Of course the big news today was Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama on Meet the Press. When Brokaw asked Powell if he was ready to now support a particular candidate, Powell said, yes he was. But instead of just saying who it was, he said he wanted to go into the foundation of his opinion, and he embarked on a rather lengthy, and very articulate explanation of how he liked McCain, but was disappointed about the direction the republican party had gone, about the Palin choice for VP, and the over-the-top negativism, such as trying to connect Obama to Bill Ayers, the robo calls to that effect, and the failure of McCain to speak out forcefully against prejudice as symbolized by the campaign to say that Obama is a muslim. And interestingly enough, Powell, much to his credit, spoke out about how that campaign is prejudiced against good muslims, some of which have been military heros for the U.S. Powell's statement was compelling, for sure. It was more than the average endorsement for those listening.

Chris Matthews had Kathleen Parker and Andrew Sullivan, two traditional conservatives, who both expressed serious concerns about the direction of the republican party. Well, George Will joins them in the more traditional conservatism - that of balanced budgets, smaller governments, and privacy rights. But these folks have been turned off by what Bush is doing. And for McCain to be out there talking about how Obama's plans are socialism while Bush is nationalizing banks and huge financial firms to avoid a financial meltdown even worse than we are having is pure folly, and those intelligent conservatives know it. So the republicans have split their party, and when parties get split bad, it bodes trouble for national elections.

One of the things that came up more than once was skepticism about the ability of the U.S. election infrastructure to handle the election. This worries me more than anything. One pundit said that they have heard from inside the McCain campaign that they are making the ACORN so called voter fraud, which is yet to be proved, as such a big issue because if the republicans lose, they are going to make the legitimacy of the election an issue. Only if the margin of victory is razor thin does that have a chance. That's why Obama is going to campaign hard, and this was noted by more than one pundit today, to run up the score and perhaps get a filibuster proof majority in the senate. More than one pundit today mentioned that this could happen. Wow, that would be amazing.

McCain's best argument is that of the desirability of mixed government - to ride herd over an out of control majority. Yet he isn't using it. He's using all these frivilous arguments, like Bill Ayers, socialism, Joe the plumber, experience, etc. Those are all losing arguments. And it is likely there is nothing McCain can do to stop Obama, but his campaign has only made things worse.