Senator Barack Obama, in Indiana, is depending on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and other women to help sway voters in the election.

By PATRICK HEALY and JEFF ZELENY

ST. PAUL, Minnesota - Senator Barack Obama will increasingly depend on prominent Democratic women to undercut Governor Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain, dispatching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida and bolstering his plan to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said last week.
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign event in Florida, her first for Mr. Obama since the Democratic convention, served as a counterpoint to the searing attacks and fresh burst of energy that Ms. Palin injected into the race with her convention speech on September 3, Obama aides said.
Senator Clinton urged audiences in central Florida on September 9 to oppose the Republican presidential ticket - “no Mc- Cain, no Palin” - but otherwise avoided criticizing Ms. Palin.
The absence of heavy fire directed at Ms. Palin had been expected, given a reluctance by Mrs. Clinton to turn her campaigning into a battle between two women.
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.”
Advisers to Mr. Obama predicted that the excitement over Ms. Palin would fade and that the race would quickly turn back into a contest between Senators Mc- Cain and Obama . At the same time, even as Democratic researchers pore over Ms. Palin’s record in Alaska, a rapid response team is being created in Chicago to dispatch female surrogates around the country.
David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief political strategist, said Mr. Obama would not raise questions about Ms. Palin’s experience. Mr. Axelrod said the campaign would work instead to impress upon voters the seriousness of the race and continue to try to link the McCain-Palin team to President Bush.
With both conventions seen largely as successes for their tickets, the importance of the three presidential debates - the first of which is September 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.
At a rally in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama asked an audience of several thousand people if they had “caught any of the performances” at the Republican convention. He did not mention Ms. Palin by name, but added, “They may have found some new faces to present their message, but it’s the same old message.
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