The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Change Is Good. Polls Are Caca.

1) Change is good: The single most unambiguous piece of information to come out of last night is that Democrats see the promise of change as way more important than the value of experience—52 percent to 23 percent said it was the No. 1 thing they were looking for in a candidate. And since in '08 shorthand Obama equals change and Clinton equals experience, this can only be good news for him; the candidate who wins the argument about what the election is over generally wins the election. (Only "generally'' may no longer apply, which leads us to our second lesson.)

2) Polls are caca, and all the rules have been suspended. Even more than has been generally acknowledged, this race is so fluid and voters so volatile that pollsters can't seem to keep up, and known patterns seem not to apply. The good in this is that it challenges some of our laziest assumptions and silliest stereotypes like ...

3) Conservatives are sheep who go bah, bah, bah all the way home. Not true, and I don't think it's so much that conservative talk radio has lost its influence as that it never had the authority to issue edicts in the first place; when Rush and Laura and Sean reflect conservative opinion, they do magnify it, but when they don't, voters seem to have no trouble dissenting.

4) Women across the ideological spectrum look great in red. Nah, scratch that one; Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama look good in anything. And on that positive note, one day down, 39 to go.

Forget the Evangelicals in '08. What About the Jews?

It seems like much longer than three years ago that Howard Dean was hailed as the great hope for Web political organizing. Now, Ron Paul has replaced him as the no-chance-in-hell candidate to best harness the misdirected money and idealism of the Internet masses. 

But apparently Dean’s feeling nostalgic for the Internet, because he recently talked about one thing sure to stir up bloggers: who gets to go to heaven. During a speech Sunday to Jewish leaders, according to the Politico, Dean said that “there are no bars to heaven for anybody.” (The article headline—“Dean says Jews can go to heaven”—is a little odd: It seems to suggest that Dean granted Jews access to heaven.) 

That assertion surely won’t sit well with conservative evangelical Christians who think that there actually is a bar to heaven, and a rather high one at that. But though the Democrats have apparently been trying to woo evangelical voters suspicious of potential GOP nominees Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, it’s not likely to happen. Could Dean instead be trying to stop the trend of Jewish Republicans? There have been periodic trend reports this year about Jews in ‘08, including some wondering if Jews might be more inclined to vote for Giuliani than they were to vote for Bush and how they might respond to Obama. Exit polling from the 2006 midterm elections found that young Jews (and Orthodox Jews) were more likely to vote for the GOP than their older counterparts. Is this actually something Dean and the Democrats need to worry about? Or was he just trying to please the audience in the crowd that day?