mainstream coverage of this year’s presidential election, has been an overall benefit to voters wanting to find out about the candidates.

The pack may be filing more stories more quickly and more carelessly, but these reporters are still charged with telling people what the candidates and their staffs are saying every day. But, because of the expansion of people like Boyarsky influencing the rhetoric, there is now much more to coverage than just that.

More reporters, who don’t have daily assignments on people they spend nearly all their time with and have possibly covered for years, have access to a medium that can spread their takes on the election far and wide.

Despite Boyarsky’s claim that technology has hindered the media’s judgment, he himself is an example of where technology has allowed reporting to shine.

If this veteran reporter’s being alone has caused him to learn and to think, then it should do the same for us.

The oldest trick in the book

American voters will make history in November. For the first time, we will elect an African-American president, a woman president, or a man older than 70 to begin his first term in the White House. Perhaps this year more than any other, people are voting not necessarily on policy but on identity – which candidate they can personally identify with since now there will be more demographic representations scattering the ballot.

Democrats like me this year can only hope that now that the primaries have narrowed the party’s field to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the race so far has been a representation of what the general election will look like. Voters’ battle cry in the Democratic primaries has been out with the old, in with the new. Gone from the race are all the white males representing the demographic that has dominated American leadership since the birth of the country. And with the novel candidates Clinton and Obama on the ballot, more people are coming to the polls, the media is paying more attention and voter enthusiasm has peaked.

Poor John Edwards. As Paul Krugman pointed out in a New York Times column that brought tears to the eyes of my friend who worked on his campaign, Edwards spawned many of the dominant ideas of this Democratic campaign, ideas that both Clinton and Obama have adopted. “Mr. Edwards, far more than is usual in modern politics, ran a campaign based on ideas,” Krugman wrote. “And even as his personal quest for the White House faltered, his ideas triumphed: both candidates left standing are, to a large extent, running on the platform Mr. Edwards built.” Alas, Edwards, part of the old, never caught fire in the way of the two remaining candidates.

With the face-off in November coming down to a choice between two candidates who present something the American people have never before had in a president, much of the decision will come down to how well voters can adapt to the newness (or oldness, in the case of the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain), and which change they have an easier time choosing.

On the surface it may look like McCain could in the general election go the way of the white male rivals who challenged Clinton and Obama in the primaries. And, unlike those challengers, McCain isn’t just more of the old – he is old, too old. In a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, more than 25 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for McCain because of his age. That’s double the number of people who said they would not vote for Obama because of his race or Clinton because of her gender. And when a Pew poll asked people to describe each of the three candidates in one word, the one that came out on top for McCain was “old.” Add to that an attack ad repeating the line “maybe 100 years” of troops in Iraq, and it appears McCain is toast.

But in a campaign that, so far, has often been unpredictable, we must realize other possibilities abound. One scenario is the manifestation a new version of the so-called Bradley effect, morphed this year to adjust to the unprecedented situation. The traditional Bradley effect refers to when pre-election poll respondents are too embarrassed to admit they would not vote for a minority candidate, so they say they will, which inflates the results. And then, when they are in the privacy of poll booths, they vote for the white candidate, who wins by seemingly astonishing numbers. The term originated when longtime Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American, in 1982 ran against, and lost to, a white man for governor after polling indicated Bradley would win by a significant margin.

This year, polls so far predict McCain is at a disadvantage because of his age. But then again, it is less taboo to say you won’t vote for a candidate because he is too old than to say you won’t vote for someone because they are African-American or female. So, someone who tells a pollster he or she is readily adapting to the increasing diversity of American rulers may just end up voting for McCain or staying home on election day, when they would otherwise be out voting for a Democratic candidate.

My friend Mark Eisen, who for almost a year now has been a volunteer for the McCain campaign, liked how this could help his candidate with pre-election strategy.
“Everyone who would or would not vote for him is out there,” he told me over Starbucks recently, adding that he thinks many Clinton and Obama defectors will be hidden.

Of course this confirmation from one student to another doesn’t amount to much more than relatively inexperienced speculation, but it presents a scary possible reality for our country. The Bradley effect is not that something only lurks in the dark history of our country – it is still alive today. If we see McCain in November with Clinton-in-New-Hampshire-like before and after percentages, we must consider what kind of progress we are making as a nation.

The perfect switch?

