Obama knocks Clinton

Sen. Barack Obama Friday knocked Sen. Hillary Clinton for taking lobbyists' money and said she was too much a part of "business-as-usual in Washington" to bring about reform.

The Illinois Democrat's comments come after Clinton Thursday questioned his record of standing up to special interests.

"The problem we have is not a lack of good ideas," Obama said in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Friday. "It's that Washington today is a place where good ideas go to die."

"In this campaign, [Clinton has] taken nearly double the amount of money from lobbyists than any Democrat or Republican running for president," he said. "That's not being a part of the solutions business. That's being a part of business-as-usual in Washington."

Clinton has sharpened her attacks on Obama in recent days, possibly in response to the do-or-die situation she is facing over the next couple of weeks.

"I am in the solutions business. My opponent is in the promises business," Clinton has said many times on the campaign trail this week.

Clinton has also questioned her rival's ability to deliver on his rhetoric.

"There's a big difference between us -- speeches versus solutions, talk versus action. ... Speeches don't put food on the table. Speeches don't fill up your tank or fill your prescription or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night," she said during a campaign stop Thursday in Youngstown, Ohio.

The New York senator Thursday also questioned Obama's willingness to stand up to the nuclear and oil industries. In particular, she pointed to a 2006 bill that originally would have required the nuclear power plants to report any release of radiation into groundwater. Clinton suggested subsequent drafts were watered down after the nuclear industry objected to the new requirements.

On Friday Obama defended the nuclear bill, noting that Clinton supported the bill at the time, and said he could not move a stronger bill because the Republicans controlled the Senate at the time.

"It turns out that Sen. Clinton, who voted for this bill that I introduced and touted it on her Web site, thought it was pretty good then," he said. "Only in Washington can you vote for a bill, take credit for it, and then criticize the sponsor of the bill."

Obama also defended his vote for energy legislation -- a bill that Clinton dubbed "the Dick Cheney energy bill" and said gave "billions of dollars of breaks for the oil industry" -- in 2005, saying, "it was the best that we could do right now, given the makeup of Congress."

On Friday, Clinton didn't make any direct comments about Obama during a campaign stop at a Lockheed Martin plant in Akron, Ohio.

She said she was "deeply saddened" by the shootings at Northern Illinois University Thursday and "we just have to figure out how we're going to get smart about protecting our kids."

"I am bullish on America. I think our best days are ahead. It takes more than hoping for it to get it done," she added.

Obama received significant boost to his campaign Friday when he received the backing of the 1.9 million-member Service Employees International Union.

"We have an enormous amount of respect for Sen. Clinton, but it's now become clear members and leaders want to become part of an effort to elect Barack Obama the next president," union president Andy Stern said during a conference call announcing the union's endorsement.

Three sources told CNN that union leaders had deliberated on the endorsement via a conference call Thursday. Obama was the overwhelming choice of the union's state and national leadership, they said.

Obama also received the endorsement of the 1.3-million member United Food and Commercial Workers Union Thursday afternoon.

A union's endorsement can give a candidate much needed support because union members often act as "ground troops" that can canvas neighborhoods and staff phone banks for a campaign.

The two union endorsements could also help Obama in his increasingly heated struggle with Clinton for blue-collar voters in the delegate-rich states of Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.

Clinton's own supporters suggest the New York senator must do well in Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4 if she is to stop the momentum Obama has built by winning eight states in a row. The Clinton campaign has also said it is looking for a strong showing in the Pennsylvania primary April 22.

Obama now leads Clinton in the overall delegate count -- 1,253 to 1,211, according to CNN calculations.

News of the union endorsements comes as a superdelegate -- one of the Democratic Party officials or elected officials who could decide the nomination at the party's convention in Denver, Colorado, this summer -- said he would vote for Obama instead of Clinton, as he had previously pledged to do.

Rep. David Scott, an African-American from Georgia, told The Associated Press he would vote for Obama because he did not want to go against the will of the voters. Obama won the Georgia primary on Super Tuesday, February 5, and 80 percent of Scott's district voted for him, the AP reported.

"You've got to represent the wishes of your constituency," Scott told the AP on Wednesday. "My proper position would be to vote the wishes of my constituents."

The New York Times reported Friday that another black lawmaker from Georgia, Rep. John Lewis, was also going to shift his support to Obama from Clinton. Lewis is one of the most senior African-American members of Congress and a respected voice on civil rights.

Lewis' office, however, told CNN that The Times misrepresented his intentions and said Lewis had not decided to switch his support to Obama. But the AP reported many sources close to the Georgia lawmaker said he was torn over his earlier endorsement of

Bill Clinton: Race, gender key in S.C.

DILLON, S.C. - He's not on the ballot but Bill Clinton seemed to dominate the South Carolina presidential campaign, disparaging Barack Obama and journalists and predicting that many voters will be guided mainly by gender and race loyalties.

The former president suggested that his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, may lose Saturday's Democratic primary because many black voters will side with Obama. The unusually direct comment on the possible role of race in the election was in keeping with the Clintons' bid to portray Obama as the clear favorite, thereby lessening the potential fallout if it proves true.

Voting for president along racial and gender lines "is understandable, because people are proud when someone who they identify with emerges for the first time," the former president told a Charleston audience Wednesday while campaigning for his wife, a role he has played all week.

His comments and a later outburst with a reporter came on a day when Obama continued to challenge Hillary Clinton's candor and trustworthiness. He said his chief rival has indulged in double-talk on bankruptcy laws, trade and other issues.

The atmosphere grew more charged after Clinton's campaign aired a radio ad in South Carolina suggesting Obama approved of Republican ideas. Obama responded with his own radio spot that says, "Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected."

Politicians "don't always say what they mean, or mean what they say," the Illinois senator told about 900 people at Winthrop University, in Rock Hill, Wednesday. "That is what this debate in this party is all about."

At each of three main stops Wednesday, Obama mocked Clinton for saying she voted for a 2001 bankruptcy bill but was happy it did not become law.

"Senator Clinton said, `Well, I voted for it, but I hoped the bill would die,'" he said, drawing hoots from the university crowd.

Bill Clinton, campaigning on the coast while Obama was inland, said Obama and the media had stirred up tensions over race in response to some Democrats' criticisms of the couple's strategies.

"I never heard a word of public complaint when Mr. Obama said Hillary was not truthful," and had "no character, was poll-driven. He had more pollsters than she did," the ex-president said in a heated exchange with a CNN reporter. "When he put out a hit job on me at the same time he called her the senator from Punjab, I never said a word."

It was not clear what he meant by "hit job."

The former president has accused Obama of exaggerating his anti-war record and handing out undeserved praise to Republicans. Clinton said he personally witnessed Obama's union forces intimidating Nevada caucus-goers and said an Obama radio ad suggested how Democrats could keep votes from his wife.

Last year, Obama's campaign circulated a memo describing Hillary Clinton as "D-Punjab," a reference to her Indian-American donors. Obama has said that was a mistake.

Bill Clinton said civil rights leaders Andrew Young and John Lewis have defended his wife. "They both said that Hillary was right and the people who attacked her were wrong and that she did not play the race card, but they did," he said.

Clinton said the news media is much tougher on his wife than on Obama. At the end of the exchange, he told the CNN reporter, "Shame on you."

Clinton also told about 100 people in Charleston that he was proud of the Democratic Party for having a woman and a black candidate and he understands why Obama is drawing support among blacks, who may comprise up to half of Saturday's turnout.

"As far as I can tell, neither Senator Obama nor Hillary have lost votes because of their race or gender," he said. "They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender — that's why people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance of winning here."