‘Wrong,’ Clinton says of Obama’s campaign mailings

CINCINNATI – An angry Hillary Rodham Clinton scolded Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama today for campaign mailings that she described as false and shameful attacks on her record.

Clinton’s rhetorical blast, the most bellicose of her campaign, came 10 days before Ohio and Texas primaries that could doom her candidacy if she fails to stop her 11-contest losing streak.

Waving two Obama mailings at a press conference, Clinton raised her voice and accused the Illinois senator of distorting her positions on healthcare and foreign trade.

“Enough with the speeches and the big rallies, and then using tactics right out of Karl Rove’s playbook,” she said, alluding to President Bush’s former chief political advisor. “This is wrong, and every Democrat should be outraged.”

Obama waved off the sharp criticism in a hastily arranged news conference at Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus.

“We have been subject to constant attack from the Clinton campaign, except when we were down 20 points,” he said “That was true in Iowa. It was true in South Carolina. It was true in Wisconsin. And it is true now. “I think they need to take a look at what they’ve been doing.”

One of the mailings says that Clinton’s healthcare plan would force Americans to buy coverage even if they could not afford it.

The other says that Clinton “was not with Ohio when our jobs were on the line,” describing her as a champion of the North American Free Trade Agreement approved by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

Though Obama defended the two mailers that caused Clinton’s vehement condemnation, he also questioned the timing of her outburst, which came at the end of a week in which she lost three more contests.

The healthcare and NAFTA mailers were shipped to voters in Ohio “several days ago if not weeks ago,” he said after holding a roundtable discussion in Columbus on healthcare issues. “So I’m puzzled by the sudden change in tone.

“Unless these were just brought to her attention, it makes me think that there’s something tactical about her getting so exercised this morning,” Obama said, calling the mailers completely accurate.

The senator from New York accused Obama of spending “millions of dollars perpetuating falsehoods.”

“That is not the new politics that the speeches are about,” said Clinton, who has tried to define Obama as a talented speaker with a thin resume. “It is not hopeful. It is destructive, particularly for a Democrat.”

Clinton made her comments to reporters on the floor of a Cincinnati community college gymnasium as a morning rally of about 1,000 supporters dispersed.

She said Obama’s healthcare mailing echoed talking points of the healthcare industry and its Republican allies.

“Just because Sen. Obama chose not to present a universal healthcare plan does not give him the right to attack me because I did” present one, she said.

Obama’s attack, she continued, would give “aid and comfort” to healthcare companies and the Republican Party.

“So shame on you, Barack Obama,” she said. “It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That’s what I expect from you. Meet me in Ohio. Let’s have a debate about your tactics.”

Obama told reporters today that the healthcare mailer simply makes the same point that Clinton herself does – that the main difference between the two candidates’ healthcare plans is that the New York senator requires people to buy insurance, while his does not.

Clinton and Obama are scheduled to debate on Tuesday night in Cleveland.

On NAFTA, Clinton said she had criticized the pact for years and had a four-point plan to fix it. At a rally later in Huber Heights, a suburb of Dayton, she called on Obama to stop sending the mailings to voters.

“That is no way to run a campaign here in Ohio about the importance of the election,” she told the crowd.

Clinton also released four new television ads today. One of them features her closing remarks in a Texas debate last Thursday. It shows her comments on a San Antonio hospital visit. She recalled seeing people who had lost limbs.

“You know, the hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country,” she says. “And I resolved, at a very young age, that I’d been blessed, and that I was called by my faith and by my upbringing to do what I could to give others the same opportunities and blessings that I took for granted. That’s what gets me up in the morning, that’s what motivates me in this campaign.”

Clinton strategist Mark Penn described that part of the debate as a “real moment of emotional connection” between her and the audience.

michael.finnegan@latimes.com