The XX Factor: What women really think.

Goodbye, Joe, We Hardly Knew Ye

I take back what I said about his bright future even as a Fox News star.

Joe is a faux plumber! (Quel horreur!) And a tax scofflaw!  And something about Obama just happens to remind him of Sammy Davis Jr.!  And-- if true, this next thing is weirder than weird—Joe may be related by marriage to Charles Keating, star of the S &L scandal that almost ended McCain's Senate career!  And—his name's not even Joe!

By now I am starting to feel kind of sorry for Joe. Faux Joe. Samuel. Whatever his name is. He registered as a Republican last spring. By now, he's probably having second thoughts about how great it is to be championed by John McCain before a viewing audience of 38 million U.S. households.

Say It Ain't So, Joe

According to the Washington Post, McCain got it wrong tonight when he said that, under Obama's health-care plan, Joe the plumber would pay a fine if he didn't provide his employees health insurance, because the Obama plan has an exemption for small businesses. Given that McCain from practically the first sentence trucked in Joe, last name and all, as his carefully planted and lovingly tended Real Guy, isn't this the definition of campaign malpractice? How could his staff have possibly failed to get Joe right? McCain was often strong tonight, on guard and on the offensive. But when he registered open-mouthed surprise as Obama explained why he was wrong about Joe, McCain looked like a man playing Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin asking for a life line. Obama had his weak moments, too, in the reaction shots, like the big smile he cracked while McCain was making serious charges about Bill Ayers and ACORN. Watching them listen sometimes seems more enlightening than listening to them talk.

Read more XX Factor posts about Joe the Plumber.

CNN's Unilluminating Gender Gap

During the vice-presidential debate, I had to keep tearing my gaze away from the CNN ticker with the reactions of undecided voters, which was tracking men separately from women. The sexual politics of politics—how could it not be riveting? Except that, after about five minutes, it wasn't. All it led me to was the basic and obvious observation that women seemed to be higher on the + scale than men, over and over again. They also seemed to dislike hearing the Republican line on the Iraq war more.

Tonight the male/female split tracker was back. And again, women seemed more positive, more excited, more supportive of Barack Obama. And they seemed to twist the dial harder toward disapproval when the topic was the Bush administration's record. Men, meanwhile, seemed to stick closer to the middle of the dial. Because they were more cautious? Less excitable? More bored? Less interested?

Who knows. And maybe I missed some moments in which women thrilled to John McCain, or men did, because I confess that I myself was close to flatlining. But I've decided that I think this men/women ticker is merely reductionist. There's no context, no way of understanding what the differences mean. The separate lines are presented as if they have significance without any way of discerning what that significance could be. Men are from campaign Mars, and Women are from electoral Venus, with no insight about what it's like on either planet.

She Shimmied. He Choked Up. But Did They Swing?

Does it make any sense to say that as expected, Sarah Palin exceeded expectations? She didn't flail. She didn't lose her train of thought or all semblance of recognizable syntax. She powered through her answers, airy and bloated as some of them were. She snapped out of the stumped distress of her Couric interviews and turned back into the perky forceful governor who showed up at the Republican convention. What made the spell-breaking difference? She had more facts at her fingertips. She got to needle an opponent, which she clearly loves and does well. But the real magic, I think, is that she didn't have to answer a single follow-up question. God bless that format.

So Palin redeemed herself. But how much does it matter? Because Joe Biden was good. She knifed him in the ribs with a smile, with a wink here, a "darn right" there. And he came back with strength, emotion, and point-by-point substance. According to those mesmerizing green and orange lines on CNN that tracked reactions among undecided Ohio voters—men and women separated this time, instead of Republicans, Democrats, and independents—Biden's numbers spiked every time he talked about the economy and the Iraq war. Palin's didn't. It doesn't matter how many times she says "doggone it" if that reflects the wider sentiment of voters in the middle. Palin got her base back, if she'd ever lost it. But with JohnMcCain writing off Michigan today, that's not enough. How many people who didn't already agree with Palin did her restored charm win over?

What did you all think of Biden's tearing up, briefly, at the end? It worked for me: He was talking about the terrible car accident that killed his first wife and their baby daughter. He choked up in the midst of a powerful answer about how he understands what it's like to be a single parent and to worry deeply about one's family.

My favorite Palin moment: "The chant is 'Drill baby drill,' "she corrected Biden, who'd said, "drill drill drill," and for emphasis she gave a little shimmy. That's the effective blend of femininity and toughness that has made a lot of us waste a lot of time this fall watching her every move. Welcome back, Sarah Barracuda.

