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Loading ...Obama enlists all-woman army to blunt Palin
09.05.2008 11:16am EDT
(Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) Barack Obama’s campaign plans to employ high-profile female supporters in an effort to blunt GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s potential to persuade women to vote Republican.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius all were scheduled to campaign for Obama in the coming weeks. Republicans say they hope Palin, who made her national debut with a feisty speech on Wednesday, could put some female voters in play.“We respect her. She’s a skilled politician, as she proved last night,” Obama strategist David Axelrod told reporters aboard the campaign plane Thursday. “She’s deft at going on the attack.”
But it’s not clear exactly how Obama and his running mate Joe Biden should respond. They keenly remember how women rallied around one-time Democratic front runner Clinton when they perceived she was a victim of sexism. They don’t want to appear with a weak response, either, and certainly they also don’t want to send independent women flocking to the GOP.
The solution, at least in the short term, will be have top-tier female supporters vouch for Obama to largely female audiences and keep the candidate himself away.
Sebelius started on Thursday, linking Palin to the unpopular President Bush.
“She mastered the words written by the Bush speechwriters and delivered them well. But what we didn’t hear was what people talk to me about every day,” Sebelius told reporters.
Clinton, a one-time presidential front runner, was set to arrive Monday in Florida. Obama aides had long planned to have Clinton as a surrogate even before Palin was named.
Clinton’s camp says the message will be honed on her long-standing appeal to kitchen-table issues that helped her win 18 million votes, but not the nomination. There are no plans for Clinton to directly engage Palin, largely because the election is about the president, not vice president.
Obama’s senior advisers say they cannot allow Palin to paint herself as the come-from-nowhere insurgent – a role that once belonged to Obama.
“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 these attacks, they all felt very familiar to Americans who are used to this kind of thing from Washington,” Axelrod said.
Obama himself dodged the question about how to treat Palin, only the second woman nominated as a major party’s vice presidential pick and the GOP’s first.
“I think she’s got a compelling story, but I assume that she wants to be treated the same way that guys want to be treated, which means that their records are under scrutiny,” Obama told reporters in York. “I’ve been through this for 19 months. She has been through it – what – four days so far?”
It was slightly more polite than Axelrod: “She tried to attack Senator Obama by saying he had no significant legislative achievements. Maybe that’s what she was told.”
The McCain campaign, keenly aware of the potential of their nontraditional pick, immediately used any criticism of Palin as a sign of sexism.
Now is not the time to abstain from voting!
Any person in the US that does not vote, does not have the right to bitch about what these politicians are doing while in office.
I cannot imagine not voting this year. If the repubs take office, my clinic is sure to close!
Giving Palin more headlines on progressive websites just fuels more interest in this lightweight twit. Stick with the critical issues of this campaign, where both McCain and Palin can be effectively challenged. Stop buying into the stupid distractions already.
trace= you have it wrong again!hillary isn’t “chompin at the bits for 2012″. several polls have obama getting 50% of the vote now(not mccain).while these don’t tell us who will win in nov. it does tell us the public knows that the rev. wright crap isn’t a big deal.the big deal is the economy(followed by iraq,health care,etc.). voters are moving to real issues & the latest polls show obama gaining 3% of women’s support just in the last week. palin isn’t going to help mccain much with female voters when they find out how extreme she really is. rev. wright won’t be a heartbeat away from the pres. palin’s cold heart will be. if the vote was held today obama/biden would get 301 electoral votes(31 more than what’s needed).check the various web sites for yourself. all the dems have to do is maintain this lead & mccain/palin is a footnote in history. if hillary is going to run in 2012 maybe she’ll try as an elephant!
trace=you’re an idiot no matter where you go & what you type in. don’t you follow politics at all? xzavier is correct! the republicans did use that argument when hillary was running,but what wasn’t touched on was that they attacked her during bill’s entire 8 year presidency & i don’t recall any republicans saying any of that stuff was sexist. i’m no hillary supporter but they did lay into her too much for my taste. if palin is getting hammered as a working woman who speaks her mind & doesn’t stay home & bake cookies with her kids. well guess which party back in ‘92 set that nasty bandwagon in motion…you know who!(& if you are dumb enough to say obama’s dems…well i’m not surprised).
xzavier, it was Obama that used the dirty tricks against the Clinton’s. Beat them at their own game. Remember Bill noting that the Obama campaign had used the race card. (And the funny thing was, they did.)
Make no mistake, Hillary is chompin at the bits for 2012.
Give me a break if anyone is smart enough to research the CHIKA they’ll know she’s got more investigations going on against her than a cookie has chocolate chips. I only hope Obama has the brass B* to not let this woman walk all over him like kerry did with bush in ‘04. Im from Arizona and Napalitano will whip the floor of this person. We need to send her back to what ever little down she came from in Alaska packing.
Once again the republicans are crying fowl and saying its sexist to attack a women. HEELLLOOOO what were they doing when Hillary was running?
Well, I don’t think that Hillary will say anything directly towards Palin. I can not imagine that McCain would run for a second term (if elected). That would mean that Palin would be the heir apparent to run for the Republican nomination in 2012. It’s certainly foreseeable that Hillary will run again in 2012. She needs to be able to put herself in a good place to be able to compete against Palin for 2012.
Abstaining this year should not, can not be an option. The Republicans are dangerous, if not perhaps, evil. Remember the words of Hitler’s director of communication (today’s Karl Rove): “If you tell a big lie often enough, people will begin to believe it.”
I’m not sure I follow John S&M’s logic. It would be awesome to have a woman leader, however, I place policy positions well ahead of the XX vs. XY chromosomes issue. If you are gay — and I might presume you (John) are for commenting on this site — I think you would be endangering yourself (if not the world) by abstaining, instead of voting for Obama/Biden.
Abstaining in this election risks McCain putting more anti-gay, anti-working class, anti-fair minded judges on the supreme court and on other federal courts. The choice is clear vote Obama for a better future for all of us!
Senator Obama chose a straight man as his running mate instead of a straight woman and now he wants to send an army of political women to deflect Sen. McCain’s running mate? I think I’ll join my mother and abstain from voting a president this year.