Gloves Come Off in Democratic Campaign As Obama Hits Back at Bill Clinton's Attacks

Barack Obama gambled yesterday on a full-frontal challenge to the Democratic icon Bill Clinton, who has made a series of personal attacks on Obama on the campaign trail since December. Obama yesterday finally retaliated, describing the former president's behavior as "troubling" and accusing him of distorting facts.

Clinton's status as the most popular figure in the party makes any public attack risky, though less so than it would have been a few weeks ago. The former president's derogatory and often tetchy remarks have alienated and angered many senior Democrats previously loyal to him, particularly African Americans.

In an interview with ABC television, Obama said: "The former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling. He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts ... This has become a habit, and one of the things that we're going to have to do is to directly confront Bill Clinton when he's making statements that are not factually accurate."

Clinton in December said Obama's lack of experience would make his presidency "a roll of the dice". A few days before the New Hampshire primary on January 8, he described Obama's early opposition to the Iraq war as a "fairytale", a derogatory remark that has caused the most offense, and at the weekend Clinton accused the Obama team of using strong-arm tactics in the Nevada primary.

The deterioration in relations between the two camps follows a short-lived truce brokered last week after a damaging series of exchanges over race, including over the legacy of Martin Luther King.

Hostilities were suspended again for a few hours yesterday as Hillary Clinton and Obama took part in a rally - along with John Edwards, who is struggling to stay in the contest - in front of South Carolina's state legislature to mark Martin Luther King Day, a public holiday.

In the most hotly-contested battle in decades for the Democratic party's presidential nomination, Obama has so far won the Iowa caucuses and Clinton the New Hampshire and Nevada primaries.

While there has been exasperation inside Hillary Clinton's team at times with some of her husband's seemingly chance remarks, Phil Singer, a spokesman for the team, issued an unapologetic statement yesterday, saying: "President Clinton is a huge asset to our campaign and will continue talking to the American people to press the case for Senator Clinton."

A source in the Clinton camp described Obama's decision to challenge Bill Clinton head-on as stemming from frustration over defeat in Nevada. The source described the attack as "bad politics, given that Bill remains extraordinarily popular in the party" and claimed it showed that Obama was worried about South Carolina, which holds its primary on Saturday.

The Clinton camp has long since privately conceded that Obama will take South Carolina, where about half the party's electorate is African American. But the source claimed that Obama was concerned that Bill Clinton, who is popular with African Americans and will be campaigning this week in the state, would eat into his 10% lead in the opinion polls.

However, the danger for the former president is that African American voters risk being turned off by personal criticism of the only black candidate in the race.

James Clyburn, the African American congressman from South Carolina who helped to broker last week's temporary truce, yesterday called on Bill Clinton to "chill it". He told CNN: "He can afford to tone it down."

Distaste over the remarks is not confined to African Americans. Newsweek reported that there was a heated exchange when Bill Clinton called Ted Kennedy, the Massachusetts senator and still one of the most influential figures in the party. Kennedy reportedly said that the former president bore some of the responsibility for making race an issue in the campaign. Kennedy's office says he is making no endorsement "at this time", amid fears in Hillary Clinton's campaign team that he is now leaning towards Obama because of her husband's behavior.

Obama decided to go after Bill Clinton after talks with his campaign team. David Axelrod, Obama's communications director, said he did not think Clinton's comments were chance remarks, saying he had a great political intellect and chose his words carefully. Alexrod characterized it as a Bill-Hillary double-act. "There is no doubt there is a good cop, bad cop thing going on," he said.

Hillary Clinton expects to win next Tuesday's Florida primary and is also well ahead in polls in big states set to vote on Super Tuesday, February 5, including New York, New Jersey and California.