by Richard Reeves, MARCH 5, 2008

LOS ANGELES — You couldn’t ask for much better than this — at least if you’re a reporter. Depending on their personal preferences, Republicans or Democrats might have their problems with Tuesday’s results in Texas and Ohio, but for those of us looking for trouble — and that is our business — there is something to be said for a Democratic tie (of sorts), with the Clintons controlling the old guard and Barack Obama leading the new party.

The climax of all this: Maybe 30,000 people who think young surrounding the Pepsi Center in Denver chanting “Rock for Barack!” if they think their man has been cheated out of the nomination for president.

There were two possible signs after last Tuesday’s voting of where the Democrats are right now. Hillary Clinton, whom no one ever accused of not being tough, was on CBS the morning after talking about a joint ticket, with, naturally, herself on top, Clinton-Obama. Could happen. Then there was George McGovern, who has gone reluctantly from rebel to old age, saying that he had endorsed Clinton — after all, young Bill and Hillary worked for him when he was the Democratic candidate in 1972 — before he ever met Barack Obama. Then he added that he had 10 grandchildren, all of them working for Obama.

We all have kids working for Obama, me included, and they think their time has come — and we have screwed ours up. It’s the old, old, oldest story. But it has a new twist this year — an exciting year that compares with, or is perhaps even more exciting than, 1960, 1968 or 1980.

The guard is changing, the vote is rocking, the polls have to stay open later. And one man, Obama, is the reason. In the minds of his people, many of them new to the crusty processes of recent nominations, he has already won this thing fair and square. The signal comment on that was by Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, who in one of the columns that will be remembered this memorable year, asked what would have happened to Obama if he had lost 11 straight primaries?

But the young black senator from Illinois is not a Clinton. They are better candidates than winners; they do not give up easily. There are those of us who remember Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, touted as a hot property from the provinces, being laughed off the podium after a windy, interminable policy-wonking speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1988. His biggest applause line that night was, “And in conclusion …”

Four years later he was back as the party’s nominee and the next president of the United States. His wife telescoped her rise and fall and recovery — from unbeatable front-runner to whining loser to contender — in just a few months or even weeks, as she changed her message and tone from hour to hour. But she’s still standing. Physically, she’s actually looking better, maybe from the workout she’s gotten from throwing kitchen sinks at Obama, while he was playing the cool and graceful “winner.”

Odds are he will be the winner; the energy he has generated among new generations will be hard to deny, particularly if young people climb the mile up to Denver with the threat of boycotting and destroying the Democratic Party they have recently embraced with such fervor. (That, of course, is why Hillary, plotting to win by mobilizing superdelegates and ghost delegates in Michigan and Florida to outnumber Obama’s elected delegates, has to talk about the new guy as a running mate. It’s not as if she has much of a choice.)

What next? Presumably we will see the fight in Obama. His real breakthrough was in South Carolina, where he was able to win over many people by pointing out that he was running against not one but two Clintons. Now he can say he’s running against two Clintons and a McCain, the last man standing on the Republican side.

At least up to now, the Grand Old Party that gave us Bush, war, recession, fear and loathing as the American way, thinks it can stay in power because, fairly or unfairly, a lot of people just hate Hillary. And if she can squeeze her way onto the top of the Democratic ticket, she will gain millions of new enemies among the younger men and women Obama brought into the process this year.

The conventional wisdom was that political conventions had become fossils, never again to generate the excitement (and resentments) of the past. Tell that to the newest Pepsi generation in Denver this August.