Dems Tread Lightly

Will Sarah Palin be a tough opponent to hit?

John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate presents the Obama-Biden campaign with an unwelcome and unexpected challenge: How do you go after a 44-year-old mother of five without once alienating the female voters you’ve just spent the last week trying to win back?

The answer so far: Not very well.

It only took a few minutes for the Obama campaign to screw it up.

Minutes after the McCain campaign confirmed that Palin would be the Republican’s VP pick, Obama spokesman Bill Burton dismissed the Alaska governor as a lightweight.

McCain, he said, had put "the former mayor of a town of 9,000, with zero foreign policy experience, a heartbeat away from the presidency." Almost immediately, the campaign seemed to reconsider its tough-guy approach.

Imagine that? All of a sudden, Democrats think a president needs to have foreign policy experience?

Almost immediately, the campaign seemed to reconsider its tough-guy approach.

In a statement distributed by the campaign, Barack Obama and Joe Biden said Palin’s selection was “yet another encouraging sign that old barriers are falling in our politics. While we obviously have differences over how best to lead this country forward, Gov. Palin is an admirable person and will add a compelling new voice to this campaign.”

Barack, already in trouble with women, had best tread lightly.

Many of Clinton’s supporters continue to believe that sexism played a large role in her defeat.

“I would say to the Democrats, regarding sexism, ‘Tag, you’re it,'” said Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway. “Everyone likes to say you are sexist if you don’t vote for Hillary Clinton, but what about all the women who are not going to vote for Sarah Palin?”