Stephanopoulos’s question about him at the debate had the expected effect, prodding not one but two major papers today to check up on him. WaPo’s is the one to read as it demonstrates how mainstream this turd has become in Chicago politics generally, not just the Obama corner of it, but the LA Times piece mentioned this video so I thought I’d toss it out there. As I’ve said before, I don’t think the Ayers association does much to hurt Obama. There are indeed contacts between the two, as Andy McCarthy reminds us, but they’re glancing enough that it’ll be hard to gain traction from them. Besides, if the point is that Obama doesn’t take great exception to exchanging pleasantries with terrorists, guess what: We already knew that. In the context of his willingness to meet with a Holocaust-denying state sponsor of regional terror like Ahmadinejad (or Hamas, should they eventually attain the magic status of statehood), meeting with Ayers almost seems provincial, particularly on a day when the left’s secular saint is busy gladhanding Bashar Assad. Still, Maverick’s bound to try to make an issue of this during the general, so here you go — necessary background for the coming clash.