Yesterday’s New York Times contained a piece on the fierce battle over California’s Proposition 8, a referendum that would ban same-sex marriages in the state–a process which began with a California Supreme Court decision in May. The conservative base is riled up, led by familiar evangelical stars such as Tony Perkins and ex-Watergate felons such as Charles Colson. And on the other side, gay-rights activists are hoping to keep the Proposition from passing and overriding the Court.

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I couldn’t help but take issue with something John McCain said when he reacted to GW alum Gen. Colin Powell’s full-out endorsement of Barack Obama. On Fox News this morning, McCain stated that “[t]his [endorsement] doesn’t come as a surprise.” Really? Why is that? Powell, after all, gave McCain the maximum $2,300 last year. There are really only four explanations I can think of that would explain why Mac thinks this is such a natural turn of events.

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I’m going to preface this by saying I’m not one of those people who think endorsements are irrelevant. Most people tend to think they don’t matter, and to be fair a lot of them don’t, but this year has proven that the right person in your corner can work wonders for your campaign (I’m looking at you, Oprah). With this in mind, today’s endorsement by Colin Powell of Barack Obama over John McCain is huge.

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The people have spoken resoundingly, and Barack Obama won the third presidential debate — meaning he has won all of them now. By a 2-to-1 margin or greater in multiple polls, viewers thought Obama bested John McCain. He scored much higher than McCain on both personal attributes (70-22% on likeability, according to CNN) and on the issues (59-35% on the economy, also from CNN). And yet the total and utter disconnect of the punditocracy from voters is astounding. John King of CNN questioned his station’s own poll results on air because he and so many other pundits were convinced that this was McCain’s “strongest performance” to date. Maybe so, but the media norm of faux two-sidedness and trying to keep elections close is getting a little old. I don’t see any other explanation for the fact that Mark Halperin of TIME gave John McCain an A- overall and a B+ on style points.

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Boy, what a difference opinion polls make on morale. John McCain is sliding, and his followers are angry. Now that McCain needs to play catch-up, he’s pulling out the smears and avoiding economic issues. After his running mate said that Obama was “palling around with” former Weathermen militant Bill Ayers, it set a dangerous course for his campaign. With McCain, Palin, all their surrogates, and Fox News now telling conservatives that Obama is a “pal” of Ayers, the recipients are terrified and outraged that their candidate is losing to a terrorist sympathizer. Perhaps that explains this unpleasant moment.

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I really hate sounding hyperbolic in these posts, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that McCain’s chances at the White House rested on the outcome of this debate. After conceding the foreign policy debate to Obama (widely considered his strength), everybody looked to the town hall format as one more chance for McCain to uplift his sagging poll numbers. After all, he’s good at town hall forums, right?

Not so much. Yet again, millions of Americans witnessed a compassionate, collected Obama juxtaposed with the same vindictive, backbiting McCain pacing nervously in the background. When answering questions McCain frequently missed his opportunities to shine and all too often descended into bitterness, frequently flubbing jokes and inexplicably launching personal attacks on Obama, even going so far as to call him “that one” and accompany it with a prying fingerpoint across the stage. By contrast, Obama’s answers were well thought out and served him well, as yet again the differences in mannerisms between the candidates worked to his advantage. Not to mention Obama didn’t strangly pace about the stage and fiddle with his notes, unlike McCain, who apparently can’t sit still for more than 5 minutes while his opponent speaks. This must be the town hall equivalent of not looking at your rival when he is speaking to you.

Honestly, at the end I wasn’t convinced anyone really “won” the debate. But with the town hall format in McCain’s supposed favor, the night was once again his to lose. And lose it he did. Sure, he had more to say about the economy, but a draw at best was not what McCain needed. Once again, he blew it. And with the economy front-and-center in the next debate and the media narrative on McCain/Palin changing from “A Team of Mavericks” to “A Team of Nutjobs”, he’s running out of time to pull this one out.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter what I think of the debate; CNN, CBS, and even FOX News focus groups of undecided voters all declared Obama the winner by considerable margins and thought that he provided more compelling cases on everything from Iraq to healthcare to the all important economy. Wow, I guess even FOX can be right sometimes.