Among the encouraging data emerging from yesterday’s Obamarama was the news that more women and older men voted for the senator from Illinois. Clinton’s camp had been claiming a lock on working women, men over 65 and blue collars of all ages but Obama made inroads with all three in Virginia, splitting those demos with Hillary across the state. Those who had hoped this was a doomed children’s crusade are left looking for new arrows to sling.

Speaking to a energized crowd in Madison, Wisconsin Obama went for inevitability. “At this point the cynics can no longer say our hope is false,” he said but at almost the same instant, John McCain was trying to harsh the mellow. “Hope is a powerful thing,” he said in his own victory speech. But: “To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude.”

Take that! Interesting that Mac has already decided who he is running against in the fall (note to Hillary) and even more significant that his antidote to the powerful “Yes We Can” message of Obama’s McCain is the rather expected refrain of “No You Can’t.” He would swat Peter Pan down with a swipe of his hook if only he could raise his arms above his shoulders. By reminding everyone every chance he’s got that he was tortured as a POW during the Vietnam war, McCain is counting on that good soldier juju that worked so well for Bob Dole and John Kerry.

But Obama has been anticipating that line of attack by honoring McCain’s “half century of service” (wow, how old is that guy?) while criticizing his politics. “We honour his service, but his priorities don’t address the real problems of the American people because they are bound to the failed policies of the past,” he said, not for the first time. The contrast between the vibrant Democratic candidate and the rather jowly, angry looking Republican was all the more striking because CNN cut away from Obama to McCain, standing in front of a waxworks worth of followers. That was when my daughter, who is from South America, looked up from her homework to say, “Wow, who are all those old white people?”

I’m glad if we’ve got some of them, too, even if you want to include me in that equation. As a member of the boomer generation, though, I am looking forward to debates that don’t focus on Vietnam or for that matter Woodstock. I was 14 then and, like McCain, couldn’t make the scene (I was busy dancing around my bedroom in my underpants, pretending I was Pete Townshend — he was there!) Enough already. Woodstock to me is Snoopy’s friend, and they must be celebrating themselves. With Uno declared best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, Tuesday was a great day for beagles as well. Let’s all dance.