Obama and Clinton Take the Gloves Off In AFL-CIO Debate

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, far left, stands on stage with seven of the eight Democratic presidential candidates before a debate held by the AFL-CIO at Soldier Field in Chicago. Next to Sweeney, from left, are New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.), former senator John Edwards (N.C.), and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio). (By Charles Rex Arbogast -- Associated Press)

Minutes later, Biden issued a withering putdown, saying he has walked with and fought on behalf of labor for more than three decades, often in difficult circumstances. "That's the measure of whether we'll be with you when it's tough," he said. "Not when you're running for president in the last two years, marching on 20 or 30 or 50 picket lines."

Kucinich played often to the union audience and drew laughs when he called himself the "Seabiscuit of this campaign," referring to the unlikely champion racehorse. But in a less jocular moment, he called out his opponents for not joining him in vowing to end the North American Free Trade Agreement and pull the United States out of the World Trade Organization.

"No one else on this stage could give a direct answer because they don't intend to scrap NAFTA," he said, adding: "I'm your candidate if you want to get out of NAFTA."

The longest and sharpest argument came when moderator Keith Olbermann of MSNBC mentioned Dodd's reproach of Obama last week. Obama had said that he would threaten unilateral U.S. military action inside Pakistan in pursuit of al-Qaeda terrorists if Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf did not root them out.

"I think it is highly irresponsible of people who are running for the presidency and seek that office to suggest we may be willing unilaterally to invade a nation here that we are trying to get to be more cooperative with us in Afghanistan and elsewhere," Dodd said Tuesday night.

"Well, look," Obama responded, "I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war against terrorism."

Clinton then jumped in to say that, regardless of the soundness of Obama's policy, he should avoid speaking hypothetically as a candidate for president.

"I think it is a very big mistake to telegraph that, and to destabilize the Musharraf regime, which is fighting for its life against the Islamist extremists who are in bed with al-Qaeda and Taliban," she scolded.

Biden reprimanded all of them by pointing out that what was being debated was already settled U.S. policy. "It's time everybody start to know the facts -- the facts," he said.

Edwards proved the aggressor against Clinton, as he was Saturday in a debate at the Yearly Kos bloggers convention, when he called on all the candidates to stop taking contributions from Washington lobbyists, which Clinton does.

On Tuesday, Edwards wrapped up a question about NAFTA -- which he criticized as the product of Washington lobbyists, not of representatives of working men and women -- by saying: "The one thing you can count on is you will never see a picture of me on the front of Fortune magazine saying I am the candidate that big, corporate America is betting on."

It was a direct reference to an issue last month of Fortune magazine, which featured Clinton on the cover and the headline "Business Loves Hillary! (Who Knew?)."