As I sat on my couch Tuesday night watching the Democratic presidential debate in Ohio, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Hillary Clinton. When it came to debating the issues, I thought she won; her policy discussions were more polished and (of course) detailed, and her attacks were more effective. But the reasons I think Clinton “won” are the same ones that give many people ammunition to say she “lost” – she is too detailed, we are sick of her political attacks. And as I watched her sitting on the stage just not getting it – not getting that repeatedly interrupting everyone on the stage so she can fit in more responses makes people think she is bitchy and not getting that complaining about always getting the first question makes her look like a whiner – I am sad to say that I thought she became more and more like a caricature of a high school loser trying to fit in by throwing out disses on the wrong person, the cool kid.

“Hillary’s annoying,” my boyfriend, who I convinced to watch at least the first half of the debate with me, blurted out during the prolonged health care discussion. “She just won’t shut up. Look, Barack’s trying to say something, and this bitch just keeps talking.”

As I watched Clinton continue with behavior I knew wouldn’t work for her, this comment brought up a question in my mind that has been plaguing me throughout the election season: What would the Democratic race be like if the personas were switched? Not the platforms, just the personas. Would Clinton be the ultimate candidate, having the killer résumé and the likeable cool, calm and collected personality to go with it? Or, would she be no match for Obama, who would be an assertive fresh face with unbeatable judgment and a nearly unmatched mastery of politics and policy?

Perhaps the debate can help us analyze those questions.

Clinton was tense, picking on every detail, leaning forward on her elbows when she spoke, arguing with the moderators seven times in order to get her responses in when they wanted to move on. Obama made her look foolish when she made a point to argue semantics about support from unwanted endorsers. The camera caught a brilliant reaction from him, listening intently to his rival’s response, but when he realizes her attack on him is that “there’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting,” a huge smile crosses his face as he, and probably lots of viewers, thought the core of the attack was silly and unnecessary.

This demeanor defined Obama throughout the debate. His relaxation was a foil to how tense Clinton was. He sat back in his chair most of the time, and didn’t feel the need nearly as much to cut off the moderators – he only interrupted them once.
So what if she were relaxed and he were tense? Clinton would sit back, letting the debate move on, while Obama would feel like he needed to harp on a point over and over just to prove his worth. Clinton would get laughs just from saying “Sounds good” after MSNBC mistakenly played a clip of Obama doing an exaggerated impression of her. And Obama would labor to make a joke based on the already-popular humor of “Saturday Night Live” just to be left as the only one in the auditorium thinking it was funny. Obama would be picking on Clinton’s every last word while she sat calmly, able to shoot smug smiles to the moderators and the audience. She would be giving vague, feel-good answers while he had every point down to the last detail.

It’s hard to imagine this after months of listening to Clinton’s hounding voice, desperately telling us point by point why she is better. And while of course people would have varying reactions to a softer, inspiring Clinton and a harsher Obama, there is no doubt in my mind that Obama would not be seen nearly as negatively as Clinton is. He would probably just look like a normal male candidate. Sure, he would not be the inspiring, hopeful mobilizer he is now, but I think few would argue he would be given labels that are the male equivalent to “bitch” or “nag.” I’m not even sure there are such equivalents. At the same time, if Clinton acted like Obama, there is a risk, not a guarantee but a risk, that she would be perceived as too weak, to passive, too sensitive to run the country. Although many men hate her now because, as Maureen Dowd said, she reminds them of their ex-wives, I believe they would find new reasons not to vote for her if she were too sweet and nurturing like Obama. She wouldn’t have the guts to protect the country, they would say, or she wouldn’t stand up to make needed changes.

Of course not everyone found Clinton “annoying.” Thomas Murray, a former John Edwards campaign worker who switched his support to Clinton after Edwards dropped out, told me he wasn’t perturbed by Clinton’s personality.

“I thought she did just fine,” he said. But, like me, he picked the reasons she won the debate as the same ones many others would use as evidence that she lost.

I am not saying that the race is not coming down just to gender and how it is perceived by society. There are too many other factors – such as Clinton’s history and Obama’s undoubtedly inspiring rhetoric – to narrow the election down to a contest of boys versus girls. But, I think it is worth recognizing that Obama started off with a wider range of acceptable personas to choose from while Clinton is just one of a range of woman that will come around, and probably lose, before enough Americans adapt to the idea of both men and woman leaders. Only then, when we look at male and female candidates on a debate stage, will use the same adjectives to describe the way we perceive them.