About (Late) Last Night: Was Obama a victim of witchcraft?

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Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware, has really made it.

A down-to-giggle David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior political advisor, stopped by David Letterman’s ‘Late Show’ on Wednesday night to explain why the presidential seal fell off the podium during Obama’s speech at Fortune magazine’s ‘Most Powerful Women Summit,’ with an allusion to this fall’s biggest blooming political celebrity,

A wobbly-voiced Axelrod -- doubtlessly anticipating his punch line -- made the most topical jab he could: ‘We’ve done 500 speeches, probably -- never happened before,’ he said. ‘And I can only think of one thing: witchcraft.’ It was almost Letterman-esque. Dave seemed proud enough of Axelrod’s delivery.

The joke itself was, of course, a reference to O’Donnell’s pop-culture-baiting new ad for Senate, which begins with her insisting, ‘I am not a witch’ -- a tongue-in-cheek refute of viral video clips of O’Donnell appearing on Bill Maher’s ‘Politically Incorrect’ over a decade ago. Then she said she’d ‘dabbled’ in the occult. Now she’s just taking the name-checks where she can get them.

Later, teasing the 2012 election, Letterman threw out some potential Republican challengers for the president. ‘Donald Trump, we know that’s a goof,’ he said. Christine O’Donnell, on the other hand...

-- Joe Coscarelli