please watch these three videos.
Exhibit A: "McCain is throwing pies! Throw some back!"
As you can clearly see, the above method is rather Vaudevillian and dated, and while still somewhat able to provoke a measure of hillarity, it is visibly crude, utterly messy and devoid of any real meaning.
Exhibit B: "Use your opponent's energy against him and simply brush him aside."
Exhibit B is exemplary of just how Barack Obama fights and continues to fight back. While it looks to the outside observer that our man is not doing much, in actuality he has been repeatedly deconstructing the Republican framework by making it look juvenile and powerless and forcing McCain to come play on his terms, all this while building a huge grassworks network.
Obama, the political Aikido master, isn't running against McCain, he's running against the Republican machinary that has produced Reagan, two Bushes, and is now trying to package and force feed us John McCain.
There is simply more than one way to fight.
Exhibit C: The "Art of fighting without fighting" (thanks to Rosbobbo)
We will win, not by throwing pies back and forth, but by convincing the American people that pie throwing is for stooges and by exercising superior rhetorical Aikido.
P.S. Happy Birthday Barack Obama.
Update: Thanks for the Rec's and the enjoyable conversation. I must get to bed now--no pie fighting.