It seems to me the people in attendance in Virginia understood exactly what Senator Obama meant.

Plying the same theme with respect to McCain-Palin campaign rhetoric in Lebanon, Virginia, Barack Obama asserted: “You can put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.” Given the tittering, shouts and raucous applause from Obama’s audience, even AP reporter Nedra Pickler found Obama’s audience drawing the connection between Obama’s comment and Sarah Palin’s convention joke.

Vandehei and Allen, by contrast, cover for Obama. They assert that “he was clearly talking about the McCain-Palin reform rhetoric.” Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental? Maybe, but the evidence of Carnahan’s remarks referring to Palin strongly suggests otherwise. And if Obama didn’t understand the ugly reference to Palin, he appears to be the only guy in Lebanon who didn’t. [Emphasis-mine]

The video of Obama’s remarks is available here. My bet is you don’t need that link as by today you will have seen it somewhere.

Interested in reading more reaction? There is plenty of it here, here, and here.

The Obama campaign defense (as some may call it) as well as tons of other information may be found at Hot Air.

It sound like another re-run of that oh boy I blew it so let’s turn this around and blame someone else defense we have seen all too often in our elections. Nice response Allahpundit:

Here’s a story of McCain using it last year. Hillary, of course, hadn’t made any lipstick references to herself before then so there was no context for McCain to play off of.[emphasis-mine]

Panic on the part of the Obama campaign? They seem to be a tad frightened of governor Palin what with all the rumors which have been touted and debunked. Now this?

No matter what conclusion the listener or reader might draw from the video, it seems that a presidential candidate would have the sense to know how many who are following the race closely would interpret these remarks.

Somewhere, George Allen is shaking his head.

*Update: I mistakenly left out this link to thoughts from Hillary supporters. Thanks to AJ Strata for the heads up.