Despite the vitriol of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, and McCain's occasional forays into moderation with immigration policy and campaign-finance reform, Senator McCain is not a moderate or a liberal but a down-deep conservative, with an approval rating of 80 percent in 2006 from the Traditional Values Coalition and an open enthusiasm for the invasion of Iraq. So in the general election voters will have a choice between disparate futures—for the war, for universal health care, for social-welfare programs and for the Supreme Court, whose majority is aging and whose decisions so shape civil liberties. Those who doubt the differences between Republicans and Democrats might consider the differences between today and eight years ago, when the federal government had a surplus and the country was at peace.

The first debate in which Clinton and Obama shared the stage alone for the first time was substantive and civil; they disagreed about some matters but the similarities were obvious. They also each offered a big picture of the coming contest. "The differences between Barack and I pale in comparison to the differences that we have with Republicans," Senator Clinton said. Senator Obama added, "It is really important, I think, for us also to give the American people this sense—as they are struggling with their mortgages and struggling with their health care and trying to figure out how to get their kids in a school that will teach them and prepare them and equip them for this century—that they get a sense that government's on their side, that government is listening, that it's carrying their voices into the White House. And that's not what's happened over the last seven years."

The fracas between the anti-immigrant right wing of the Republican Party and Senator McCain shows that the Republicans have now learned something at which the Democrats have long excelled: how to eat their young, or, in McCain's case, their not-so-young. For many years the Democratic victory of choice was the Pyrrhic victory, which is synonymous with defeat, but the kind of defeat you could feel smug about afterward. Over time this turned out not to be particularly satisfying, either for the party or the people.

Not long ago there was a plan in some states to turn the franchise into a million-dollar lottery to bump up pathetic voter turnout; on Super Tuesday the momentum was so great that people tried to vote in states that weren't even having primaries. Americans are awake and aware again, and if the committed Democratic supporters of one candidate or another turn this new era of good feeling into the era of prolonged sulking, the election won't be the only thing they'll lose.

© 2008