South Carolina state senator Vincent Sheheen, Governor Nikki Haley’s Democratic opponent, spoke to a Florence crowd recently about the need to “take our state back.” Now, when a white politician talks about “taking back” our state and/or country from a leader of color, we all know what that means, right? Or at least we know what it means when the incumbent is Barack Obama. Sheheen went further though, and in the course of the usual litany of complaints, made this extraordinary remark: “We must escort the whore out the door.” Despite the rhyme, it seemed like a slip of the tongue. He repeated it as “escort her out the door.” But when the audience laughed and seemed to approve of this excursion into the sewer, he winked, laughed, and then commented that “you have to tell the truth.”

I don’t believe in seizing upon every slip up, playing gotcha. But when Sheheen laughed and pointed to the crowd after this despicable lapse, he owned it. Haley is fully within her rights to run wall-to-wall ads about it. I guess when Democrats talk about the war on women in 2014, it’s about waging it.