The Rev. Herman Bing is a popular man. Pastor of the red-brick Carpentersville Baptist Church in North Augusta, S.C.—a town of barbershops, strip malls and churches on the northern bank of the Savannah River—Bing, who was the late James Brown's minister, has been taking calls from the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both of which are anxious for the 53-year-old preacher's endorsement before the state's Democratic primary on Jan. 26. The courtship between campaigns and African-American ministers is an ancient political rite, but for Bing, who is also a friend of Al Sharpton's, this is no ordinary time. Like many Democrats, he has been waiting a lifetime for a viable female presidential candidate or a viable black one. Now he and his party have one of each, and in the aftermath of Iowa and New Hampshire, the two camps are fighting over a great deal more than just Bing's endorsement. "I really hate that they had to run at the same time in the same election," says Bing. "It just makes what should be a wonderful situation very stressful for folk like me. I never imagined you could have too much of a good thing."

A continent away last Friday, in an empty classroom inside the sprawling Electrical Training Institute of IBEW Local 11 in Commerce City, Calif., I read Bing's words to Clinton, who, while she listened, took a sip of water and nodded knowingly, a look of recognition in her eyes. She had heard this before. "I understand that," she said. "What a good problem to have. Two leading candidates for president, a woman and an African-American, who are being viewed, I hope, on our merits, our qualifications, our records, our plans, our vision. I don't think it's easy for either of us. And I really commend Senator Obama for the very graceful way that he has navigated this campaign. I wish it didn't have to be a choice. I think a lot of people who are torn between us feel that way."

She pauses for the briefest of beats. "But it is a contest," she says, "and the contrasts have to be drawn and the questions have to be asked because, obviously, I wouldn't be in this race and working as hard as I am unless I thought I am uniquely qualified at this moment in our history to be the president we need starting in 2009. And I think it is informed by my deep experience over the last 35 years, my firsthand knowledge of what goes on inside a White House."

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Torn is a tough word, but Clinton is right: it aptly captures how many Americans, and not just Democrats, already feel about 2008. Some women are nursing guilt over supporting Obama; some African-Americans worry they are doing the wrong thing by voting for Clinton. And these are early days: we are only just beginning to grapple with the questions of race and gender that the campaign will raise again and again through November. Sometimes the grand statement has the virtue, as Henry Kissinger is said to have remarked, of being true. This is one of those times: every election changes the country in some way, but the campaign now moving out of the largely white states of Iowa and New Hampshire to the rest of the country will soon mean that the politically engaged across America will be presented with the likelihood that a woman or an African-American will be the Democratic nominee and perhaps the president. And, as Clinton says, it's a good "problem" to have.

Journalists (and politicians) have a weakness for breaking things down into overly simplistic dichotomies, but here are a few of the contending forces at play, particularly within the Democratic Party, in the aftermath of Obama's victory in Iowa and Clinton's surprising win in New Hampshire: race vs. gender, youth vs. experience, novelty vs. familiarity. Until last week, race and youth and novelty seemed to be carrying the day. Then, on the morning of the day before the voting, in a Portsmouth, N.H., diner, a female questioner asked Clinton how she kept going through it all. The mask of command slipping, Clinton spoke honestly, her voice cracking, saying, "I just don't want to see us go backwards." The moment was about her main opponent, too, when she added: "Some of us are right and some of us are wrong, some of us are ready and some of us are not." This moment and her subsequent 2-percentage-point win brought an odd truth to light: though Hillary Rodham Clinton has been on the periphery or in the middle of national life for decades (from being featured in Life as Wellesley's commencement speaker in 1969 to serving as First Lady and the junior senator from New York), she is one of the most recognizable but least understood figures in American politics.

She seems to get that at last. "I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice," she told New Hampshire voters. To say it is late in the game for a major politician to have found one's voice is too glib. Many public figures are works in progress, and they are all certainly human. Clinton's primary victory is a new chance for voters to get to know her beyond the caricatures, positive and negative, that have for so long defined her. "Everyone forgets she went to law school when women were not 50 percent of each law-school class, and certainly not seen as litigators," says Maria Echaveste, a senior adviser to Clinton's campaign. "When you were breaking down walls, it wasn't enough to be equally tough. You had to build a shell to protect yourself. That's what she did."