I want to follow up Todd's post with my own kudos to Hillary Clinton!  I saw her on CNN, not Fox News, and I thought she was outstanding in her surrogacy tonight.

Let me start by explaining that I have been a Barack Obama supporter since before he announced, but I have also been a big fan of Hillary Clinton.  In my opinion, a lot of Obama supporters were extremely unfair in their critiquing of her primary campaign.  As the GE has proven, campaigns are tough and you can't expect candidates to give up without a fight.  I think Obama's debate performances have been excellent, better than they ever were during the Primaries, and I give Hillary a lot of credit for sharpening him up for these.

At times, this felt like a debate between a stoner and an alcoholic.  Like in the first debate, it was frustrating to see Obama let McCain largely drive the debate and keep Obama on the defensive.  But more so than in the first debate, I think if Obama seemed somewhat too subdued or even sedate, McCain came off as cranky, irritable, and nasty to the point of seeming unpresidential.  McCain did himself no favors by cutting Obama off to bring up Bill Ayers an extra time, or with the endless sarcastic asides.  And I think you look small when you whine on and on about how a civil rights hero was too mean in criticizing the nastiness of your campaign.

As a super-decided voter, it was aggravating to see McCain attack on the first Gulf War without Obama firing back about the current one, and more so to see Obama sounding defensive, reassuring tones about his tax plan without hammering McCain on why now of all times he would want to outdo George Bush in sending more money to the richest among us.  That said, it's not that Barack Obama doesn't know how to go on the attack.  It's just that he's winning, and his strategy in this debate - like the prior two but even more so - was to show himself a steady hand steering the ship of state.  It's hard to find someone not currently receiving checks from the McCain campaign to argue the Obama strategy isn't working.

Zogby for tomorrow is 49.0-43.5 Obama. A net gain of 1.7%.  

Zogby has his noggin comfortably past his sphincter, and far be it for me, normally an extremely bearish poll watcher, to sound optimistic - but I would be surprised if we don't see significant upticks for Obama in the next few days.  Judging by the extraordinarily negative reactions viewers seem to have had to McCain, it's clear that people just don't like the guy.  The third debate is usually about confirming what people already think about the candidates - they tend to conform what they see to what they expected to see.  That's why they rarely change things much, and why it's becoming obvious that McCain's standing was probably damaged beyond repair before tonight's debate even began.

(AP) Following yesterday's criticism of Democratic candidate for President, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), for delaying a possible game 6 of the World Series 15 minutes by buying ad time on every channel in the world, RNC spokesman Alex Conant spoke out against what he called "an even greater sin against our national pastime."

Conant had been quoted as saying, "It's unfortunate that the World Series' first pitch is being delayed for Obama's political pitch, Not only is Obama putting politics before principle, he's putting it before our national pastime." Today he offered the comment that, "You know who is responsible for even more delays of baseball games? God. Not only that, but He does so by raining on them, getting hundreds of thousands of baseball fans wet every year."

"It's bad enough that Obama wants to delay a game 15 minutes so he can talk about the future of our country. What does God delay those games for? To water some plants? How degrading. I would have thought the deity who sacrificed His son for us could wait until the game's over to take care of His yardwork." The Almighty could not be reached for comment.

A weird thing on CNN's post debate coverage. The first comments after Blitzer and Cooper delivered their summary came from Bill Bennett. He reminded us that he had been unhappy with McCain's previous performances, but exuberantly proclaimed McCain the winner of this debate. They went to Paul Begala who gave a less enthusiastic nod to Obama, pointing out that McCain again came across as angry. Then they went to David Gergen who argued for reasons I don't remember that Obama won. The reason I don't remember is that I was distracted by Bennet's rather pronounced head shaking and sarcastic grimacing.

It's not an easy thing to get clear on. 'Cause it involves an acceptance of a denial of our visceral desire to see Obama blast away the long stream of lies coming out of McCain's mouth and Rove's outfit.

But if you want to see why Obama is winning this election, you'll need to see this clearly:

   When Obama ducks opportunities to "score points" on McCain ...

   Obama wins!

On my way home from the gym to the watching the debate, a few
guys decided to slow traffic even further by waving Yes on 8 signs on an overpass.  The middle one read:  "Yes on 8 = Less government."

Less government?  I thought about that.  So how is gay marriage
a buurden on taxpayers?  Or is it more government because schools
will have teach about gay marriage (another lie).

Which brings me to my main point--where's the No on 8 presence?
I've seen no TV ads, no bumper stickers, no yard signs.  What are they afraid of?  Perhaps we're too focused on the presidential race.  

Did you catch John McCain dropping his "g" at 9:20 ET -- "Americans are hurtin'"?  That, his repeated use of the word "angry," and his "Joe the Plumber" (aka Joe Six-Pack?) reference, signal to me that he is channeling Palin's fake populism.