Who would have thought. Not the Obama camp, not even back then. Sure, all campaigns talk with enough bravado. And how great would have been if one of those other extra-qualified fine senators would have gotten this far, if only to prove to the world that the only superpower can, through rational debate, pick the most qualified from the crop.

But no, that would be out of character. And never has happened, with few exceptions. 2008 seemed like a year when a reasonably seasoned candidate, and articulate enough, would skate gaffe-free to the nomination. But them came Obama and flew Hillary off the rails. Well, in fact, he did not quite, which is exactly why the Democratic Party is in the mess they are in, because the candidates, playing race and gender politics, simply cannot get themselves to say enough is enough.

This is not the calamity the media proclaims, however. Find me the first to shed a tear for the demise of New Deal expunged, milquetoast party of centrist measures and 'fiscal responsibility'. The fact of the matter is that two ideal candidates at any time, with different strengths, for different reasons, are putting the remaining reason of being of the Democratic Party through a wringer that should come very close to break it or make it invincible.

On paper, sure, Obama camp has more than a few points. The vote on Iraq, the status quo, she didn't really dodge Bosnian bullets. And Cheney and company has given experience a bad name. Let's be frank, however. These would be alright cute lines against a Republican candidate, but against a candidate with a resume and platform to match, this kind of sniping can get a little gauche.

The present scenario has only a resemblance to victory in that it has had many fathers. The discovery of the empty cockiness with which the Clintons avoided planning for the long haul of the campaign may be one, but then again, primaries have never been this long since 1968. If to adjudicate the Ralph Nader spoiler award to one, a good suggestion would be Oprah, who has the distinction of having mangled Democratic changes not once, but twice. In 2000, she 'humanized' W. and let him catch up to Al Gore. Now, she put her stamp of approval on Obama, terrific candidate at any time, by doing her bit for the media not so silent casting search for the 'Anti-Hillary' (Remember that Time magazine cover with the said title and the picture of Al Gore at the time of 'Inconvenient Truth'?)

Political pundits are a bit clueless about the deserved Oprah credit for Obama, but then again they would never pick up a copy of the National Enquierer if they could browse through The National Review. (Pray find me, dear reader, any normal person who does).

The ongoing Clinton sinking operation speaks of two things: First, media fatigue. What can they speculate about with the Clintons back in power? They have already been through the presidency of one related to a previous administration, and have been put through the wringer by long memories of past press shenanigans, which they are able to perform for the simple fact that the victim is rarely the same person twice.

Having wrung all life out of the Whitewater and the philanderer storylines, there is nothing to endear her to them. Obama, however, is another thing altogether.

Is not that there is nothing to hate about him, that's not it. He is new. That is his advantage to the media. They can have a new season arch, so to speak. Sure, the observant public may have noticed that the candidate has already shown a few flashes of arrogance and self-serving behavior, but being new, all that can wait to be shown in the second term, or the first, if he is deemed to be awful, a la George W. and Clinton I.

The other thing the Clinton quandary is indicative of is the side effect of that baby boomer disease, the self-serving and patronizing gloating combo, which not only gave the press Clinton fatigue but also wearied the Democratic Party. Whatever little headway they made in Bill Clinton's time was only to offset their losses in the first Clinton term. The fact that the demise of their congressional majority had little to do with Clinton himself seems to be easily forgotten. In short, to paraphrase the former Democratic President, there is nothing wrong with what's bad about Hillary Clinton that can be cured with what's right about Obama.

It is truly funny how this year has shed more than its share of clueless remarks about race, not even having to do with the usual fabrications about welfare queens and such. Furthermore, it is extraordinary that this inability of perception occurs to a population clearly visible and vocal to the rest of the country, with a gigantic, with bragging rights to a millennial grudge, to boot. Little wonder, then, that Latinos, let alone illegal workers whose menial labor sustain this remaining superpower, are mostly meted out by the rest of the population with the condescension reserved for stray pets and skid row denizens.

This primary, then, becomes all about what in the hood we call 'represent'. In trying to doggedly fight through symbols, all gets reduced to symbolism. The first woman ever. The first viable African American, and by the way, please Rev. Jackson, take no offense.

If that weren't enough simplicity, we add to it the slogan, in lieu of names, because voters need to be reminded they don't represent real people. Suprisingly, no one makes a semiotic report on Change (As in, this is cool, baby, out with the old) versus Solutions (Change is for the worse. Change is off with the new thing. Who's left holding the bag?), something that would get Umberto Eco himself in political hot water.

If that were not funny enough, a truly blind society would see the irony in that, while the two camps are exploiting image politics, each of them is trapped in, or freed from, acting within their own stereotypes. In that way, Obama can't be feisty, so he must rise, as much as he can, above the fray, in the self-image of those who considered themselves of no particular ethnicity in this country, while the Clintons can show one thing or two about fighting with the single-mindedness and lack of decorum that people assume is the ghetto coin of the realm.

This way, the Clintons can be criticized for their behavior, in a way that would be unthinkable if this were the other way around. Likewise, Obama gets all the mileage from behaving in a manner that, if reversed, would portray the Clintons as aloof, patronizing and out of touch with reality.

It is too unusual a scenario to predict how the party would emerge from it, as it now seems headed to a hair-breadth victory, if not a general election defeat. Even victorious, the fact remains that identity politics would have gone through such a wringer that its survival may be in doubt. Half the Congressional Black Caucus, who has supported Hillary, may find itself challenged. In California alone, many of these are the residue of former black districts, now populated by large swaths of Latinos, which would make them easy pickings for a new generation of politicians.

Needless to say, it would be a long time for a repeat of identity politics at the national level. For once, it would require a candidate not so tied into identity politics, a rare thing for an African American to accomplish, and only slightly less probable in the cse of female candidates.

Both Obama and Hillary shot to national prominence as essentially flukes, neither born out of the party machine, but squeezing through the cracks in the system. In the same way, their extraordinary qualities, their lack of identification with the tenets of identity politics, their over-qualifications- grasp of issues on one hand, articulate delivery in the other -would have made them easy target in the strong customer atmosphere of local politics.

Hillary's emergence owes a great deal to her spouse, a former President, as Obama's to the party's equally strong resistance to the return of this powerful couple, which would pulverize the influence of the rest of the party elders. (Bid goodbye to the ramshackle Kennedy dynasty in a new Clinton era, already on its way to Jimmy Carter curio status).

It remains to be seen whether the Obama-Hillary fight would have put out of commission one of the last bastions of solid base support for the Democratic Party. Were McCain the unlikely winner in 2008, and were he able to repaint the G.O.P. as a modern version of Rooseveltian Republicanism, the last vestiges of non-union base could very well debilitate Democrats and send the party into the political wilderness once more.

In the best case scenario, it could sediment a more combative, socially conscious party, and a disastrous extension of the Middle East war further tax the economy to the point of collapse, which would make the more combative Democrats less politically frightening an option. In either case, not a good omen for the country as a whole.