I've become increasingly depressed by the slog that is the Democratic primary season - not because of the length, but because of the Clinton campaign's gains and the reason for them.

I'm very much afraid that Hillary Clinton will win both the Indiana and the North Carolina primaries tomorrow - or will come extremely close in North Carolina, where she has wiped out Barack Obama's double-digit lead. The change has nothing to do with either candidate's stands on issues. There's little difference on most of them. My hunch is that people are gravitating to Clinton because she's the personality they want. Because she's effectively made class the most important issue in the campaign. She has convinced voters that she's one of them, and Obama isn't. That she's patriotic, and Obama isn't.

Either of them should be able to beat John McCain in the general election. But we may very well get Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate. And the more I listen to her, the worse I feel, about the coming election, and about this country. She announces that she'll obliterate Iran if Iran attacks Israel - and her poll numbers rise.

Maybe Obama can pull this off. But if Clinton does extremely well tomorrow, particularly in North Carolina, he may have a tough time persuading the remaining superdelegates that he's the better candidate. And then she'll insist that the Democratic Party count the faux votes from Michigan and Florida. And then it'll all be over.

And Democrats, who were in an uproar over the way George Bush won his first term, will have a candidate who's willing to do and say whatever it takes to get elected.

On a related note: I've developed a new obsession: conservative writer Peggy Noonan's Saturday column in the Wall Street Journal. Her politics and mine are polls apart: she was special assistant to President Reagan and a speech writer for Bush I. But she's one of the most perspective - and entertaining - commentators in this election campaign.

In her May 2 column, "Loyal to the Bitterness," Noonan says she's perplexed about the damage Jeremiah Wright has done to the Obama campaign. "What happened with Mr. Wright should not determine the race," she writes. "Mr. Obama's stands, his ability to convince us he can make good change, his ability to be 'one of us,' that great challenge for a national politician in a varied nation, should determine the race."

And then Noonan analyzes the reason for Wright's rage, and her own reaction to it. "I do not feel a sense of honest anger or violation at his remarks,"she writes, "in part because I don't think his views carry deep implications for our country."

It's yet another thoughtful musing from Noonan about the complicated issues that face Americans, and the complicated sentiments that make us who we are.