This is why it’s important for Team McCain to keep punching Obama on the little things, like “lipstick on a pig.” Here’s a Ben Smith post where Obama answers the McCain critics:

UPDATE: The McCain campaign is now saying Obama called Palin a pig, which he didn’t. The Obama campaign notes that “lipstick on a pig” is a fairly common idiom Obama often uses, as in a recent Washington Post interview. McCain has also used the phrase.

OK. Now click through to the Washington Post interview. It’s from a year ago. It’s not an interview, but a Eugene Robinson piece on the McCain surge strategy in Iraq. Here’s how Obama used the “lipstick” phrase then:

“I think that both General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are capable people who have been given an impossible assignment,” Sen. Barack Obama said yesterday in a telephone interview. “George Bush has given a mission to General Petraeus, and he has done his best to try to figure out how to put lipstick on a pig.”

Team Obama, to defend their sexism, just used a piece that highlights their defeatism.