The XX Factor: What women really think.

Followers and Their Leaders

To go back a couple of steps, but still in the general XX spirit of today, I think: Hanna, you've put your finger on what I've been thinking/worrying about lately—which is not the candidates themselves, actually, so much as their followers. I'm not sure where Paul Krugman got the impression that Obama supporters "want their hero or nobody," but I think there is a potential irony in the kind of "movement" backing Obama has: At least to judge by Dreams From My Father, he himself really doesn't have a crusading temperament at all, yet he seems to owe his success to stirring up those sentiments in voters. What remains to be seen is whether fervent followers turn out to be good compromisers, since surely that's the kind of constituency it takes to build the bridges, forge the consensus Obama so often invokes.

As for Clinton's followers, I think it's a big mistake to elevate Robin Morgan as the emblematic Hillary-ite (or as all that much like Hillary herself, though what do I know). There are plenty of fad-allergic realists of both genders—people who are miles away from being aggrieved feminists—who find themselves in her ranks. What remains to be seen is whether they really are no-nonsense pragmatists, eager and ready to join forces with Obama when—if—the time comes.

In the meantime, I keep remembering how much I liked that incredibly civil debate in Los Angeles, when both Democrats sounded like supersmart people, ready to tackle a lot of unwieldy problems—in a league apart from the Republican buffoons who had debated the night before.