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Mauritius: Clinton, Obama Go On Attack Ahead of Crucial Vote
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L'Express (Port Louis)
22 April 2008
Posted to the web 22 April 2008
Port Louis
The marathon US presidential nominating race is entering the final straight. After the Democratic party's Pennsylvania primary today, there will only be nine more contests to go.
Latest polls show HIllary Clinton (R) leading Barack Obama, with the latter however slowly closing the gap.
Ahead of a crucial US presidential vote, Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sharpened their attacks yesterday, with Clinton pouncing on Obama for saying Republican John McCain would be better for the country than George W. Bush.
Obama told a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania McCain would be an improvement over Bush, a comment that seemed to undercut the message he often pushes that electing McCain would amount to giving the current Republican president a third term. "You have a real choice in this election - you know, either Democrat would be better than John McCain, and all three of us would be better than George Bush," Obama said.
Clinton, vying with Obama for the Democratic nomination and the right to run against presumptive Republican nominee McCain in the November election, criticized Obama's comments. "We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain," she said at a rally in Johnstown.
The two candidates sparred ahead of today's Pennsylvania primary, which has become a major test in the race for the party's nomination.
Clinton, a New York senator who needs a win in the state to keep her presidential ambitions alive, leads in polls but Obama, an Illinois senator and the national front-runner, has cut into her one-time double-digit lead in recent weeks.
At a later event in Scranton, Obama appeared to backtrack on his suggestion that McCain would be better than Bush, once again reiterating his view that the Arizona senator was "running for George Bush's third term."
"Cheap points"
"We can't afford four more years of George Bush policies under the guise of John McCain," Obama said. He also said Clinton's campaign tactics amounted to "game-playing" and said she would not represent enough of a change from the Bush administration.
"Trying to score cheap political points may make good headlines and good television but it doesn't make for good government," Obama said. "If we're really going to solve big problems then we can't just settle for a little bit better. We need something fundamentally different," he added.
Clinton said it was Obama who had gone negative since their Philadelphia debate last week. "It's no wonder that my opponent has been so negative these last few days of the campaign because I think you saw ... a big difference between us," she said at a rally in Bethlehem. "While my opponent says one thing in his campaign, he does another. You can count on me to tell you what I will do," she said in Johnstown.
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Clinton, who with her husband former President Bill Clinton has been the subject of many conservative investigations since the couple first entered the White House in 1993, was endorsed on the day before by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review whose publisher, Richard Mellon Scaife, funded many of those probes. "Clinton's decision to sit down with the Trib (editorial board) was courageous, given our long-standing criticism of her," the paper said. "Political courage is essential in a president. Clinton has demonstrated it. Obama has not."
Obama picked up an endorsement, too, from the Financial Times. "After today's vote, the Democrats should move quickly to affirm Obama's nomination," it said. "He is, in fact, the better candidate."
Ahead of today's Pennsylvania vote, most analysts believed Clinton would win but the size of the victory has become the focus of both campaigns.
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