BARACK IS MORE ELECTABLE. As somebody who has studied race and politics for some time -- my first book is about black state legislators, and my second addresses a variety of racial issues in modern politics -- I think Adam Nagourney has the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama gender-race hurdle issue backwards in the piece that Garance flagged yesterday. Although the idiosyncratic abilities (and liabilities) of Clinton and Obama may disprove my general thesis, I would suggest that it�s easier for a black man than a white woman to win the White House, ceteris paribus. Why? First, sexism is a more universal phenomenon than racism. There has been ample racial and ethnic violence throughout human history, to be sure. But notice that conquerors tend to butcher males and then subjugate women as a spoil of victory and, more to the point, a vehicle for and shared expression of what conquest means. Though there are both evolutionary-reproductive and security reasons for killing men and subjugating women, doing the reverse would imply that women are more a threat to power than men. Obviously, this would not be the case whenever women are viewed as property or a mere commodity but other men are considered rational, self-determined actors. Put more simply, while racism may be a common if not pervasive form of making societal distinctions and justifying violence, sexism is the more universal idea: Men recognize differences between and among themselves by race, but express their shared gender identity across ethnic and racial distinction through their willingness to dominate the �fairer� sex.