You know, they don’t look bad together:

The New Republic story that goes with this image, “Slouching Toward Denver,” argues that the Democratic nomination fight is, like academics, so bitter because the differences are so insignificant:

With little chance that either candidate this time around can clinch the nomination at the polls, it’s not inconceivable that Democrats will re-enact this spectacle in Denver this August. (One direct link: Clinton operative Harold Ickes oversaw Kennedy’s convention effort in 1980 and would likely oversee Hillary’s.) The sequel could be even more damaging. It’s true that the ideological gulf separating Kennedy and Carter doesn’t divide Obama and Clinton. But, precisely because the substantive differences are so small, the temptation to court delegates along racial and gender lines would be even greater.

The fact that Obama really has not been grilled on his substantive differences with Clinton–by The New Republic or by anybody else–is remarkable. After all, here we have a guy the media constantly claims to be “transcending” race, but even in the pages of TNR Obama’s racial identity was the front-and-center issue, even before his big speech about … race. From TNR:

But the scenario-builders pondering this contest two years ago imagined a showdown between Clinton and–let’s be honest about it–a white guy. … Against anyone else but Obama, Clinton could have counted on strong support from African-Americans. Against an Adlai Stevenson-Gary Hart-Paul Tsongas-Bill Bradley sort of reformer, she would have assembled the “regular” Democratic coalition: blue-collar whites allied with black voters.