The dramatic escalation of hostilities Sunday in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination suggests that Senator Hillary Clinton and her strategists are convinced they can win a war of invective and that in such a conflict they will prevail because her liabilities are already well known, while rival Barack Obama's are not yet public and have not been subjected to close examination.
The Democratic contest entered a dangerous new stage as Clinton initiated an all-out assault Sunday, directly accusing Barack Obama of failing to be consistent in his opposition to the Iraq war. Clinton also stood by at a South Carolina rally as one of her prominent campaign surrogates, Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson, raised the issue of Obama's past cocaine use and suggested that the Illinois Senator's views on race are as naïve as Sidney Poitier's in the 1967 movie "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner."
With contests in Nevada and South Carolina coming over the next two weeks and so-called "Tsunami Tuesday" scheduled for February 5 when 22 states will hold primaries and caucuses, the Clinton campaign clearly concluded that drastic and immediate action was necessary to take and hold the advantage.
A just-released ABC/Washington Post survey shows Obama picking up support in virtually every demographic group, including among such Clinton mainstay constituencies as single women. Obama has now won over a decisive majority of black voters who could play crucial roles in many southern contests, including the January 26 South Carolina Democratic primary.
Overall, the ABC/Post poll found that Obama "is reaping benefits from winning the Iowa caucuses and coming within 2 points of Clinton in New Hampshire. He now challenges her as the most electable candidate. He's severely eroded her reputation as [the Democratic Party's] strongest leader and sharply improved his trust to handle key issues. And in overall preference, Clinton and Obama now are all but tied, 42-37 percent among likely voters, a dramatic tightening."
Obama spent Sunday vigorously counter-punching the Clinton pummeling, but proved unable to wrest the offensive away from Clinton. His supporters called on Clinton to renounce Johnson's cocaine and Poitier remarks, and his top aides sharply disputed Clinton's allegations about his anti-war record.
"Two impressive candidates and formidable campaigns locked in full-scale combat," Brookings scholar Tom Mann declared at the end of the day. "The Clinton war machine has launched an aggressive offense following their near-death experience in New Hampshire," Mann said. "Obama seems to have anticipated this and is responding quickly and firmly."
Sunday began with Clinton challenging Obama's anti-war credentials during an hour long appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, not budging from her aggressive line even under sharp questioning from Russert.
"He (Obama) gave a very impassioned speech against it and consistently said that he was against the war, he would vote against the funding for the war," Clinton said. "By 2003, that speech was off his Web site. By 2004, he was saying that he didn't really disagree with the way George Bush was conducting the war. And by 2005, '06 and '07, he was voting for $300 billion in funding for the war. The story of his campaign is really the story of that speech and his opposition to Iraq. I think it is fair to ask questions about, 'Well, what did you do after the speech was over?' And when he became a senator, he didn't go to the floor of the Senate to condemn the war in Iraq for 18 months. He didn't introduce legislation against the war in Iraq. He voted against timelines and deadlines initially."
A Democratic analyst who had worked in both of Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns, but is not aligned with any candidate now, said Hillary Clinton's campaign has concluded that "the only way to go is to force Obama to get specific on stuff and push him hard. They're doing it in a much cruder way than Mondale did it to Hart and Reagan did it to [George H. W.] Bush in 1980, but they are going to plow ahead."
Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Obama's national campaign co-chair, countered that the Clinton campaign had adopted the under-the-belt tactics of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth which alleged that decorated veteran John Kerry did not deserve the medals he had won in the Vietnam War.
The most provocative development of the day was Johnson's speech at a Columbia, South Carolina Clinton rally. Responding to suggestions from pro-Obama forces that the Clintons have denigrated the achievements of Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders, Johnson told the crowd, "to me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood - and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in the book - when they have been involved."
Obama in his autobiography acknowledged cocaine use as a young man.
Johnson declared: "That kind of campaign behavior does not resonate with me, for a guy who says, 'I want to be a reasonable, likable [like] Sidney Poitier [in] 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' -- And I'm thinking, I'm thinking to myself, 'this ain't a movie, Sidney. This is real life.'"
The Clinton campaign later issued a statement from Johnson contending that he was not referring to Obama's cocaine use: "My comments today were referring to Barack Obama's time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else. Any other suggestion is simply irresponsible and incorrect."
Few observers, however, found Johnson's disclaimer to be credible. "There is no reasonable interpretation of his remarks than that he was referring to cocaine use," said Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.
Ornstein contended that Johnson's remarks went "way, way over the top," and said that "the Poitier comment seem to me to be playing with fire. Race and gender are such sensitive things in the society, and especially in the Democratic activist community, that you can end up with a serious backfire effect. I can't believe that the Johnson comments were pre-arranged."
In the view of the Obama campaign, their candidate may yet benefit if voters feel he has been the victim of foul play.
In fact, Johnson, who is black, raised just the kind of questions about Obama that Clinton strategists have been covertly pressing reporters to use as the basis for news stories. On December 12, Clinton's New Hampshire co-chair, Billy Shaheen, who is white, brought the topic to a national audience in an interview with the Washington Post, publicly warning that Republicans would seek to capitalize on the cocaine issue if Obama were the nominee. "The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight," Shaheen said, "and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use." The outcry was so strong that Shaheen was forced to take a bullet for the campaign and resign.
In contrast to Obama, Clinton has been the subject of countless adverse news stories, magazine articles and books. The ABC/Post poll found that her negative or unfavorable ratings, at 40 percent, were substantially higher than Obama's, 30 percent. Clinton aides are convinced that there is little new to be raised about Clinton, while Obama's complex past remains,journalistically, virgin territory.