Surely you all remember those two grumpy old muppets up in the balcony, griping throughout the 1980’s Muppet Show? Do you think you might get a pang of nostalgic delight if you could see them reprise their roles for the 2008 presidential election? The folks over at the Daily Show took a stab at it last night.
Click on this link to the main page of the Daily Show, scroll through the recent videos for the one called “Barack’s Millions,” and then fast forward through the clip if you want, to about 4:20 minutes in (as Jon Stewart analyzes John McCain’s cranky interview with Larry King in response to the Obama informercial). It’s a quick snippet, but I promise, you’ll get a good chuckle out of it.
Remember back in June, when Cindy McCain said we would see no negative campaigning at all from their side?
Gosh, seems like eons ago, doesn’t it? At rallies from Florida to Pennsylvania, the McCain campaign is pulling out all the stops to attack that other side, including this from Cindy McCain:
“The day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son while he was serving sent a cold chill through my body, let me tell you,’’ Mrs. McCain said, in an introduction before Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin delivered speeches at Lehigh. “I would suggest that Senator Obama change shoes with me for just one day.’’ Mrs. McCain was referring to a vote against troop financing that Mr. Obama cast in 2007 because the legislation did not include a timetable for withdrawal; Mr. Obama has voted for all other war-spending bills since he entered the Senate in 2005.
It’s worth mentioning as well, that John McCain voted against funding the troops when the bill contained a timetable to bring them home. Cindy McCain knows full well that no troops would go without their flak jackets because of that vote; it was simply about forcing the president to adopt a timetable (or as the president later acquiesed to in negotiations with Iraq back in June, what you might call a “time horizon“). Cindy McCain’s comments were a demeaning exploitation of her son’s service. And Cindy McCain thinks Barack Obama is the one waging the “dirtiest campaign in American history?”
That’s rich. How quickly she forgot the bruising 2000 Republican primary, in which Bush aides now working for McCain suggested that Bridget McCain, a bangladeshi child Cindy McCain brought back from an orphanage in India, was John McCain’s illegitimate black child.
And then there’s this campaign. I’m sure Cindy McCain was so very proud of Mike Scott, the uniformed sheriff who warmed the crowd up in Bethlehem, PA yesterday, warning of “Barack Hussein Obama” becoming president. (He’s now under investigation for politicking on the job) And let’s not leave out Sarah Palin’s relentless attempt to associate Senator Obama with a 1960’s radical turned Chicago professor, Bill Ayers. Palin’s baiting has famously riled supporters up this week, one of whom yelled “Kill him!” after she accused Obama of being best buds with a former terrorist. Angry supporters booed the press corps covering a Florida rally– one taunting an African American among them, “Sit down, boy.” Yes, I’m quite sure the McCain camapign will go down as the cleanest campaign on the record books.
Obama has not engaged the Bill Ayers stories, instead dispatching aides to shut them down (Robert Gibbs ably knocked Sean Hannity off his high horse yesterday). Joe Biden’s been the only campaign principal to really hit back on the stump this week, calling McCain, “an angry man, lurching from one position to another.”
Last night, Michelle Obama, who has kept largely out of the limelight since her reintroduction at the Democratic Convention, reappeared. But, the campaign is not bringing Michelle out to defend her husband. They’ve brought her out to make Cindy McCain look ungraceful, and to underscore that the Obamas keep a steady hand.
Not for lacking of trying, Larry King and John Stewart were unable to draw out the wrath of Michelle Obama. Instead, Michelle had this to say about Sarah Palin:
“You know, I’m a mother with kids and I’ve had a career and I’ve had to juggle,” Mrs. Obama said on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
“She’s doing publicly what so many women are doing on their own privately,” she added. “What we’re fighting for is to make sure that all women have the choices that Sarah Palin and I have.”
And, declining to hit the Republican ticket for the barrage of negative attacks against her husband, she had only this for Cindy and John McCain:
“You can’t tear up the game so much so that, you know, you don’t leave people something to come back to,” she said. “You know, we’re going to need John McCain, we’re going to need Cindy McCain, we’re going to need independents and Republicans working hard to fix this crisis.”
You can’t get more gracious or classy than that, which is exactly what the Obama campaign was looking for.
Inform Your Consent 