For the first time since this campaign began, it was possible to imagine these two contenders as running-mates.

Clinton came close to saying as much during a discussion about whether her proposal to mandate universal health care coverage or Obama's proposal to expand access might be preferable, the senator from New York said of the senator from Illinois, "We share a lot of the same values… we are trying to work our way through to get to where we need to be and that is to have a united Democratic party…"

But neither Clinton or Obama is running for vice president just yet. Despite one warm and fuzzy debate, don't think that this race has gone "soft."

The Captain was a propaganda stunt from the get-go: a former art student, Steve Rogers, finds himself pumped up with a super-soldier formula, dressed up in stars and stripes, and sent out to the front lines of World War II to boost morale. The 1941 cover of “Captain America Comics No. 1” shows him, with that big letter “A” on his forehead, punching out Hitler. It’s hard to escape the feeling that someone was trying too hard.

During the Watergate scandal he had a crisis of conscience and changed his name to the Nomad. He formed a partnership with the Falcon, the first African-American superhero. In his final adventure, he rebelled against a Superhuman Registration Act to license heroes in a kind of super-D.M.V. The man struggled, visibly and with great effort, to do what he saw as the decent thing.

It should be easy for conservatives to get over their McCain issues since overall he was always the most conservative of the major candidates, but of course if these pundits were rational they would already see that.

And if Democrats give the GOP the gift of Clinton, which still seems very likely, these pundits can pretty much ignore McCain and focus entirely on Hillary Clinton's purported Trotskyism, murder and drug running operations, "shrillness," her husband's penis, etc.

Some of the sociologists, psychologists and demographers who study this new life stage see it as a good thing. The twixters aren't lazy, the argument goes, they're reaping the fruit of decades of American affluence and social liberation. This new period is a chance for young people to savor the pleasures of irresponsibility, search their souls and choose their life paths. But more historically and economically minded scholars see it differently. They are worried that twixters aren't growing up because they can't. Those researchers fear that whatever cultural machinery used to turn kids into grownups has broken down, that society no longer provides young people with the moral backbone and the financial wherewithal to take their rightful places in the adult world. Could growing up be harder than it used to be?