US Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton accused each other on Saturday of waging negative campaigns
CALIFORNIA: US Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton accused each other on Saturday of waging negative campaigns as they sped across Pennsylvania before next week’s potentially make-or-break primary election.
Obama, an Illinois senator who is the party’s national front-runner but trails in Pennsylvania, hopes an upset on Tuesday will hand him the Democratic nomination and knock Hillary out of the race for the right to face Republican John McCain in the November election.
Obama pounded on the New York senator at various stops throughout the day for using negative tactics and changing positions on key issues. “What’s happened is that
Hillary has internalised a lot of the strategies, the tactics that have made Washington such a miserable place where all we do is bicker and all we do is fight,” he told a rally in Paoli, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia.
He described the former first lady’s tactics as: “We’re going to throw whatever we want at Barack, whether it’s true, whether it’s false, whether it’s exaggerated, whether it’s relevant, because that’s, according to Hillary Clinton, what the Republicans will do.”
The Hillary Clinton campaign returned fire, saying an Obama ad deliberately misrepresented her health care policy and taking umbrage at comments by a US general and Obama supporter who said Clinton lacked the “moral authority” to lay a wreath on a soldier’s grave.
“He always says in his speeches that he’s running a positive campaign, but then his campaign does the opposite,” Hillary told a rally in the town of California, referring to Obama.
Hillary has seen her sizable advantage over the Illinois senator in Pennsylvania dwindle to a single-digit lead, but a Gallup daily tracking poll released on Saturday gave her a slight edge among Democrats nationwide — putting her ahead of her rival in that ranking for the first time since mid-March. Both candidates crisscrossed the state ahead of Tuesday’s primary, the first nominating contest in several weeks.
Hillary travelled by bus and plane to some five rallies statewide, while Obama rode a train for a “whistle-stop” tour of four cities. Hillary advisers said Obama was using negative tactics himself.
Advisers say they expected a narrow win for Hillary. “If Obama is unable to win here with his enormous spending advantage ... it will again demonstrate that he has a big problem winning in the large swing states that a Democrat needs to win in order to become president,” Communications Director Howard Wolfson said.
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