Review and Reflections of the third and last presidential debate with Obama and McCain, plus the full video, plus the Joe the Plumber video

It's all here! The debate-



McCain gave his best debate performance yet, but its far too little, too late. voters handed the debate to Obama 58-31, and swing voters favored Obama even more, 58 to 23.

All this when the meta-pollsters doing 10,000 election simulations a day based on weighted aggregates of all national and state polls now find Obama winning 95% of the time, with a landslide 353 electoral votes. That would spell doom for McCain even if he killed it tonight. Instead, it saw undecideds breaking toward Obama 2-1 (about 18% going to McCain and 38% deciding to vote for Obama, with the remainder still making up their minds).

Obama has become a much more polished, and much more typical, politician over the past year. In the summer at the saddleback religious forum, where he appeared alongside McCain and answered the same questions, he spoke from the top of his head, uttering his often-mocked ers and ums. To some he sounded indecisive and wishy-washy. Some conservatives claimed he was forgetting pre-fed lines, and didn't realize they were witnessing the opposite- a politician that really and truly was trying to answer honestly and thoughtfully on the spot (to mixed results)

No more. Obama is a gaffeless, teflon campaigning machine now. Everything out of his mouth sounds like it was cleared and deliberated by a dozen aides. Nothing McCain ever does seems to shake him or put him on the defensive. Even his common reaction for when McCain issues an embarrassing charge (looking away and smiling), seems to be measured and pre-planned. He's unflappable. And the "body language" crowd, the types of people that think its more important the way a politician sits or looks at his opponent is more important than what he actually proposes to do, just laps it up. They wanted a typical politician, and they got it. To speak in crass pundit talk, he is the "alpha male" here.

Go to the 24:50 mark in the debate video, when the sparks start to fly and they start talking about each other's negative campaigning and things like the people at McCain/Palin rallies yelling "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" about Obama. He scolds McCain for getting emotional about how much it hurt him to hear Civil rights activist/congressman John Lewis accuse him of inciting violence. And McCain looks down in embarrassment when he talks. The image of the hardened experienced war hero vs. the dangerously green naif is shattered. McCain may be older, but fair or not, Obama looks like the grown up here.

Obama got McCain pretty good when he tried out the old "He still hasn't told us how much that mandate will cost" line in ref to Joe the Plumber. Watch his facial reaction here-



He's dumbfounded. Obama said it in the last debate, but he's awestruck in disbelief. Count the deer in headlight blinks.

Wonder who Joe the Plumber is? He's not a new spin on "Joe Sixpack"- he's a real guy that Obama discussed taxes with when he campaigned door-to-door in Ohio the other day. Here's the vid-



Like many conservatives, Joe may not be fully decided on McCain, but the subsequent interviews he's done demonstrates that he was already fully decided against a democrat, and nothing Obama can say will convince him otherwise.

Last night he told CBS News on their webcast that "He danced around my question better than Sammy Davis Jr." Ewwwww...ok, your 15 minutes of fame is up. Now.

Bonus- a picture of McCain after the debate. (Not photoshopped).



It's over.