The XX Factor: What women really think.

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.

Loving and the Campaign

We surely haven't heard the last of the Rev. Wright problem, but after the Obama campaign has been focused on fighting off the notion that Obama is part of this country's deep racial divide, it did feel good to hear him talk again of it being time to transcend categories (though surely it was no coincidence that the backdrop of faces behind him were mostly white women, some old enough to be his mother). Speaking of his mother (I wasn't bothered, Emily, by his shorthand description of her), I couldn't help but think of the obituaries that appeared Tuesday of Mildred Loving, the black woman who was arrested with her white husband in Virginia for the crime of being married to each other. The Supreme Court finally struck down miscegenation laws in 1967; if Barack Obama's parents had traveled with him in Virginia when he was a baby, their mere existence as a family would have put them in legal jeopardy. And now a man who's the product of a marriage that would have been illegal in the majority of states is poised to be the Democratic nominee for president. I hope Mrs. Loving got satisfaction from this.

I also enjoyed watching the backdrop behind Hillary—the shifting facial expressions of Bill Clinton. I'm always intrigued by the semiotics of what she does with Bill. At the last few election nights she's had him in camera range as she spoke; whenever she has him close it seems to signal she feels she's in trouble. At first Bill watched her with that lip-biting look of enchantment we know so well, but as the speech wore on the mask seemed to drop and you could almost read his thoughts: "Hill, you haven't got it. I've got it, and you haven't, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Hill, guess what, all those years you sacrificed for my career—well, it turns out I wasn't holding you back. You're only on this stage because of me, and even so, now that it's your turn and you had everything in your favor—Hill, you just haven't got it. And let's face it, Obama, he's got it."

Obama Hits the Reset Button