Feb 24 2008
Ready, Set, Fingerpoint!
Hillary Clinton is escalating the rhetoric against Barack Obama and at this point is frankly beginning to sound more than a little desperate.
CINCINNATI — Hillary Rodham Clinton angrily accused her Democratic rival Saturday of deliberately misrepresenting her positions on NAFTA and health care in mass mailings to voters, adding, "Shame on you, Barack Obama."
Clutching two of Obama campaign mailings in her hand for emphasis, the former first lady said, "enough with the speeches and the big rallies and then using tactics that are right out of Karl Rove's playbook."
Obama defended the mailings as accurate and rejected Clinton's complaint as a political ploy. He said that despite her current criticism of NAFTA, she supported the trade agreement when it passed during her husband's administration.
"You can't be for something and take credit for an administration … and then when you run for president say that you didn't really mean what you said way back then. It doesn't work like that," he said to cheers at a rally in Akron.
The long distance clash erupted as the two Democrats campaigned separately across Ohio, one of two big states with primaries on March 4.
Obama appears to be shrugging off Clinton's attacks as mere politics. Which they are, of course. But in these exchanges, he sounds confident, she sounds shrill. That is not a recipe for a Clinton victory.
