On Eve of Climactic Debate, Obama, Clinton Trade Attack Ads

Hillary Rodham Clinton looked to a debate Wednesday in the key primary state of Pennsylvania to help salvage her long-shot hopes of defeating Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Obama's campaign has struggled in the past week as he has had to repeatedly explain remarks considered derogatory to Pennsylvania's working-class voters -- an important bloc in a contest taking place next Tuesday. But a recent poll shows him with an 11-percentage-point lead over Clinton among Democrats nationwide and, more importantly, a solid lead in delegates who will choose the nominee at the party's convention in August.

Obama leads Clinton in delegates 1,640-1,504, with only 10 contests remaining after Pennsylvania, the largest state still to vote. A big Clinton win in Pennsylvania would do little to narrow Obama's advantage, but it would keep her campaign alive.

Democrats fear that a long primary season and the candidates' harsh criticism of each other could damage the party's chance's of defeating Republican John McCain in the November election.

The former first lady has labeled Obama an elitist for remarks he made about bitterness among economically hard-pressed working class voters. The first-term Illinois senator has countered with charges that Clinton was pandering by drinking a shot of whiskey in front of TV cameras and with stories of learning to shoot a gun at her father's knee.

Obama got a boost ahead of the Pennsylvania primary with the endorsement of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday. The western Pennsylvania city's largest newspaper said he brings ''an excitement and an electricity to American politics not seen since the days of John F. Kennedy.'' However, it said either Obama or Clinton would represent a welcome change from President George W. Bush.

Clinton was leading among Pennsylvania voters 46% to Obama's 40%, according a poll released Wednesday that had a margin of error of 5.1 percentage points. Her lead was narrower than in March when the same poll by Franklin & Marshal College showed her ahead by 16 points, 51% to 35%. The latest poll was conducted April 8-13 among 367 likely Democratic voters.

Because Democratic state contests are not winner-take-all in terms of delegates, it is extremely unlikely that Clinton could overcome Obama's lead in the elected delegate count.

Neither candidate will be able to clinch the 2,025 delegates needed to win the nomination without the approval of the party's nearly 800 superdelegates -- elected officials and party insiders who can vote for whichever candidate they want at the party's convention. Of the superdelegates, 254 have said they back Clinton, and 226 are supporting Obama. His overall delegate lead includes the committed superdelegates.

Clinton faced further challenges as a new national poll showed that more Americans have an unfavorable view of her than at any time since 1992, when her husband was elected to his first term.

Fifty-four percent said they have an unfavorable view of Clinton, up from 40% after she won the New Hampshire primary in early January, according to the Washington Post-ABC News poll. The survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points, found Obama's ratings also had dropped but remained more positive than negative.

In Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Obama dismissed a voter's suggestion that Clinton, when she called him elitist, had ''bordered on [calling him] uppity.''

''It's politics,'' Obama, who aims to become the country's first black president, said at a town-hall meeting. ''This is what we do politically, when we start getting behind in races. We start going on the attack.''

Clinton, meanwhile, was jolted with a fresh reminder that party elders have no appetite for a campaign that drags into the convention in late August. Democrat congressman Barney Frank, a Clinton supporter who is also a superdelegate, said the candidate who trails in the delegate chase should quit by June 3. ''Probably sooner,'' he told the Associated Press in an interview.

Clinton on Tuesday spoke to newspaper editors at their annual convention, sketching an agenda for her first 100 days in office that includes the beginning of a troop withdrawal from Iraq and submitting a budget to Congress that rolls back some of Bush's tax cuts.

Obama and McCain spoke at the convention Monday.

On Wednesday, Clinton was to speak at a conference of the labor federation AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department in Washington before going to Philadelphia for the debate. Earlier in the day, she won the endorsement of a union representing plasterers and cement masons, the 45,000-member Operative Plasterers' and Cement Masons' International Association.

McCain plans to hold a summit on the economy in Milwaukee on Wednesday. On Tuesday he discussed his economic proposals in a broad speech in Pittsburgh, which included tax cuts and long-term plans to help the middle class and eliminate wasteful spending. (AP)