OBAMA'S LEAD AMONG WHITE WOMEN IS BIGGER THAN BILL CLINTON'S IN 1996

Before we were so rudely interrupted by Fox, I was going to talk a bit more about the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. No, Barack Obama is not blowing McCain away, and it's still going to be a tight race, but for now -- despite warnings that his victory was going to drive women into the McCain camp en masse (which, to some extent, I admit I believed) -- he's actually leading among women by 19 points (52%-33%). Among white women, he leads by 7, 46%-39%.

Not only is that 7-point lead among white women better than what Gore and Kerry accomplished (both lost the white female vote), it's actually slightly better than Bill Clinton did when he won the presidency handily in 1996 -- his lead among white women was 5 points, according to CNN's exit poll (48%-43%).

Who's keeping McCain in the race? White guys, naturally.

Yet among white men -- who made up 36 percent of the electorate in the 2004 presidential election -- Obama trails McCain by 20 points, 55-35 percent.

So Obama emerges from the Great Feminist War of 2008 as the villain -- and the people who don't like him afterward are dudes? Talk about your Law of Unintended Consequences.

Oh, and as for that he-can't-win-without-Hillary thing: adding her to the ticket has close to zero effect.

Twenty-two percent say that adding Clinton as Obama's vice presidential running mate makes them more likely to vote for Obama in November; 21 percent say it makes them less likely to vote for him; and 55 percent say it makes no difference.

Wow. But, er, doesn't that contradict another poll result?

While Obama has a six-point advantage over McCain, that lead expands when New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is added as Obama's running mate, the poll shows. An Obama-Clinton ticket defeats a GOP one of McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by nine points, 51-42 percent.

Well, yes -- or maybe no. Maybe the dropoff for McCain isn't because of the addition of Hillary -- maybe, for some voters, it's because of the addition of that evil Satanic Mormon, Mitt Romney. The resistance to a Mormon president (or vice president?) isn't trivial in this country, after all.