The XX Factor: What women really think.

More in the Annals of Joe Biden Statements

So, news outlets reported that yesterday Joe Biden told fundraisers in Seattle that in the next six months an international crisis would "test" Barack Obama just as one had tested Kennedy. According to reports, Biden told supporters: "The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States. Watch, we're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy." The gist in part seems to be that Obama is as brilliant as Kennedy. But one wonders why, exactly, Biden felt he had to say this now, since it opened Obama up to an easy counterattack, which McCain promptly seized. At a rally this afternoon, he asked crowds why they'd want to elect a president whose mettle the world feels primed to test--i.e., a president who has so little experience he seems an easy target, or at least an urgent target.

Meanwhile, according to CNN, McCain has been closing ground in one poll, which asked voters who they supported for president, leaving Obama with a five-point lead compared to the eight-point one he had at the beginning of the month. These polls are changing all the time. But maybe not a good time for Biden to be acting as if Obama has the race locked up.

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.