Relations between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama reached a new low at the weekend with a series of increasingly destructive exchanges and “attack” ads ahead of Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary, the last big contest of the Democratic party’s 15-month presidential nomination campaign.
The two camps now routinely swap personal criticism to a degree rarely seen when the battle for Pennsylvania began seven weeks ago.
Obama, abandoning his stance as a candidate standing above the fray, claimed that Clinton had adopted a “slash and burn” strategy in the knowledge that she was no longer able to win.
A retired general and Obama supporter, Walter Stewart, told reporters that, because of Clinton’s lie about being under sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia, she would lack the “moral authority” as president to lay a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier. Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s communications chief, described it as the “most outrageous attack of the campaign”.
The Obama campaign distanced itself from the remark. The latest opinion poll, published on Sunday by the McClatchy newspaper group, put Clinton on 48 per cent to Obama’s 43 per cent, with 8 per cent undecided. She needs to win by a margin of 10 per cent or more to head off calls to quit the race.
Geoff Garin, the head of the Clinton campaign team, told MSNBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that she intended to stay in the race after Pennsylvania. Resisting pressure from Democratic leaders to end the contest, Garin said: “There is no need to make a rush judgment.”
The next contests are on May 6 in North Carolina, which Obama is expected to win easily, and Indiana, which polls suggest is too close to call.
David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign strategist, acknowledged that Clinton had a right to remain in the race, even though her defeat was inevitable.
Obama, who will have spent $9.3 million on television advertising in Pennsylvania, a record for a primary, put out two fresh ads at the weekend, one attacking Clinton’s healthcare policy. Bill Clinton, also on the campaign trail, described the ad as “bull”, while the Clinton-supporting governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, said ad spending by Obama was “almost obscene”.
At a late-night rally in Harrisburg on Saturday, he told 8,000 people on the steps of the state capitol building that Clinton had taken more money from lobbyists than any Democratic or Republican, whereas he had not taken any. This would mean a continuation of the same old Washington politics if she became president, he said.
Clinton, speaking to a crowd in Wynnewood on Saturday, took a dig at his rhetorical style. “I don’t want to just show up and give one of those whoop-dee-do speeches and get everybody whipped up. I want everyone thinking,” she said.
