Age and education do affect the vote. Many of Barack Obama’s wins have been fueled by big turnouts from younger voters, who have come out strongly for him. . . .  

But Pennsylvania seemed to be an exception: the 12 percent of the vote cast by voters under the age of 30 was the same as their share of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary vote back in 1992, which is the last time the state had a meaningful Democratic primary. Obama’s support among young Pennsylvania voters (60 percent) was a bit on the low side - it had been as high as 77 percent in Georgia and 76 percent in Virginia. And among white Pennsylvania voters under the age of 30, he did not even win a majority in Pennsylvania - according to the CBS News Exit Poll, 52 percent went for Clinton; 48 percent for Obama.  

It’s worth examining young voters by race and by education. In Ohio, Obama won 61 percent of the under-30 vote, but his margin over Clinton came almost entirely from young African-American voters. White Ohio voters 18-29 years old divided evenly, with 48 percent for each candidate.  

Black voters accounted for a large share of the youth vote in other states, too. Half of the under-30 voters in Georgia were African-American, equal to the black share of the total vote there. In Ohio, they made up more than a third of the youth vote, much larger than their share of the total vote there. In Pennsylvania, the black share of the youth vote amounted to a little less than a third. But that was twice as high as the black percentage of the statewide vote, and much higher than the black share of the vote cast by those 60 and older n Pennsylvania: only about one in ten voters over the age of 60 there was black.  

We know something about the role of education for young voters, too. CBS News worked with UWire - the news service for college journalists - to poll a representative sample of more than 2,000 Pennsylvania college students before that primary. Those who said they were registered Democratic voters in the state were overwhelmingly pro-Obama - 71 percent to 29 percent - and for that group, race mattered little. Whites favored Obama over Clinton 69 percent to 31 percent. Pro-Obama students were more enthusiastic than students supporting Clinton: six in ten liked him “a lot” better than Clinton; only 42 percent of Clinton’s student supporters said they liked her “a lot” better than Obama.  

But student opinion can be very different from the opinions of people who have left college - or perhaps have never gone. There are differences even within age groups depending on education.  . . .  

Education is strongly related to social class. Looking at all the primary exit polls (combining exit polls, weighted to total votes, and excluding Florida and Michigan), it appears the “problem” the Obama campaign faces might involve both class and age. Among white voters with a college degree, Obama and Clinton have run almost even so far this year - 49 percent for Obama, 47 percent for Clinton. The results are very different by age within this group - those under 45 have given Obama a lead, and those over 45 have chosen Clinton. This does seem to support Obama’s claim that older, better-educated Democratic voters are staying with what they know, keeping on “track.”  

White voters without a college degree, however, vote differently. This year, they have voted for Clinton over Obama by almost two-to-one - 61 percent to 33 percent. And the age of the voter matters less. Clinton leads decisively with just about all age groups of these voters - as long as they are over 30. She even edged Obama, 48 percent to 47 percent, among non-degreed voters under 30, but over 24 years old. Only the white non-college graduates younger than 25 have favored Obama so far this primary season. They voted for him 59 percent to 38 percent. This is the group that would include most of those pro-Obama undergraduate students.  

We don’t know exactly how large that group has been in the primaries this year - there is no exit poll question that measures students -- but the data suggest that any “problem” Obama has with older, working class white voters could start with voters a lot younger than we thought.

A few months ago the Obama campaign was talking about transcendence. Now it’s talking about math. “Yes we can” has become “No she can’t.”  

This wasn’t the way things were supposed to play out. 

Mr. Obama was supposed to be a transformational figure, with an almost magical ability to transcend partisan differences and unify the nation. Once voters got to know him — and once he had eliminated Hillary Clinton’s initial financial and organizational advantage — he was supposed to sweep easily to the nomination, then march on to a huge victory in November. 

Well, now he has an overwhelming money advantage and the support of much of the Democratic establishment — yet he still can’t seem to win over large blocs of Democratic voters, especially among the white working class. 

As a result, he keeps losing big states. And general election polls suggest that he might well lose to John McCain. 

What’s gone wrong? 

According to many Obama supporters, it’s all Hillary’s fault. If she hadn’t launched all those vile, negative attacks on their hero — if she had just gone away — his aura would be intact, and his mission of unifying America still on track. 

But how negative has the Clinton campaign been, really? Yes, it ran an ad that included Osama bin Laden in a montage of crisis images that also included the Great Depression and Hurricane Katrina. To listen to some pundits, you’d think that ad was practically the same as the famous G.O.P. ad accusing Max Cleland of being weak on national security.  

It wasn’t. The attacks from the Clinton campaign have been badminton compared with the hardball Republicans will play this fall. If the relatively mild rough and tumble of the Democratic fight has been enough to knock Mr. Obama off his pedestal, what hope did he ever have of staying on it through the general election? 

Let me offer an alternative suggestion: maybe his transformational campaign isn’t winning over working-class voters because transformation isn’t what they’re looking for. 

From the beginning, I wondered what Mr. Obama’s soaring rhetoric, his talk of a new politics and declarations that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” (waiting for to do what, exactly?) would mean to families troubled by lagging wages, insecure jobs and fear of losing health coverage. The answer, from Ohio and Pennsylvania, seems pretty clear: not much. Mrs. Clinton has been able to stay in the race, against heavy odds, largely because her no-nonsense style, her obvious interest in the wonkish details of policy, resonate with many voters in a way that Mr. Obama’s eloquence does not. 

Yes, I know that there are lots of policy proposals on the Obama campaign’s Web site. But addressing the real concerns of working Americans isn’t the campaign’s central theme.  

Tellingly, the Obama campaign has put far more energy into attacking Mrs. Clinton’s health care proposals than it has into promoting the idea of universal coverage.  

During the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary fight, the Obama campaign ran a TV ad repeating the dishonest charge that the Clinton plan would force people to buy health insurance they can’t afford. It was as negative as any ad that Mrs. Clinton has run — but perhaps more important, it was fear-mongering aimed at people who don’t think they need insurance, rather than reassurance for families who are trying to get coverage or are afraid of losing it.  

No wonder, then, that older Democrats continue to favor Mrs. Clinton.  

The question Democrats, both inside and outside the Obama campaign, should be asking themselves is this: now that the magic has dissipated, what is the campaign about? More generally, what are the Democrats for in this election? 

That should be an easy question to answer. Democrats can justly portray themselves as the party of economic security, the party that created Social Security and Medicare and defended those programs against Republican attacks — and the party that can bring assured health coverage to all Americans. 

They can also portray themselves as the party of prosperity: the contrast between the Clinton economy and the Bush economy is the best free advertisement that Democrats have had since Herbert Hoover. 

But the message that Democrats are ready to continue and build on a grand tradition doesn’t mesh well with claims to be bringing a “new politics” and rhetoric that places blame for our current state equally on both parties. 

And unless Democrats can get past this self-inflicted state of confusion, there’s a very good chance that they’ll snatch defeat from the jaws of victory this fall.