CBS Insta Poll shows Barack Obama won 39% to John McCain's 25% with 36% saying the debate was a draw. Insider Advantage reports those polled Obama won 42% to McCain's 41% with Undecided 17% CNN reports voter opinions that Obama "did better" 51%, McCain "did better" 38% The CNN poll showed men were evenly split, but women gave Obama higher marks 59% to 41% for McCain.

The MSNBC on-line (non-scientific) poll showed Obama winning the debate 52% to 33%. (But this is what one would expect from such a poll at MSNBC because of the nature of its viewers.)

women voters especially would be turned off by McCain's sarcastic tone because women do tend to be the conciliators in our society and saw Obama display those conciliatory qualities very well in the debate. Obama looked at McCain, and McCain wouldn't return the eye contact but rather glared or displayed a tight and angry expression.

It's clear that McCain picked her because he had decided that he needed a game-changer. But why? He'd closed the gap in the polls with Obama. True, that had more to do with Obama sagging than McCain gaining. But what's the difference? You win either way.

So why did McCain do it? He figured it's a Democratic year. The Republican brand is deeply tarnished. The opposition is running on "change" in a change election. So McCain gambled that he could steal the change issue for himself -- a crazy brave, characteristically reckless, inconceivably difficult maneuver -- by picking an authentically independent, tough-minded reformer. With Palin, he doubles down on change

The gamble is enormous. In a stroke, McCain gratuitously forfeited his most powerful argument against Obama. And this was even before Palin's inevitable liabilities began to pile up -- inevitable because any previously unvetted neophyte has "issues." The kid. The state trooper investigation. And worst, the paucity of any Palin record or expressed conviction on the major issues of our time.

There must be a secret that all commanders know, the secret revealed in crisis, that the soul that is calm with controlled emotion is performing an act of faith – the battle continues.

In an interview here on Tuesday, Mr. Plouffe said voters should instead judge Mr. McCain for what he called an “impulsive” decision to choose Ms. Palin, who has served as governor of Alaska for 20 months. He said Ms. Palin’s governmental record in Alaska is fair game for examination in the final two months of the campaign, but not her family.

Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

Evidence? John McCain needs no evidence. His campaign is about trashing the opposition, Karl Rove-style. Not satisfied with calling his opponent’s patriotism into question, Mr. McCain added what amounted to a charge of treason, insisting that Senator Obama would actually prefer that the United States lose a war if that would mean that he — Senator Obama — would not have to lose an election.

Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this — the sole reason — is that he is black.

He does not stir dissent simply for dissent’s sake, but often employs a Socratic method of discussion, where aides put ideas forward for him to accept or reject. Advisers described his meetings as “un-Clintonesque,” a reference to the often meandering, if engrossing, policy discussions Bill Clinton presided over when he was president.

But Mr. Obama’s ease belies a more controlling management style. For all the success his campaign has enjoyed with grass-roots organizing, the operation is highly centralized around Mr. Axelrod; David Plouffe, the campaign manager; Robert Gibbs, the communications director; Pete Rouse, his Senate chief of staff; Valerie Jarrett, a longtime friend from Chicago; and a handful of senior advisers that has barely changed since he opened his campaign in January 2007.

Mr. Obama’s circle of advisers takes seriously his “no drama” mandate. It is a point of pride in his campaign that there have been virtually no serious leaks to the news media — small leaks are immediately investigated — about internal division or infighting. He is a careful reader of daily newspapers and magazines (titles from Foreign Affairs to Maxim are stocked on his campaign plane). He takes his briefing books — three-ring binders filled with political memorandums and policy discussions — to his hotel room or home every night, but aides say how well he reads the materials may depend on what is on ESPN.

And that Mr. Obama did. He began participating in more strategy sessions, spoke out against a summertime gasoline tax suspension more forcefully than some advisers initially preferred, and last week was involved in conference calls that led to the departure of James A. Johnson, the man leading the campaign’s vice-presidential search.

Coincidentally, on the very same day the Financial Times reported that UBS had advised 50 current and former employees of its private banking group not to travel to the United States. The bank is worried that they might be arrested in connection with a massive tax-evasion scheme under which UBS helped rich Americans cheat the IRS, thus making sure that the rest of us suckers had to pay for, e.g., the War in Iraq. Some of the clients of the scheme are already testifying before a grand jury, and a senior UBS official has already been indicted. UBS is offering to provide lawyers for all of the suspects. Now, how is it that Gramm got to be Vice-Chairman of UBS? Why, by being the chief author of the banking-deregulation legislation (the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act) that made so many bankers rich and helped create the crisis McCain doesn't want to do anything about. In keeping with McCain's decision to purge "lobbyists" from his campaign, Gramm had himself de-registered as a lobbyist. But he's still Vice Chairman of UBS, and still McCain's chief economic adviser. All the de-listing means is that he can't now personally call Congressmen or Senators; no doubt his staff can handle such details for the next few months.

