We--those of us in my home this evening--thought Gwen did a great job. She had excellent questions, kept things moving well, stayed on top of things. We also noticed how her different style worked better for Palin than Couric's style had, but you know what, in the end, that played better for Biden as well. I think he found his pace once he realized Palin wasn't going to flounder too much. Gwen helped moderate a debate that gave them both the opportunity to show their stuff, and Biden is winning, hands down, in the polls already. The Republicans can't whine about not getting a fair chance with Gwen.

I say that Joan and all of us Democrats are smart to be focused on Sarah Palin. Palin's had a net negative effect on the McCain campaign so far, but given the reactions of Rich Lowry, Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, David Brooks, etc. (in my mind, quite tellingly, the list of Republican fans is more male than female), she's going to be around for a run for the PRESIDENCY in 2012.

I would ask Carol Richards: what do you know about Palin beyond her support of the Republican platform, or beyond her willingness to carry on with whatever Rove tells her to do, that causes you to cheer her on? For myself, I cheer on women who make progress against those glass ceilings, but not when they do it at the expense of women's collective rights/well-being. And that's how I view Palin. She strikes me as being much more about her self promotion (and her evangelical passions, which are conveniently not at odds), than about support for women's issues in general. I do not know of any single public initiative she has supported that promotes women's issues. Please educate me/us if you can...

I do feel silly. I'm not a fan of sarcasm... my natural inclination is to take things at face value. Anyway, I should know better than to take on the trolls.

...on this I disagree:

Misquoting a Starbucks cup isn't even worth mentioning

Actually, I can agree that the difference between the meaning of "help" and "support" is splitting hairs. But the context for this "quibbling," not the misquote itself, really gets me.

I don't think of myself as an old-school feminist, but when I hear a woman (Palin) turning against another woman (Allbright) while using the language of emancipation (sisterhood) with blatantly cynical purposes--to rally her audience against feminists (of both parties, the way I see it)-- while at the same time she is herself clearly way more dependent on the currency of her gender than on her abilities or intellect for her recent incredible position of power--well that just makes me nuts. It reminds me of Anita Bryant's twisted rhetoric. One could wish either woman's rhetoric could have been/be ignored so that it would lose its power, but in fact, the rhetorcial sting doesn't just go away. Not when there are crowds and crowds of people who buy into the mindsets they both espouse/d--for Bryant, not only that women should stay home but also that gays are in the same league as criminals, and for Palin that women who are conscious about sexism are whiners. To Palin, it would seem, no other woman but herself can legitimately complain about sexism in the media/world because complaining about sexism is about complaining about God's social order.

I don't like whining, but I also feel that it's important to call a spade a spade. So forgive me for this rant... It feels like the least I can do. And having said that, I will also say that I am very glad that the Obama campaign has not gotten hung up on attacking Palin. They're doing a much better job by ignoring her.

Barack Obama as inscrutable. What could possibly be as scarily unfamiliar as a black man in power in the White House? McCain is showing his age. To put it mildly, his tactics aren't honorable, and they aren't hip; they're not going to work.

You say: we may legitimately conclude that Obama lost the campaign but won the election.

Some people may conclude this based on Eyore type of thinking, but based on your explanation of the Steve Schmidt erratic campaign strategy, it does not strike me as being a logical conclusion to say that Obama loses the campaign if indeed the McCain strategy doesn't prevent him from getting all the votes he needs to win the election.

"That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant".

[Paglia's words on Palin, which could be lost in all her other words.]

I know I'll be a minority here when I say that I really do think it's great that we get to read Camille. For all her blind spots (she clearly doesn't get Joe Biden's sex appeal, perhaps because of her obvious personal crush on Palin, or maybe because he represents intelletual competition), I continue to laugh and applaud Paglia's unique intelligence and energy. She's a cyclone who gets things stirred up...not that the pot she's stirring is all that large. I'm glad she's back tonight.