Obama likely to step up his attacks

WASHINGTON — Again unable to score a knockout, Sen. Barack Obama is likely to make his new negative tone even more negative — with a sharp eye on trying to end the Democratic presidential-nomination fight after the May 6 primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's victory Tuesday in Pennsylvania has accentuated the quandary that Obama faces: Stay negative and risk undermining the premise of his candidacy. Stay aloof and underscore Clinton's argument that he will not be able to beat a "Republican attack machine."

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe indicated Tuesday night which of those options they would take. "We've done a lot of counterpunching. We've been swift and effective," he said. "For Democrats judging how we're going to perform as the nominee, we have been relentless."

But the candidate who rocketed to stardom as the embodiment of a new kind of politics — hopeful, positive, inspiring — saw his image tarnished in the bruising fight for Pennsylvania. Provoked by Clinton's repeated references to his remarks about the state's voters and her charges that he is an "elitist," Obama struck back.

"It's a real danger for Obama, and if you look at these recent ads, the messages they're delivering in all these conference calls, it's a far cry from last fall," when the theme of hope emerged amid calls for a more negative tone, said Democratic consultant Steve Elmendorf, a Clinton supporter.

Republican strategist John Feehery put it less charitably: "That's the danger of running as holier than thou. You have a lot farther to fall."

Late last year, with the Iowa caucuses looming and Clinton maintaining huge leads in national polling, Obama donors and advisers pressured the campaign to begin drawing sharper distinctions with the New York senator. The response was to stay positive, but to out-organize Clinton, especially in caucus states.

The strategy helped Obama build what is still likely to be an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, total states won and popular votes, while his message filled arenas, inspired artists and energized young voters. But that was not enough Tuesday to win over the working class.

If Obama's image was coarsened in Pennsylvania, the next round of primaries may do it even more damage. But his advisers say the campaign is in a far different place now. The Illinois senator is much better known nationally, with an image that will not be recast easily.

"Are there some people who might see him as less than the idealistic candidate that he was at the beginning of this process? Certainly," said an Obama adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "But part of what we are trying to do is confront an effort by his opponents to paint him negatively. At some point, he's got to be able to respond."

In recent days, the Obama campaign has flogged Clinton's exaggerations about a 1996 trip to Bosnia, framed comments she made against MoveOn.org activists as her version of "Bitter-gate," and accused her of tactics reminiscent of Karl Rove.

"Senator Clinton has internalized a lot of the strategies and the tactics that have made Washington such a miserable place, where all we do is bicker and all we do is fight," Obama said last weekend.

With Obama clearly favored in North Carolina, even he has called Indiana the "tiebreaker," a state where Clinton voters hold sway in the working-class towns in the south. Leading up to the primary, a Democratic strategist said aides are likely to turn to the controversies of Bill Clinton's White House years — Hillary Rodham Clinton's trading cattle futures, Whitewater and possibly impeachment.

"Everyone knows the history of the Clintons," the strategist said.

Plouffe would not say the campaign planned to address that period but seemed open to the possibility: "The Republicans certainly are going to look at those issues, the Clinton finances, the record issues. We have chosen not to go there."

Tony Fabrizio, a GOP pollster, said the onslaught of negativity that saturated Pennsylvania and is likely to wash over the big final primary states of Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky and Oregon has not registered with many voters.

But there are signs that the brutal slog is taking a toll. Clear polling leads that Obama once held over Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, have disappeared.

The candidate of hope is morphing into an Ivy League scold, said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster — and Republicans can hardly believe their good fortune. With President Bush's approval ratings at record lows, oil prices soaring, housing foreclosures spreading and an unpopular war raging, the Republican Party faces what may be the worst political environment since the early 1970s. And, they say, Democrats are making the same mistake now.

"He's George McGovern without the military experience," Ayres said of Obama. And the Clinton campaign will exploit such an attack, as her backers seek to convince superdelegates — elected officials and party powers — that Obama is unelectable.

Washington Post polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.