The XX Factor: What women really think.

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.