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HALLI CASSER-JAYNE - bio
RED, WHITE 'N TRUE™
THE BORE WAR
Posted, September 10, 2008,  12:01 p.m

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    So here we
go, less than eight weeks until Election Day 2008 and the would be savior of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama,  is locked in a neck and neck hog-tie with that he-hasn’t-a-chance-in-hell-of-winning in this I-hate-the-Republican-year, that old boar, or is it bore, John McCain.

How did this happen? How could this have happened? The young shoat, Obama, was supposed to be a pig-hide shoe in.

But, oink, oink along comes Sarah Palin the “do you know the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull – lipstick?” a multi-faceted woman, now the Republican’s vice-presidential nominee here to rescue McCain’s day for those of you who still believe in fairy tales (Bill Clinton)  and happy endings (not Hillary Clinton).

So that inside of a week the polls shifted, white women moved over to the Republican ticket in litters. Sarah huffed and MAC puffed and together they blew Obama and the house of Dems down a peg or two.

Obama has been wounded; his little house is down and out in if not in Beverly Hills, Hyde Park, Illinois. And if he doesn’t get off the defensive and back on message he won’t have that happy ending he likes to dream about.

This little piggy went to market, check, check, today’s list includes the economy, the economy, it’s the economy stupid! Didn’t Uncle Bill teach you anything, Baracky?

Apparently not; Pig-eyed and stubborn as a mule, Obama missed his opportunity to secure the big win for himself and his party when he passed over  Hillary Clinton for his vice presidential nominee.

It was as if he had his nose rooted in dirt, because surely a candidate worth his pork barrel spending would have known that when he passed over Hillary Clinton he would be leaving John McCain a huge opening to secure women voters who had told pollsters in no uncertain terms they weren’t sure they would vote for Obama.

Not so Obama. As well, he didn’t prepare himself for the consequences of his choice. Did he not weigh McCain’s options in lieu of his own choice to pick Joe Biden as his running mate?  Bad judgment?

After McCain took advantage of Obama’s tactical error and named Governor Palin his running mate, Obama literally appeared hog-tied, his campaign wallowing like a bunch of hot hogs in a sty knee deep in cool mud.

Yesterday, Obama after trying a host of different tactics against Sarah Palin none of which seemed to work, he got down with Sarah Palin and John McCain and started throwing some of that mud.

"John McCain says he’s about change too, and so I guess his whole angle is ‘Watch out George Bush -- except for economic policy, health-care policy, tax policy, education, policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove style politics -- we’re really going to shake things up in Washington,'" Obama said yesterday at a town hall in Lebanon, VA.

He then added, "That's not change. That's just calling the same thing something different. But you know, you can ... put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change; it's still going to stink. After eight years, we've had enough of the same old thing. It's time to bring about real change to Washington."

All hog broke lose; the two campaigns rolled in the mud together, and it was because of yet another tactical error on the part of the much flummoxed Obama campaign.

“But you know you can put lipstick on a pig: it’s still a pig,” was not a phrase that Obama arbitrarily picked out of a slop bucket. That is not how campaigns are run. The lipstick phrase has been key to Palin’s popularity, and you can be certain that Obama’s opposition research team had looked and had found that McCain had used the same term against Hillary Clinton during the primaries, which would give Obama cover to resurrect the phrase and turn it against Palin.

Obama’s remarks were meant to be a searing condemnation and deliberate attempt if not subtle sexist jab aimed directly at the lipstick-totin’ hockey Mom, Governor of Alaska, the young “gilt” as Obama would probably call her with disdain in private.

The video of the event substantiates the deliberate use of the phrase,  showing a candidate off a Teleprompter reaching into memory for the line he was supposed to deliver, which he seemed to struggle to remember.

McCain’s camp was quick to pounce. McCain-Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella said, "Barack Obama's comments today are offensive and disgraceful. He owes Gov. Palin an apology."

Obama hit back.  “Enough is enough. The McCain campaign’s attack tonight is a pathetic attempt to play the gender card about the use of a common analogy -- the same analogy that Sen. McCain himself used about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health care plan just last year," said Obama senior adviser Anita Dunn. "This phony lecture on gender sensitivity is the height of cynicism and lays bare the increasingly dishonorable campaign John McCain has chosen to run.”

Obama ought to be heeding the “lecture.” Hillary Clinton won about 10 million votes from female voters in the Democratic primaries, and there are 52 million women voting in the general election.  

If Obama wants to win the support of the bulk of these women I offer up this advice to Obama: in the words of Henri Charpentier: “Carve a ham as if you were shaving the face of a friend.”

Will Obama listen to me? From my mouth to a sow’s ears. But probably not, after all, I’m just a member of the Lipstick Club, just one of those 52 million voters ready to cast my ballot in the general election, a woman. And you know, what Obama says about us card-carrying, lipstick-totin’ women: “You can put lipstick on a pig, and it’s still a pig.

Oink!