Only a few months ago, Barack Obama rarely mentioned Hillary Clinton by name and was criticized for not hitting her hard on the campaign trail.
But this week in Nevada, with Clinton holding a slight edge in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama didn’t hesitate to ridicule her for showing indecisiveness on key issues.
Clinton has hit back just as hard, arranging conference calls with supporters to denounce her senate colleague for calling the GOP the “party of ideas” during the past decade and for what she sees as other political transgressions.
Political analysts say the attacks will continue as long as the race remains close. While Clinton is favored to win the Nevada caucuses today, Obama is viewed as the likely victor in the South Carolina primary next week, which would leave no clear front-runner.
“If Clinton doesn’t win Nevada, Obama has considerable momentum moving forward,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant who worked on Bill Clinton‘s presidential campaign. “There is a lot at stake here, therefore the fighting will only increase.”
Surrogates are conducting most of the attacks, which have grown more frequent and more vicious.
On Friday, Clinton recruited Rep. Barney Frank to denounce remarks Obama made in a Jan. 17 interview in which he said, “I think it’s fair to say the Republican party was the party of ideas for the last 10 or 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.”
“I am stupefied by the comment,” Frank said. “This kind of explicit endorsement Ronald Reagan baffles me.”
One of the most cutting attacks is a Spanish-language radio advertisement by a Nevada union allied with Obama criticizing Clinton in connection with a lawsuit over the location of voting sites on the Las Vegas strip.
The ad proclaims that “Hillary Clinton does not respect our people,” and that Obama, “is defending our right to vote. Obama wants our vote, he respects our vote.”
United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, a Clinton backer, conducted a conference call with reporters in which she denounced the ad as “pathetic” and a desperate attempt to win the Hispanic vote, which is leaning toward Clinton.