My favorite Biden moment: his deconstruction of Palin's much-repeated mantra that she and McCain are the mavericks in this race. Biden ripped her on the facts, citing all the votes McCain has cast with Bush.Then he ended with "maverick he is not." It had gravitas, it was on message, and as my colleague John Swansburg said, it felt cathartic.

What If She Plays the Comeback Kid?

XX Factor Chat on Washingtonpost.com

Slate editors and XX Factor bloggers Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick will be chatting on Washingtonpost.com this afternoon at 3:30 ET. They will be outlining what Joe Biden and Sarah Palin each need to do to succeed in tonight's vice-presidential debate.

Emily has an article in Slate today that discusses how watching Palin's interviews is agonizing for women. Dahlia has written about how Joe Biden can debate Palin and win.

Send them your questions about tonight's debate.

 Update, 5:21 p.m.: Here's the transcript. Thanks for your questions!

The Nods to John

A small point about the debate last Friday: Obama called McCain "John" routinely in the first part of the debate, switching to "Senator McCain" only after McCain pointedly refused to return the favor by saying "Barack," ever. In debators' terms, it was a clear win for McCain: He stiff-armed his opponent and took for himself more authority. As I was watching, I kept thinking Obama should stop, and then eventually he did.

But Saturday-morning quarterbacking by looking at the polls Rosa cites, I wonder if some voters in the middle read Obama's concessional speech patterns in a different way. LIke Obama's statements that McCain is right about various points, the friendly wave of "John" could be read as confident and magnanimous. Maybe Obama will be more aggressive in the next debate—certainly he'll hear lots of exhortations to move in that direction. But I wonder if these courtly overtures served a purpose, even if McCain is using it against him in the ad he cut before the debate ended. If nothing else, it says something that Obama came off as McCain's equal even while repeating, "John is absolutely right."

And/But: Undecideds Go for Obama

So I thought McCain did slightly "better" in the debate than Obama. Like Dahlia, I thought Obama came across as wonky—he had trouble shifting from long, rather academic-sounding answers to short and punchy. I though McCain seemed folksy and confident while Obama seemed annoyed and sometimes defensive. McCain was aggressive; Obama was a little overly polite. McCain had a theme: "Me experienced, Obama naive." Obama—well, he was being too complicated.

But what do I know? The preliminary post-debate polls and focus groups suggest that most people saw something different in that debate. A CBS post-debate poll of 500 uncommitted voters saw 39 percent saying Obama won, 24 percent saying McCain won, and the rest declaring it a draw. And the CBS poll doesn't seem to be an outlier. According to the Financial Times:

A CNN survey of viewers said 51 per cent thought Mr Obama had won the debate, compared with 38 per cent for Mr McCain, with a big majority of women backing Mr Obama. In a Fox News focus group most viewers said Mr Obama had emerged the winner.

Same with the Frank Luntz and Stanley Greenberg focus groups.

Strikes me that most media commentators reacted as I did. But are we parsing these debates in a way that no one else was, making mountains out of too many molehills? (Or did everyone else just fall asleep halfway through the debate?)

I Like Veterans as Much as the Next Girl. But.

OK, I think I heard John McCain say, in his debate with Obama, that a) he was going to be voting for the $700 billion recovery plan ("Sure." Well, really, who knew?), and b) that if elected president, he would cope with the resulting budget squeeze by having "a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs."

Lots could be said about this. (Obama: "The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel.") But what's bugging me is the notion that there is Only One Truly Special Group of People in the Country—only one group worthy of specifically exempting from an across-the-board spending freeze—and that's veterans. Naturally.

Don't get me wrong, veterans have put up with danger, hardship, and a great deal of general bureaucratic idiocy on behalf of our often muddle-headed country and deserve to have this muddle-headed country treat them with respect and concern. Overhauling and improving health, mental health, and educational benefits for veterans should be a national priority. But in a time of economic and foreign-policy crisis, should it be the only priority, aside from defense spending and maintaining entitlement programs? Really, John? Are programs that benefit veterans clearly more important than infant and child health programs? Than programs to prevent the further spread of HIV/AIDS? Than investments in critical infrastructure? Than increasing port security? Than early childhood education? Than improving first-responder capacity? Really?

I don't think McCain really believes that, but sacrilization of "our troops," and by extension, all veterans, has become standard in American civic religion. Beats blaming the troops for the mistakes and bad acts of their civilian commander in chief, no question—but it's not a particularly healthy state of affairs, either.

