United States Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democratic party’s frontrunners for the White House, are locked in a battle that has unleashed a raft of negative campaigning as their party debates who should be its 2008 presidential candidate.
An ugly fight between the two politicians raged all last week in the first serious bout of open infighting in the current Democratic political campaign. Previous spats had broken out between campaign officials, but now the candidates are openly attacking each other.
There are signs that the fight has damaged both the top-tier candidates and perhaps opened a door of opportunity to another Democrat contender. A CNN poll in the vital first voting state of Iowa showed both Clinton and Obama had dropped 6% to second and third place respectively. Left-wing candidate John Edwards led the Iowa poll by five points, though he still trails Obama and Clinton in all national polls.
Edwards, sensing his moment, has joined the fight by attacking both the frontrunners. ”We have had two good people, Democratic candidates for president, who have spent their time attacking each other instead of attacking the problems this country faces,” he said at a campaign event at the end of last week.
The duration and viciousness of the Clinton-Obama spat has caught Washington by surprise and marks the end of the ”phoney war” between the two leading campaigns. It throws serious doubt on whether Clinton — if she wins the nomination, as many expect — can now choose Obama as a running mate. Democrat insiders make little secret of her dislike for Obama’s campaign and anger at the challenge it represents.
The fight began at the start of the week during the YouTube debate in South Carolina where all the Democratic candidates were asked questions submitted through the video-sharing website. Obama answered a question on foreign policy by saying he would meet leaders of nations considered unfriendly to the US. Clinton said she would not.
Later, Clinton described Obama’s stance as ”naive”. That remark appeared to land a direct hit on Obama’s campaign. Clinton aides and the Republican party have repeatedly identified Obama’s relative inexperience as his weakness.
However, Obama immediately went on the offensive. His campaign’s central message is one of change and he slammed Clinton’s foreign policy ideas as a mere continuation of the current administration’s. He dubbed her ”Bush-Cheney Lite” and attacked her most vulnerable spot — her early support for the invasion of Iraq. That, in turn, prompted further attacks from Clinton.
Obama’s campaign also started running an ”attack ad” in Iowa and the other key early voting state of New Hampshire. The advertisement asks ”Ready for a new direction?” — a reference to Clinton being a member of the establishment. It then repeats Obama’s commitment to talking to all world leaders.
Clinton hit back. In an interview on CNN, she demanded: ”Whatever happened to the ‘politics of hope’?” — a reference to Obama’s oft-stated commitment to set a high tone of debate.
It is hard to pick a winner in the dispute. Clinton has shown she is capable of picking holes in the campaign of her most dangerous rival, and that she does not make such mistakes. However, by attacking Obama she has conferred extra status on his challenge. It is an old saw of American politics that frontrunners should be very careful about picking fights with challengers.
Obama has shown he will immediately go on the offensive when attacked. That is likely a lesson learnt from watching the ill-fated campaign of the 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry, who was widely seen as responding too slowly to Republican assaults.
But the real winners could be Edwards and the other second-tier Democratic candidates. The fight gives those candidates a chance to boost their own profiles and pick up disaffected supporters from both campaigns. — Guardian Unlimited Â