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MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina: Bad blood and pent-up anger boiled
over as Democratic foes Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seethed and
accused one another of truth twisting in a rancorous 2008 campaign
debate.
Obama charged Clinton with shilling for
anti-union Wal-Mart as a corporate lawyer, while she snapped back he
did the same for a slum landlord, in the most irascible exchanges of
a Democratic race careening to a testy climax.
The two senators stared one another down,
gesticulated and constantly interrupted one another, just days
before the January 26 South Carolina primary, the next crucial leg
of the White House nominating marathon.
Obama, the Illinois senator striving to be the
first black president of the United States, also lashed out at
former president Bill Clinton, who is mounting an outspoken campaign
on behalf of his wife.
Obama all but accused the Clintons of lying
about his opposition to the Iraq war and a comment he made that the
Republicans had recently been the party of ideas, and what was
painted as praise for Republican icon Ronald Reagan.
Clinton rapped Obama over his opposition to the
Iraq war, which she voted to authorize in 2002, saying he had not
been consistent when the conflict had appeared to be going well.
“You gave a great speech in 2002 opposing the
war in Iraq,” the former first lady said.
“By the next year, you were telling reporters
that you agreed with President Bush in his conduct of the war. And
by the next year, when you were in the Senate, you were voting to
fund the war time after time after time.”
Both foes delved into one another’s personal
history.
“While I was working on those streets watching
those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate
lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart,” Obama said, drawing
applause from the audience.
Clinton did not take long to get her revenge,
saying she was battling Republicans when Obama was practicing law
and representing a campaign contributor she said ran a “slum
landlord business in inner city Chicago.”
As the third major Democratic candidate John
Edwards struggled to get a word in, Clinton accused Obama of being
unprepared for the damaging crossfire of the top-level US politics,
saying she had fought off Republican attacks for years.
One of the few moments of unity came when Obama
and Clinton roasted President George W. Bush on the economy, as
world stock markets plummeted for a second day on fears of a US
recession.
Clinton accused Bush, who last week unveiled
plans for an economic stimulus package, of not taking a mortgage
foreclosure crisis “seriously enough.”
“The President’s proposed stimulus package
is inadequate, it is too little, too late.”
Obama warned of dire economic times ahead.
“We could be sliding into an extraordinary
recession unless we stimulate the economy,” the Illinois senator
said.
“George Bush has made it worse, George Bush
has consistently skewed our tax code to the wealthy.”
“He has squandered billions of dollars in a
war that should have never been authorized and never should have
been waged,” he said referring to the Iraq war, which is fiercely
unpopular with Democratic voters.
On the national holiday commemorating the birth
of civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr., the two senators and
Edwards earlier joined thousands of people, mostly black, for a
procession and rally in the South Carolina capital.
The Republicans meanwhile were campaigning
full-bore in Florida, which on January 29 will stage a four-way
fight between new frontrunner John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt
Romney and Rudolph Giuliani.
Most polls give Iowa winner Obama a double-digit
lead over the New York senator in South Carolina, which has a
sizeable black community.
Clinton is heading out to California, Arizona
and New Mexico on Tuesday, but her campaign denied that was a sign
of an attempt to diminish expectations, before a defeat in the
primary on Saturday.
-- AFP
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