Obama Sharpens His Tone
As Pa. Vote Nears, Clinton Criticizes Rival's Negative Turn

By Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 21, 2008; A01

READING, Pa., April 20 -- Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday traded accusations of negative campaigning as they headed toward a critical showdown in the Pennsylvania primary.

The volleying in the final hours reflected the high stakes in Tuesday's contest. Clinton is favored to win, but the senator from New York may still face renewed pressure to end her candidacy unless she rolls up a sizable margin in the popular vote and significant gains in the overall delegate count. As the candidates jostled with one another, their advisers mounted a final effort to shape expectations for what will constitute victory on Tuesday.

The Pennsylvania race has forced Obama to rewrite his script from earlier contests, with the result being a more aggressive tone and style in the final hours of this campaign than had been the case in previous states. Far more than at any other time in the campaign, Obama has applied pressure to Clinton, both on the stump and in his increasingly negative advertising.

The dramatic shifts in Obama's campaign in Pennsylvania reflect the lessons learned from earlier disappointments, when victories might have driven Clinton from the race. In the closing days of previous contests, the senator from Illinois almost appeared to coast toward the finish, wary of appearing too aggressive toward Clinton for fear that undecided voters would find her a sympathetic figure.

Since Wednesday's debate in Philadelphia, however, Obama has steadily escalated his rhetorical attacks. He has questioned whether she is honest and trustworthy and cast her as a practitioner of old-style, special-interest politics.

Speaking at Reading High School Sunday afternoon, Obama accused Clinton of using a "kitchen-sink" strategy of negative attacks aimed at him and said to his opponent, "You learned the wrong lessons from those Republicans who were going after you in same way using the same tactics all those years. I don't want us to become like them. I want us to change the country."

Clinton, campaigning in Bethlehem, called her rival's approach "so negative" and charged him with mimicking Republicans by attacking her plan for universal health care.

"He has sent out mailers, he has run ads, misrepresenting what I have proposed," Clinton said. "I really regret that because the last thing we need is to have somebody spending as much money as he has downgrading universal health care."

Obama's Pennsylvania campaign reflects his desire to bring the long nomination battle to a close quickly. He also is seeking to overcome any doubts the remaining uncommitted superdelegates may have about his toughness as a candidate in the hope that many more will endorse him.

But Obama advisers also believe they are competing against a more vulnerable Clinton, one whose credibility is damaged and whose negatives are higher as a result of a series of mistakes.

Clinton's campaign advisers say it is now Obama who is pursuing a kitchen-sink strategy, with millions of dollars of television ads. Geoffrey Garin, the co-chief strategist of Clinton's campaign, said Obama's campaign "is throwing a ton of money and a ton of mud at us" because it fears the consequences of a Clinton victory.

Garin said that, after controversy over Obama's comments about small-town Americans being "bitter" and a debate in which he was subjected to tough questions, the stakes have been raised for Obama in Pennsylvania.

"Given how much they've thrown at us, and the all-out effort the Obama campaign has made to win, we don't believe that the margin matters that much any more -- just who comes out on top," Garin said.

Obama's advisers dispute that notion, saying that if they hold Clinton's margin down well below her 10-point win in Ohio a month ago, she will have failed to do what she needs. They also said their aggressive ads this weekend are an attempt to avoid the mistakes of earlier campaigns, when attacks from the Clinton campaign stalled Obama's progress.

"Hillary has a track record of doing a large amount of negatives in the last 72 hours of all these major state battles," noted one Obama official, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about strategy. "Instead of getting beat up and not pushing back, this time we are on the offensive."

Obama officials said they expect Clinton to win on Tuesday, but their goal is to prevent her from winning the kind of double-digit victory she secured in Ohio, which slowed Obama's march toward the nomination.

From start to finish, almost everything about the campaign Obama has run in Pennsylvania has been strikingly different from earlier contests.

He and his advisers came off the defeat in Ohio and the loss in the popular vote in Texas on March 4 determined to rewrite their script -- de-emphasizing huge rallies for smaller events and stepping up informal campaign stops at diners, bars, bowling alleys and ice cream shops to give the campaign a more down-to-earth feel.

Obama gained ground in the polls, but two controversies -- one involving his former pastor's incendiary, anti-American comments after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the senator's remarks about the bitterness of small-town Pennsylvanians -- raised fears that his progress might have stalled.

After Wednesday's debate, in which Obama fielded tough questions from Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, the senator began the final weekend seeking to regain the offensive. He drew a stark contrast with Clinton and emphasized to voters the choice they face on Tuesday.

The new language began to emerge in downtown Philadelphia Friday night before the biggest crowd of his campaign: a sea of 35,000 people, stretching across three blocks in front of Independence Hall.

In the written text of the speech, he compared his mission to reform Washington to the Founding Fathers' quest to throw off the "tyranny" of the British Empire. He drew a contrast with Clinton that was clearer and more crisp than in debate appearances or previous campaign speeches. Compared to what was coming, the language was still somewhat restrained.

"Senator Clinton is a tenacious opponent and a committed public servant," Obama said. "But her message comes down to this -- we can't really change the say-anything, do-anything, special-interest-driven game in Washington , so we might as well choose a candidate who really knows how to play it." He also depicted her as a political opportunist: "She's taken different positions at different times on issues as fundamental as trade and even war to suit the politics of the moment."

On Saturday, during his whistle-stop train tour, Obama steadily toughened his script. "She seems to have a habit of saying whatever it is that folks want to hear," Obama told a crowd in Paoli. "I try to talk honestly about how we're going to solve problems."

In Downington, he said, "The fact of the matter is, Senator Clinton essentially buys into the kind of politics that we've become accustomed to in Washington. . . . She's got the kitchen sink flying, the china flying, the buffet is coming at me."

By Harrisburg, he had added this line: "Senator Clinton would be vastly different than George Bush would be, but that's a very low bar."

Staff writer Anne E. Kornblut, traveling with Clinton, contributed to this report.