Democratic hopefuls take gloves off (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong (L), Susan Walsh)
Clinton and Obama: Who’s more negative?
What happenedHillary Clinton and Barack Obama stepped up their attacks against each other as Tuesday’s Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary approached. Obama said that Clinton changed her positions to suit the tastes of voters. Clinton said it was Obama—not she, as critics said—who was stooping to negative campaigning, including criticism of her health-care plan that she said amounted to an attack on universal health care. “That’s what Republicans do,” Clinton said. (Los Angeles Times, free registration) “Look, our campaign’s not perfect,” Obama said. “There’ve been times where, you know, if you get elbowed enough, eventually you start elbowing back.” (The New York Times, free registration)
What the commentators said
Obama’s staff accused Clinton of running a “100 percent negative” campaign, said Marc Ambinder in his blog at The Atlantic. Across Pennsylvania, half of Clinton’s paid ads have been negative—most of them focusing on Obama’s “bitter/cling” comments. The rest have been positive, so, as a point of fact, “they’re not running an entirely negative campaign.”
Obama has been denouncing “tit-for-tat politics” as he travels around Pennsylvania, said John Dickerson in Slate. But that takes “chutzpah,” given that while the candidate has been denouncing “distractions” his staff has been going to great lengths to maximize the damage from “Clinton's fantastical story about her breakneck race to shelter under sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia.”
The campaign sure has “spiraled deeper into the mud pit,” said Michael McAuliff in the New York Daily News. It started when Clinton “relentlessly” pounded Obama for saying that small-town Americans cling to guns and religion out of economic bitterness. It’s all fairly easy to understand, really. Obama had been rising in the polls in Pennsylvania, and Clinton needs a “blow-out” win there to keep her slim hopes alive.
Comment on this article
Recent comments | 3 total
\"Who\'s more negative?\" Clinton, without a doubt.
MY FELLOW “BITTERâ€
jacksmith, American can see past your cut-and-oaste trolling. Are you unable to speak for yourself? Have you NO facts to offer, only lies and hate? Just look at your post, full on nonsense that can esaily be disproven by a simple internet search. YOu realize this IS THBE INTERNET? People know bettere than to believe you almost comical nonsense. Mr. Obama never said those words and the fine people of Pennsylvania know better, and, they know the truth. the truth that, especially judging by your very own comment, you are bitter. Sometimes the truth hurts, and it takes a mna like Barack Obama to speak this harsh truth. Many people in PA and acroos America are bitter because of the type of old school politics being played by the like of Hillary Clinton and John McCain. We are smarter then that. PA is smater than that and will elect Brack Obama, a great man to lead our nation to a new level it has never been to before. But, it seems many CLiton supporters don\'\' want a change from the old school, negative, slahs and burn, vitiol politics of the past. You aren;t ready, so you \"cling\" to old politicians like Hillary Clinton, who will bring all her skeletons, all her lies, and all her hatred to the forefront of this nation. America does not need that and knows better. Don\'t be bitter and vote for Hillart because you can\'t handle the truth. Obama \'08.
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