Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton hit each other with TV attack ads in the final days before the critical Pennsylvania primary, notching up the animosity in the Democratic presidential campaign on the eve of yesterday’s debate.
With Clinton trailing in delegates and 11 points behind in a new poll, she faced Obama in Philadelphia yesterday for what could be the climax of a contentious few days.
The former first lady has labeled Obama an elitist for remarks he made about bitterness among economically hard-pressed working class voters. The first-term Illinois senator has countered with charges that Clinton was pandering by drinking a shot of whiskey in front of TV cameras and with stories of learning to shoot a gun at her father’s knee.
PHOTO: AFP
Clinton’s new ad pulled together a string of sound bites from Pennsylvania voters who chastised Obama for his remarks that Pennsylvania’s working class was clinging to guns and religion in bitterness over job losses and falling living standards.
Obama’s ad shows Clinton being briefly heckled as she criticized Obama at a meeting of the Alliance for American Manufacturing on Monday. The ad ends with Obama accusing Clinton of playing the “politics of division and distraction.”
The heat in the Democratic race reflects the view that Clinton needs a sizable victory in the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday to keep her candidacy alive. She trails Obama 1,640 to 1,504 in delegates with only 10 state primary and caucus votes remaining after Pennsylvania.
Because Democratic state contests are not winner-take-all in terms of delegates, it is statistically extremely unlikely for Clinton to overcome Obama’s lead in the so-called pledged delegate count.
Neither candidate will be able to clinch the 2,025 delegates needed to win the nomination without the approval of the party’s nearly 800 superdelegates. Of that group, 254 have said they back Clinton, and 226 are supporting Obama.
In Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Obama dismissed a suggestion that Clinton, when she called him elitist, had “bordered on [calling him] uppity.”
“It’s politics,” Obama told a town-hall meeting. “This is what we do politically, when we start getting behind in races. We start going on the attack.”
Obama dismissed Clinton’s characterization of him after a member of the audience said Clinton’s use of the word elitist had angered him.
“As a white person, this term, the way it’s being used against you, it isn’t far from ‘uppity,’” the man said. “I think the Clintons are getting away with something that they must be called on. They will continue to do it until somebody states, ‘Mrs. Clinton, you are really close to prejudice here.’”
Obama said he did not believe race played a role in Clinton’s strategy.
Clinton, meanwhile, was jolted with a fresh reminder that party elders have no appetite for a campaign that drags into the convention in late August. Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the candidate who trails in the chase should quit by June 3.
“Probably sooner,” he said.
Frank’s remarks carried extra weight because of his long-standing support for Clinton and his status as a superdelegate.
Clinton appeared before newspaper editors at their convention, following appearances by Obama and Republican Senator John McCain on Monday.
Clinton’s agenda for her first 100 days in office included the start of a troop withdrawal from Iraq and submitting a budget to Congress that rolls back some of Bush’s tax cuts.
She also vowed to sign bills he has vetoed to expand federal embryonic stem-cell research and broaden government-supported healthcare to millions of lower-income children who now go without.
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