We know that enthusiasm didn't carry the day in the voting booth for Senator Obama in California. Hillary is the projected winner and exit polls showing her winning by a comfortable margin. Because of the proportional rules in the state it's still too early to know what the delegate count will be for each camp.

All eyes were on the Golden State tonight because of the number of delegates in play as well as a curiosity about how the powerful Latino would vote play out.

After a quick analysis of the exit polls, not only did Clinton score with women (women made of 55 percent of the Democratic voters and of those, 59 percent voted for Senator Clinton) she also won big with California's Latinos.

Latinos accounted for 29 percent of the voters and Hillary won every age demographic by significant margins including the youth vote (18-29 year olds) where she scored 67 percent. Her vote margin with older Latinos (60 and older) was even higher, at 81 percent.

In California's neighbor, Arizona, Latinos made up 20 percent of the Democratic voters and Hillary received 53 percent of their vote.

There's a lot more analysis to do here to better understand the Latino vote - but there is one thing for sure - there may be a Latino gap in the primary election. This gap will be important for both Democratic campaigns to consider while strategizing how to win over the 224 delegates in the March 4th Texas Primary.

I have no illusions that as we head into the general election that this might change. Immigration, many would argue, is the new “What’s the Matter with Kansas” issue and much of the debate is as hateful as any issue can be.
Tonight the voters are most interested in the war in Iraq and the economy. There’s a real advantage to having the economy as the top issue to voters of both parties.

You can’t talk about the economy without talking about inequalities. You can’t talk about how to get out of a recession with talking about fair tax policy.

You can’t talk about putting America on stronger economic footing without talking about improving our schools, making health care higher quality and more affordable.

You can’t talk about strengthening the economy without supporting working families with paid family leave, providing quality child care and having safe neighborhoods for our kids to come home to.

While a slumping economy is very bad in short-term for America, in the long tern perhaps is the only thing that can help get us back on course. The next President has a great duty to lead us. And let’s hope that we can keep the discussion on issues that bring us together and not wedge us a part.

Now wouldn’t that be a relief.

I’m blogging from 35,000 feet while watching DirectTV on Jet Blue. When choosing my return trip from San Francisco to New York City tonight I knew I had to pick one of the only airlines that would allow me to watch the results live while zipping through the air.

The “Best Political Team in News,” as CNN describes itself, has minute-to-minute coverage of, unarguably, the most exciting election of my life. I turn to CNN whenever there is breaking-news as my “trusted source” on cable. But watching tonight, I can’t help but be distracted by who’s delivering the results.

In the main political segment there are two rows of desks with four analysts at each. Out of the eight commentators only one of them is a woman. I find this ironic considering that a significant part of the analysis is the role of women voters and the fairing of the first ever woman presidential candidate.* You can bet that the gender imbalance on the tube isn’t because anyone over at CNN is overtly sexist or that they don’t value women’s opinions. I know they do. In fact, they are committed to working with more women. It could be that they couldn’t find enough women commentators to go on or it was an innocent oversight. But by just adding one more woman to their panel they would have doubled female representation.

I’m not saying that every news panel should be perfect mirror of the demographic percentages of the country. But, it does seem like smart television to get a little closer on representing 50% of the population on this pivotal night. Imagine if men tuned into the results and 7 out of 8 commentators where women. They’d be a bit surprised too. Or, they’d think it was a show for women only – better yet, The View. This is one of the reasons it’s so hard for women in politics and leadership. Women and girls don’t see themselves as experts and men often don’t see them as such either. It becomes a self- fulfilling prophecy. A cycle that is hard to break. There is no doubt that elections are primarily about who the next President may be. But they are also a time for us to pay attention to who’s delivering the news, how it’s being filtered and what the effects are.

Just as change seems to be a winning slogan in this election it would be good for all of us if the news changed to be more representative.
For more on closing the gender gap in the media, check out www.shesource.org.

*Later in the evening they did add another female commentator.