WASHINGTON, Pa. — Democratic Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday dismissed a voter’s suggestion that when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called him elitist it “bordered on uppity.”
“It’s politics,” the presidential candidate told a town-hall meeting on veterans affairs. “This is what we do politically, when we start getting behind in races. We start going on the attack.”
Seeking to undercut his advantage, Clinton has seized on Obama’s comments in which he told donors at a private San Francisco fundraiser that blue-collar voters “cling to guns or religion” because of bitterness about their economic lot.
Obama has said he chose the wrong words to characterize the economic insecurity many people face.
At the town-hall meeting, an audience member said he was angry at Clinton’s suggestion that Obama’s comments were elitist.
“As a white person, this term, the way it’s being used against you, it isn’t far from uppity,” the man said. “I think the Clintons are getting away with something that they must be called on. They will continue to do it until somebody states, ‘Mrs. Clinton, you are really close to prejudice here.’ ”
Obama said he didn’t believe race played a role in Clinton’s strategy.
Primary polls give Obama edge
WESTPORT, Conn. — Barack Obama is leading Hillary Rodham Clinton in two of the next three Democratic primaries, an advantage, if it holds, that would let him to sew up the party’s presidential nomination.
A new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll of likely Democratic voters gives Clinton a 46 percent to 41 percent edge in Pennsylvania, and a similar 40 percent to 35 percent lead for Obama in Indiana. In North Carolina, Obama has a larger, 13-point advantage.
“To have a solid chance of winning the nomination she’d probably have to win all three” and get “a double- digit victory in Pennsylvania,” says Tad Devine, a former strategist for Democrat John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid. “If she wins just one of the three, it may be difficult if not impossible for her to continue,” and “if she loses Pennsylvania, it’s over.”
The poll, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, offers some warnings for Democrats in the general election. More than two-fifths of voters in each of the three states say the controversy surrounding Obama’s former pastor will be a problem if the Illinois senator is the Democratic presidential nominee in the fall. And at least one-fifth of voters in Indiana and North Carolina say they would vote for Republican candidate John McCain in November if their chosen Democratic candidate isn’t the party nominee.
Frank wants nominee set in June
WASHINGTON — Rep. Barney Frank said the trailing Democratic presidential candidate should drop out of the race no later than June 3 — the date of the last two Democratic primaries — even if it is the candidate he supports, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“Probably sooner,” the Massachusetts congressman added in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press. He suggested that the trailing candidate should drop out once it becomes clear that person has no practical chance of winning the nomination.
South Dakota and Montana vote June 3. Sen. Barack Obama leads Clinton in pledged delegates and in the popular vote. But neither can mathematically win a majority by that date, and the final outcome will depend on superdelegates. Frank is one of the nearly 800 elected officials and party leaders who are superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention.