The grab for this group of voters has generally been coordinated by a seasoned team of professional campaign staff operating in war rooms and spending millions in mobilizing voters. But new efforts among progressive voters, musicians, and grassroots groups are saying the way to be "big" in '08 is to "go small." And how resources are spent in this election and after, could determine whether the Democratic Party is about short-term voter excitement or permanent citizen engagement.

This new group of efforts focuses on local leadership, small circles, and cultural organizing. They are taking their strategies from the anti-slavery movement, groups like craigslist, and most surprisingly, a new Christian movement. "

Potts and other organizers note that while overall church attendance has steadily declined since the 1990s, a new form of church has taken off--the house church. Unlike traditional churches, the house church movement doesn't meet in a specific house of worship, but instead, as the name suggests, in people's homes.

In one of the most incendiary columns ever written, "Race And The Presidential Election," Bill O'Reilly sets the race-bait bar to record-breaking...depths. Short of saying that Barack Obama wants to sleep with your pearly-white daughter, O'Reilly uses just about every button meant to alarm his white fans to the fact that Barack Obama is BLACK and that just his running for, let alone becoming, president, could set off race-laced fireworks.

"Obama's second dilemma is convincing skeptical white voters that he and his wife are sympathetic to their concerns. Let's be honest--few white Americans would tolerate a Reverend Wright for five minutes, much less 20 years."

Richard Rorty's socialist parents, Walter Rauschenbusch's daughter Winifred and her husband James Rorty, moved from churchly circles into the cosmopolitan company of the old New York Intellectuals and at least for a season loved Trotsky more than Jesus. Their son Richard was born in 1931 into a family circle of leftist politics and very progressive social hopes. Frequent guests in the Rorty home included John Dewey, Sidney Hook, Lionel Trilling, the Italian anarchist Carlo Tresca and John Frank (Trotsky's secretary who lived with the Rortys under an assumed name). Richard Rorty confesses that as a boy of 12 he knew the point of being human was to give one's life to fight against social injustice. He also knew the temptations and terrors of radical politics. He knew that Stalin had ordered the assassinations of Trotsky, Tresca, Frank and scores of other anti-totalitarian leftist leaders and intellectuals.

Walter Rauschenbusch was declared the father of the Social Gospel.

Alegi, 72, said Europeans are appalled by the Republican administration's willingness to set aside conventional civil rights for detainees captured in Iraq or Afghanistan. Ken Sherman, a Hamilton, Ont., resident who was selected as a delegate pledged to Barack Obama, said that when he visits Europe, he uses his Canadian rather than American passport because international anger over U.S. foreign policy. "In the last five years with George Bush, I don't pull out my American passport unless I need it." But Obama's rise has made Sherman, 71, prepared to embrace his American citizenship again. "Something has happened in the past two years that has made me proud to be an American again. People are rising up." Wayne Weightman, a 46-year-old Cambodian lawyer, came to Vancouver to support Barack Obama who, he believes, can revive respect overseas for America.

Except in Iowa, in January of this year, they did vote. Younger voters represented 22 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucus— the highest youth turnout in any state so far — and Obama got 57 percent of them to Clinton’s 11 percent. The youth vote, in fact, turned out to be about 30 percent of Obama’s total vote.

But to my way of thinking, Clinton’s loss in Iowa was a critical one, because she was no longer inevitable. She had let Obama into the game. She had let a candidate with money and a message get off to a running start. She had allowed him to become a credible candidate.

As it turned out, Obama had both a strategy and the money to execute it. His campaign knew what the race really was about: the acquisition of pledged delegates.

Clinton’s campaign strategy in Iowa was a traditional one: Target those voters who had voted in the past — the most reliable kind of voters there are — and then get them to the polls. And some Clinton aides were openly contemptuous of Obama’s attempt to “expand the universe” and bring in younger voters.

We commissioned Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg to write the Power of Information report because we knew that information, presented in the right way, was a potent driver for improving public services and government.

Today I am going to offer two arguments that I think compliment the Prime Minister’s recent announcement on public service reform

Firstly, that freeing up data will allow us to unlock the talent British entrepreneurs. And secondly, engaging people - using the simple tools that bring them together - will allow the talents of all our people to be applied to the provision of public services.