The XX Factor: What women really think.

Send in the Evangelicals

Another post from Hanna Rosin, who is having technical difficulties:

Think of it this way: This is not a gesture that signifies acceptance or even necessarily a desire for reconciliation. Instead it has a faint air of condescension, even tokenism. It puts evangelicals in the position of feeling grateful to be included.

I agree with you, Dahlia. Warren will never budge on gay marriage or abortion. But the tide is turning against people like Warren. The younger generation of Christians gives gay marriage a big shrug.

Leave them out of the next four or eight years, and they'll do what they always do: rise again. Give them a place—a symbolic one, as E.J. points out—and the whole thing will go more smoothly.
 

Read the rest of the XX Factor's discussion about Rick Warren giving the inaugural invitation.

Post-Marital Sex

Talk about a sex-ed message that seems tone deaf to adolescents, no matter how you slice it. For any teens who might have been in the congregation listening to the exhortations to parental "whoopee," can you think of any greater gross out? And if they could bring themselves to think about it, the reverend's diagnosis of sex-starved couples undermined the promises preached to youth: These teens are being told to save themselves, the better to enjoy the bliss that arrives with marriage. I wish I thought the spectacle of their elders' confusion could help kids see what a complicated business sex can be, but somehow I don't think that's what sinks in.

Don't Write Women—or That Woman—Off Yet

Emily, I'm with you. This campaign was about the right leader at the right time: It's really only been since we went to the polls that breaking the racial barrier has become the euphoric narrative of the election. Exit polls and popular discourse suggested that most people checked the "content of his character" box, not the "color of his skin" box, after all. And that's just how Obama geared his campaign. Race was not a major topic during this infinite run, except for when our next president could no longer avoid it after the Wright sinkhole opened. (Obama addressed race full-on in that landmark speech back in March and basically never returned to the topic.) If we had a woman candidate who so captured the public and seemed to represent a new direction that the country craved, this might be a different historic first. Identity politics only rules this election in hindsight. The issue with Hillary was never her sex. Unlike Obama, she simply wasn't the right leader at the right time, and that's what it takes.

But then there's the question of right leader to whom? Forty-eight percent of the country went for the white guy who had rebranded himself a social conservative for the sake of the campaign. (Though I suspect that many of those people have risen to the historic occasion: Even Murdoch's NYPost was capable of seeing the bigger picture on Election Day.) With that population in mind, Dana, I wouldn't pack up our designer Palin bags yet, I'm sorry to say. It remains to be seen just how the GOP will define itself after these years of splintering and self-immolation. Palin was included on the ticket not just for her sex but for her appeal to the Evangelical base. And while plenty of people thought that young Christians would go Obama in great numbers, or older ones might merely sit this one out, in fact, they voted the same way they did last time. Evangelicals couldn't swing the vote this time because of record turnout in other demographics. But should apathy return to our nation in the challenging years ahead, that still-organized and still-tenacious base may outlast this moment. And should Republicans decide Evangelicals butter their GOP bread best, instead of going, say, the Romney route, you betcha we'll be returning to our regularly scheduled culture wars—likely with Palin in a starring role, no matter how the campaign may be damning her today.

Two Cheers For Dithering

I feel sort of sorry for the Republicans today as they face the end of their interlude of disarray. And I can't share the editorialists' dour view of the bruising fight ahead for the Democrats, whose race is still so unsettled. Here's to continued dithering! Like Meghan yesterday, writing from Texas, and Anne from Poland, what I'm fascinated by, and totally in step with, is the mood of indecision and unpredictability. Lots of people headed into the voting booth not sure which way they'd go: That's what I heard, too, from family and friends in the Northeast. And it's not just mushy Democrats who are still wavering, but evangelicals as well, hardly your waffling type. Take a look at the astonishing Barna Group study Hanna cited yesterday, and what's really striking is that so many evangelicals--the subset of born-again Christians who are really conservative (believe that everything the Bible asserts is true, that God is perfect and all-knowing, etc.)--haven't made up their minds, either: "a whopping 40%," as the study puts it, are still undecided (with 45 percent ready to support the Republican nominee, and 11 percent the Democratic contender). And this from a voting bloc that has until now seemed made of granite: 85 percent of evangelicals voted Republican in 2004. So many ditherers on all sides don't seem to add up to an embattled nation, entrenched in polarized camps. We're baffling the pollsters. Who knows, maybe we can surprise ourselves, too.

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?