NYT: Obama to dispatch female surrogates

By PATRICK HEALY and JEFF ZELENY

updated 12:13 a.m. ET Sept. 5, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Senator Barack Obama will increasingly lean on prominent Democratic women to undercut Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain , dispatching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida on Monday and creating a rapid-response team to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said on Thursday.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign event in Florida, her first for Mr. Obama since the Democratic convention last month, will include a forceful response to the searing attacks and fresh burst of energy that Ms. Palin injected into the race with her convention speech on Wednesday night, Obama aides said.

With the McCain-Palin team courting undecided female voters, including some who backed Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Obama aides say they are counting on not only Mrs. Clinton but also Democratic female governors to criticize their Alaskan counterpart, Ms. Palin — and, by extension, Mr. McCain — including Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.

Talks under way about Palin
Still, within the Obama campaign and among Democratic officials nationwide, talks are well under way about how the party should treat Ms. Palin in the final two months of the campaign — and what Mr. Obama and his running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, need to do to regain the offensive after the Republican convention.

Some Democrats were urging Mr. Obama’s campaign not to underestimate the potential power of Ms. Palin’s electrifying speech to the Republican convention on Wednesday night even among voters not aligned with either party: On liberal talk-radio shows and on left-leaning blogs on Thursday, some Democrats fretted that the Obama campaign should fight back hard to avoid being caricatured as Senator John Kerry was four years ago. And some party strategists warned that Mrs. Palin’s personal narrative, as a “hockey mom” with a special-needs child, would appeal to some undecided women voters.

“What McCain has done with Governor Palin’s nomination is aim right at a demographic that Obama needs to address quickly — non-college educated women,” said Mike McCurry, a former spokesman in the Clinton White House. “They need to maximize Biden’s ability to reach out to them, but at the end of the day it is Obama who has to get that very, very critical group.”

Senior advisers to Mr. Obama predicted that the initial buzz over Ms. Palin would fade and the race would quickly turn back into a contest between Senators McCain and Obama, despite the McCain campaign’s efforts to compare Mr. Obama’s experience unfavorably to Ms. Palin’s while promoting her presence on the ticket. At the same time, even as Democratic researchers continue poring over Ms. Palin’s record in Alaska, the rapid response team is being formed in Chicago to dispatch women surrogates around the country.

Linking McCain-Palin team to Bush
David Axelrod, the campaign’s chief political strategist, said Mr. Obama would not raise questions about Ms. Palin’s experience. Instead, the campaign would work to impress upon voters the seriousness of the race and continue its attempt to link the McCain-Palin team to President Bush.

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While Mr. Obama did not aggressively challenge Ms. Palin in the wake of her withering attack on Wednesday night, his advisers opened a new line of criticism on Thursday to brand her as part of the Republican establishment.

“For someone who makes the point that she’s not from Washington, she looked very much like she’d fit in very well there when you see how she brings the attacks,” Mr. Axelrod said. “They all felt very familiar to Americans who are used to this kind of thing from Washington.”

Advisers to Mrs. Clinton, who has been on vacation this week, said that she stands ready to help the Obama-Biden ticket, but they urged not to overestimate the effect she could have, noting that she had other commitments this fall, like campaigning and raising money for Senate candidates.

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Still, Mo Elleithee, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said she could make a difference with some voters who feel lost in the current economy and who want to see a federal role enacting universal health insurance.

“Anyone who was inclined to support Hillary Clinton typically did so because of her focus on middle-class, bread-and-butter issues,” he said. “Her message for Barack Obama on those issues could certainly help the Democratic ticket at the ballot box.”

Biden to be a steady campaigner
The Obama camp also plans to keep Mr. Biden campaigning steadily in such battleground states as Pennsylvania and Ohio. Obama advisers said that one advantage they already have is that Mr. Biden, as a six-term senator and former presidential candidate, is well-prepared for his debate with Ms. Palin in October, and that she will have to stay off the trail for more time to train for it.

With both conventions seen largely as successes for their tickets, the importance of the three presidential debates — the first of which is on Sept. 26 — and the one vice-presidential debate become even more crucial for either side to gain a political advantage, Democratic strategists and elected officials said.

Mr. Obama, speaking to reporters on Thursday during a campaign stop in York, Pa., brushed aside any worry he might have about Ms. Palin’s criticism of his biography and political record.

“I’ve been called worse on the basketball court, so it’s not that big of a deal,” he said.

Patrick Healy reported from Minnesota, and Jeff Zeleny from Pennsylvania.

This story, Obama to Dispatch Female Surrogates, first appeared in the New York Times.

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