Elaine Laffertyhas been working for Hillary Clinton's election campaign and is shocked at the extent to which the Democratic race is now dominated by gender and race.
'They told us we're not supposed to shop at Wal-Mart."
The 25-year-old Clinton campaign field organiser said this as I insisted that we needed to get somewhere fast to buy stuff. I'm not talking about T-shirts or peanut butter or hair gel. We needed survival gear.
We were near Pleasantville, Iowa on an early December evening. It was snowing and temperatures were dropping. But understand what kind of cold we are talking about here: car door locks were frozen. Windscreens were solid ice, and wipers stuck.
In Iowa, when the roads glass over into black ice, they do not salt or sand them the way they do in, say, New Jersey. (Something to do with livestock and farmland and run-off.) So drivers who cannot see and cannot brake skid along at 40 miles per hour until they either reach their destination or land in a ditch. Where they wait for help. Because mobile phones often do not work in these sparsely populated areas. (One staffer had ended up in a gully the night before but was uninjured.)
"They didn't tell you to die. It's anti-union and politically wrong, but it's the only place open and we're going in," I said.
Armed with aerosol cans, gallons of anti-freeze and plastic ice scrapers, we returned to the field office for a night of phone calls.
There was a general feeling in Iowa that Barack Obama was surging. And given the wild inaccuracy of the opinion polls that have plagued every single primary since, feelings are proving more reliable than anything else.
One young staffer, a recent law school graduate, was shocked at what she was hearing as she canvassed door to door. "I've had men tell me they're not happy voting for a black guy but they'd sure do that before they vote for a woman! I can't believe it."
Ah, a young person's naivete, I thought. She has no idea how deeply ingrained sexism is in American society. But in fact no one back in December realised how the issues of race and gender would come to dominate the most historic election in American history.
Fast forward to New Hampshire a few weeks later. After Obama's win in Iowa, the momentum continued. Clinton was working her heart out, and she inarguably outperformed Obama during the televised debates. But nothing seemed to matter.
Sure, her voice had wavered and her eyes grew misty as she spoke to a group of women at a New Hampshire coffee shop, showing the strain of no sleep. The media were in full attack mode. Election night for those of us who supported Clinton was going to be painful. Opinion polls predicted a loss of at least 10 points.
I stood in the small bar of the Centennial Hotel in Concord, New Hampshire with a friend of mine who is close to Hillary's family. It was about 6pm, and polls had not yet closed. Her two brothers were there, along with top aides. Faces were dour.
Hillary came down and her face lit up as she spied her one-year-old niece, Fiona, who giggled and squealed at the sight of her aunt.
A little while later, Bill Clinton came in, dressed in tattered jeans, a sweatshirt, and carrying a cup of coffee. His voice was raw, his face swollen, eyes runny. He was sick with a very bad cold.
"You know what? I think we are gonna do better than anybody thinks. I'm telling you, it feels different out there," he said.
At 8pm the polls closed. Chief strategist Mark Penn sat with one friend at a small table as other aides seemed to be avoiding him. The concession speech had been prepared. All eyes were on the television.
Suddenly the actual results came trickling in. One per cent of the precincts reported. Then five, then 10. Clinton had a slight lead.
"Oh my God, can this hold?" said a top fundraiser. Cell phones started ringing and black- berries buzzed.
Everyone knew that if Clinton's lead held with 30 per cent of the precincts in, she would probably prevail. When CNN declared her the winner, a cry of "We're back!" came from behind one door in the hotel.
After all the analysis of numbers and trends, all the hand-wringing and beard-stroking by the pundits, what had happened was clear. Women voters had turned out in droves, and they supported Hillary. Whole industries are now sprouting up to explain why.
The American electorate is now brutally and bitterly split along race and gender lines. About 80 per cent of black men and black women are voting for Barack Obama. Latinos are voting for Hillary Clinton by a lesser but still healthy per cent. White women are voting for Clinton, although Obama is peeling off a percentage of white women who are wealthier. White men are generally leaning toward Obama.
But here's the truth, and it is not something the media is touting because it might appear to dull the exciting horse race. None of this matters anymore. From now on, voters are not going to decide the Democratic nominee.
Here is the math. There are 3,253 pledged delegates to the convention, those allocated on actual voting in primaries and caucuses. A candidate needs 2,025 to win the nomination. About 55 per cent of those 3,253 delegates have been pledged in the primaries and caucuses so far, with Clinton and Obama roughly splitting them at about 900 delegates each.
That means there are now only about 1,400 delegates left up for grabs in the remaining states voting.
Someone needs to win more than 1,100 of the remaining 1,400 delegates to secure the nomination. That is unlikely to happen. They will each continue to gain a chunk of delegates and each will end up with 1,600 or so delegates.
The nominee will likely be decided by the "super-delegates", those 796 Democratic Party leaders and lawmakers who are free to vote for whomever they choose.
Of course, something dramatic could yet happen. There could be a scandal or a personal disaster. Because in politics, as in life, you don't have to run faster than the bear who is chasing you.
You just have to run faster than the guy who is running beside you.