Democratic race toughens up with attacks on Clinton

des moines -- Barack Obama’s decision to launch a tougher phase of his campaign with a foreign-policy attack on Hillary Rodham Clinton opened the door Friday for the one of the most contentious campaign days yet among the field of Democratic presidential contenders.

Clinton, a New York senator who is the front-runner in national public opinion polls, found herself under attack not only from Obama, an Illinois senator, but from Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. Biden also criticized Obama over a missed Senate vote, and Biden and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson sparred over a strategy to stabilize Iraq.

With the first caucuses and primaries less than three months away, Dennis Goldford, a professor of politics at Drake University in Des Moines, said the Democrats were responding because Clinton had been solidifying her lead in many polls.

“If you’re seeking to be the un-Hillary, you’ve got to do something to shake it up,” Goldford said.

Amid the attacks, Clinton picked up a valuable endorsement from Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a hero of the civil rights movement. Obama’s campaign said Lewis had a close relationship with President Clinton.

Obama used a speech before a few hundred students at Drake University to blister Sen. Clinton as being part of a Congress that “failed” the public by leading the nation into a war with Iraq that should have never happened.

He also criticized her vote for a recent nonbinding Senate resolution that labeled an offshoot of the Iranian military as a terrorist organization that is destabilizing Iraq. The resolution, Obama said, could provide a “blank check” for the Bush administration to justify an attack on Iran.

“She said, like she did five years ago, that it is a way to support diplomacy,” Obama said, referring to Clinton’s vote in 2002 authorizing war in Iraq. Diplomacy should be conducted “separately from any saber-rattling about checking Iranian influence with our military presence in Iraq,” he said.

At a separate appearance in Des Moines, Biden called Clinton’s vote for the Iranian resolution a “serious mistake.” But he also questioned why Obama was campaigning in New Hampshire instead of staying in Washington to vote against the resolution.

“I wonder why he wasn’t there to vote,” said Biden, who voted against the measure. “We all knew that this vote was coming up.”

Obama also attacked Clinton for saying this week that she would negotiate without preconditions with Iran’s leaders after she earlier had assailed the Illinois senator as “naive” for saying that if elected, he would meet with leaders of rogue nations without preconditions.

“I’m not sure if any of us knows exactly where she’s standing on this issue,” Obama said.

Edwards, whose attacks on Clinton have been more direct, said in a statement that the public deserved a president who would “tell them the truth and offer straight answers, not flip-flops and political doublespeak.”

According to Clinton’s campaign, the New York senator said the United States should enter into diplomatic talks with Iran, not a face-to-face presidential meeting as Obama said he would conduct without precondition. Her campaign also noted that Obama’s fellow Democratic Illinois senator, Assistant Majority Leader Richard J. Durbin, also voted for the Senate resolution and did not believe it could be used as a pretext to invade Iran.

“Once again, Sen. Obama has abandoned the politics of hope to engage in the same old attack politics,” Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said. “If Sen. Obama really believed that this measure gave the president a blank check for war, he should have been there, speaking out, and fighting against it.”