GOP Women Thought Huckabee Won the Night

Now this is interesting; I see where a focus group of Republican women has declared Mike Huckabee the winner of last night's debate. These undecided, right-leaning women thought Mitt Romney came off as phony, arrogant and "a snake''—and one woman who described herself as a strong Republican wondered if a guy that rich would really look out for the little guy. (Do you want to break it to her, or should I?) Others expressed discomfort with his Mormon faith and bridled at his lack of support for Sandra Day O'Connor, whom he suggested he would never have appointed to the Supreme Court.

John McCain also got a big thumbs-down from the group, which included 11 California women of various ages, races, and wings of the GOP: He's so snide, they said, as if that were a bad thing. But Huckabee they found caring, real, and in touch with their concerns. So much so that seven of the 11 declared him the winner, and four who'd been leaning toward other candidates decided to support him as a result. Maybe they liked how he patted Nancy Reagan's hand?

Hillary's Girls Pass the Kleenex and Save the Day

Back when that book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten came out, I thought about how everything I needed to know I learned in my 92 years of dating. And as it turns out, those lessons hold up pretty well in political life, too, in that chemistry and timing trump reason and a common goal more often than we'd like to admit.

Political life does not always mirror the real thing, though: If New Hampshire were an employer and Hillary Clinton a job candidate, she would have been out of contention the minute her eyes filled with tears during the interview. As those Sex and the City women (thank you, Trailhead) and every flesh-and-blood XX knows, men can throw phones and wastebaskets across the office and that's cool, but a woman who lets a tear fall is toast.

Which really might explain - sorry, but the instant Conventional Wisdom does occasionally get it right -- why women who could relate rode to Clinton's rescue last night. In future contests, I'm guessing Obama will refrain from gratuitous, way-beneath-him swipes like "You're likeable enough, Hillary.'' But that still leaves her with the same problem Al Gore had in 2000: What about Bill?

Will We Ever Get Tired of Talking About Hillary?

I agree that there were no gender politics at play in the video, but I did find it quite ineffectual. The other candidates are shown, over and over, addressing or referring to "Senator Clinton ... Senator Clinton ... Senator Clinton." Without context, it's hard to know if they were critiquing a policy statement or complimenting her pantsuit. But last week's debate spawned another YouTube video that I feel is far more damning to Sen. Clinton, and that's the clip put out by the John Edwards camp of Hillary contradicting herself on Iraq, Social Security, and those infamous driver's licenses for illegal immigrants in New York. If, as a few of us seem to agree, Hillary's biggest problem is not her gender but her phoniness, I think it probably helped her to let the storm over her playing the gender card swirl for as long as it could. It served to distract people from her debate performance.  

Have the Media Been Too Harsh on Hillary's "Politics of Pile On" video?

I missed out on some of the analysis of the Clinton campaign's "pile on" video last week. Now that I've caught up, there is something I don't understand about all the fuss over Hillary supposedly playing the gender card/"victim card." As far as I can tell, there is nothing explicitly gendered about the "Politics of Pile On" video that was released on You Tube, and there is nothing explicitly gendered about the press release. Nor does either document portray Clinton as a victim. On the contrary, read the press release, and you'll find that the point is not one of victimization or wimpy femaleness. Its point is that the "pile-on"style is contrary to the "politics of hope" message Obama (and to some degree Edwards) both espoused early on. Nor does the imagery of the video make Hillary look like a frail woman embattled by men; at the end, Hillary looks cool, calm, and collected, not shaken and stirred. (I say all this as no particular defender of Hillary, about whom I have reservations.)

I suppose you could make the argument that no man would ever run an ad like "The Politics of Pile On", but that would be purely speculative. I suppose you could say that the video implicitly brings up gender by contrasting Hillary with the men, and maybe it does, but there's nothing in the way it's edited to suggest gauzy, delicate femininity. In the main, the video is not about gender, it's about hypocrisy. I don't happen to think it's a particularly good video about hypocrisy, but no matter. Meanwhile, the gender lens seems to have largely been derived from the media's reading of the whole event (as in this Gail Collins column about "six men" piling on one woman). Hillary herself said (I paraphrase):  "They didn't pile on me because I 'm a woman, but because I'm the front runner." This has been construed as some kind of rhetorical turnaround, but it seems to me pretty consistent with the presentation of the YouTube video and the press release. So a fund-raising letter said Hillary needed women's help; that's tacky, but I'm not sure it has all that much to do with Hillary's own self-presentation.