Clinton’s soft touch on Palin

Hillary Clinton is out on the trail for Barack Obama, but don’t expect a “cat fight” with Sarah Palin, said now-“informal” Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson in The New Republic. Editors and news executives would love to see Clinton “take Palin on,” due to the odd “obsession in our popular culture” with seeing two women fight. Well, “Clinton-Palin might drive ratings and sell magazines, but it wouldn’t be good for the Democratic party.”

It’s true that Democrats would be better served focusing on John McCain, not his VP pick, said John Riley in Newsday, but the celebrated “Palin is launching two well-covered negative tirades a day against Obama.” It wouldn’t be “a cure all, or a magic bean,” but Clinton’s hitting back at her fellow “white woman” could help Obama a lot.

“This need to pit Palin against Clinton is in many ways to be expected,” said Keli Goff in The Huffington Post, because we tend to compare politicians who look alike, not think alike. But that’s “fundamentally stupid, particularly in instances where there is absolutely no comparison”—and Clinton is Derek Jeter to Palin’s high school softball captain.

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Still, polls show that Palin has helped push McCain ahead of Obama, said Amy Chozick in The Wall Street Journal. And with or without a “cat fight,” the presence of “the two prominent female politicians” in the arena “signals a battle for women voters.”