Folks, I hate to say this, but I value honesty above partisan credentials.

I’ve reluctantly concluded that we’ve come to a point in time when a Presidential candidate is simply using the female gender to nakedly appeal to voters. It’s transparent and, I have to be honest, it’s pathetic.

Maybe I’ll at least get an Yglesias Award.

Read the ugly story of why I’ve come to this conclusion in the extended entry.

The New York Times has the sordid details.

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 creating a rapid-response team to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said on Thursday. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign event in Florida, her first for Mr. Obama since the Democratic convention last month, will include a forceful response to the searing attacks and fresh burst of energy that Ms. Palin injected into the race with her convention speech on Wednesday night, Obama aides said.

The fresh burst of what now? Could you just repeat that? I didn’t hear it the first time.

Did Obama aides just concede that Sarah Palin has revitalized the Republican ticket?

Where’s the vetting?!

Some Democrats were urging Mr. Obama’s campaign not to underestimate the potential power of Ms. Palin’s electrifying speech to the Republican convention on Wednesday night even among voters not aligned with either party: On liberal talk-radio shows and on left-leaning blogs on Thursday, some Democrats fretted that the Obama campaign should fight back hard to avoid being caricatured as Senator John Kerry was four years ago.

I gotta get a new hearing aid. Could you just say that one more time? I heard “the potential power of Ms. Palin’s something something speech . . .” What was that word again?

Did the New York Times just call Sarah Palin’s speech “electrifying”?

And did I just read that Obama is going to fight all of this energy and electricity by . . . hiding behind some womens’ skirts?

What a wussy. Sarah Palin would man up better than that. Far better.

Thanks to Dana.

UPDATE: Oops! Looks like the editors have stepped in and decided that the original version was a bit too honest. For example, the current headline reads: “Obama Camp Turns to Clinton to Counter Palin.” Hmm. The previous headline was far more entertaining:

And one of the passages I quoted above now reads:

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.

Notice anything missing? Don’t believe me, believe the screenshot of the way the story read before the editors got hold of it:

UPDATE x2: Why is it “Mrs. Clinton” but “Ms. Palin”?