The recently reinvigorated cast of Saturday Night Live has been having a field day with the 2012 election and their ratings have shown a payoff for their efforts. Yes, the majority of their skits still tend toward skewering conservatives and Republicans, but to give credit where credit is due, they do take some shots at Obama when the target is too obvious to ignore. Such was the case with last week’s debate.

As pointed out over at Mediaite, they lined up their fake MSNBC cast for a panel hosted by their version of Rachel Maddow and featuring Chris Matthews with Al Sharpton to talk about “the worst thing that ever happened anywhere.”

SNL had a field day mocking MSNBC’s reaction to President Obama‘s debate performance, from Al Sharpton coming up with every excuse in the book to defend how badly Obama did to Chris Matthews yelling at the camera like a drunken man-child.

Rachel Maddow opened by calling the debate “The Worst Thing That Happened Anywhere” before asking her co-hosts for their reaction. Sharpton first threw out altitude poisoning as a possibility before Matthews insisted that Obama’s real problem was not speaking up enough. As Matthews argued, “you win a debate” by screaming at people incoherently until they shut up.

They still managed to get in a collateral damage shot at conservatives by bringing in a fake S.E. Cupp, portrayed as a pretty but vapid observer who had no comments beyond smiling over Obama’s defeat. But even with that, it was a fairly glaring attack not just on Obama’s poor performance, but the totally vacuous nature of the MSNBC prime time lineup. The roughly four minute video follows and, for once, you may want to actually watch. The show stealer is, beyond a doubt, the Sharpton character.

Bonus: Doug Mataconis has the video of SNL’s other segment on the debate itself. The President had a bad night on SNL no matter how you slice it, and they reach a far more diverse audience than primarily conservative leaning media.