Obama camp pull out their secret weapon: Hillary Clinton

Obama, who campaigned on Thursday in Lancaster, Pa., will send female surrogates to swing states.

The gloves are off. And I knew that the Obama camp would bring Hillary in the fold as their counter attack against Palin. McCain camp thought they can needle Obama so much for him to attack Palin, a female. Senator Hillary Clinton, like her or not, was the backbone to her husband, Bill Clinton's, two term Presidency. Hillary will now be that strong link for Obama to make sure that he is put in office as President and fulfill her promises to her supporters. This will be a very interesting road ahead to November.

ST. PAUL — 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 bolstering his plan to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said Thursday.

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

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

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 campaign — and what Mr. Obama and his running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., 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 speech, even among voters not aligned with either party: On liberal talk-radio shows and on left-leaning blogs, some Democrats said the Obama campaign should fight back hard to avoid being caricatured as Senator John Kerry was four years ago when he ran against President Bush.

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: noncollege-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.”

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