A debate McCain can win? Both presidential candidates attended the Al Smith dinner this year, a rare occasion for elites to drop the pretense of real antagonism between pro-corporate plutocrats of different parties, much less the media millionaires who happily transcribe their every lie.

Both candidates were funny, but McCain was really in his element, and won more good will from me in this fifteen-minute segment than anything else he's done in eight years.

It's been said before, but Kos is absolutely right: these instapolls have been a tremendously important bulwark against the neverending bullshit of the pundit class. They've been so devastating, in fact, to the fine art of pro-Republican spin—an art which went a long way towards giving us eight years of Bush—that I genuinely wonder whether we'll see them again in 2012. I sure hope we do.