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Clinton, Obama Give 'Final Push' for Votes in Indiana

Posted on: Monday, 5 May 2008, 06:00 CDT

By Martha T. Moore

INDIANAPOLIS -- As he sank a basket in a pickup hoops game on Sunday, Sen. Barack Obama told the crowd, "I'm a pressure player."

That would be handy, because the pressure is on in Indiana, where polls show Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary to be a virtual tossup between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In the final days of the primary campaign here, the two are battling on how to cut gas prices and, in doing so, fighting over who is a truer champion of the middle class.

"Politics didn't lead me to working people -- working people led me to politics," Obama said Sunday at a dinner thrown by the state Democratic Party.

Clinton wants to suspend the gas tax for three months and make up the revenue with a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Obama opposes a gas-tax holiday, saying it would save drivers only $28 and that quickly passing a profits tax is unrealistic.

He called the proposal typical of "empty gestures calculated to get politicians through the next election.''

Clinton, at the same event, said, "When I say solutions, I mean immediate action. ... We can't just plan for the future, we have to help people in the here and now.''

The fight continues on television: The Clinton campaign is airing an ad saying the tax holiday would save consumers $8 billion; the Obama campaign fired back with an ad accusing Clinton of taking the "low road" in attacking him and calling the proposal "bogus" and a "gimmick.''

Both candidates are emphasizing, not for the first time, their middle-class credentials and trying to portray the other as not so. In an interview Sunday on This Week, Clinton alluded to "elite opinion" opposing her gas-tax plan.

When asked to name an economist who supports her proposal, Clinton said, "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists. ... We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans."

Obama, on Meet the Press, criticized Clinton for saying the United States should "obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel.

"It's not the language that we need right now, and I think it's language that's reflective of George Bush. We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber-rattling and tough talk," he said.

Clinton said she had no regrets about her stand.

"Why would I have any regrets? I'm asked a question about what I would do if Iran attacked our ally, a country that many of us have a great deal of, you know, connection with and feeling for, for all kinds of reasons. And, yes, we would have massive retaliation against Iran."

Both candidates have been campaigning intensively in the state. Obama has focused on smaller events taking questions from voters rather than the huge rallies that characterized his campaign before Super Tuesday. The Clinton campaign has dispatched both President Clinton and Chelsea Clinton to small towns all over the state.

Before his basketball game in Elkhart, Obama knocked on doors in a residential neighborhood. Prior to the dinner, Clinton revved up volunteers at her headquarters in Fort Wayne.

"This is the final push," Clinton told a crowd of volunteers.

Former Indiana representative Tim Roemer, an Obama supporter, said Obama would overcome the controversy surrounding statements made by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. "We hit a rough patch a week ago," he said. "The fact that people haven't decided is a good thing for us."

Contributing: Wire and pool

reports (c) Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

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