Barack, You Should Have Practiced With My Grandpa

Debates are awesome.

Is there any competition so subjectively judged, with such bias in virtually every spectator (other than figure skating)? Is there any other kind of struggle, whose victory conditions are not only amorphous and vague, but even unpredictable and as fickle as public opinion?

My day could have ended with the sad knowledge that my candidate lost the debate - even got trounced and laughed at. Fortunately, I stayed up late enough to see the poll numbers.

Wow. So after my initial surprise, and soberly acknowledging that unscientific polls are severely flawed, my question is this: with most pundits saying the debate was a tie, how is it that only 6.4% of those polled think so?

I think this tells us something about what kinds of people respond to post-debate online polls - people like me, who thought McCain won, but will gladly claim the opposite for a poll. Bwahahahaha. Ugh.

Is it just me, or does all of this hoopla seem like insubstantial fluff, more like an inconsequential sports match than a debate over the future of our country?