Obama Tries to Change the Subject

Both Dem candidates are picking at each other in the hopes of dominating the story-of-the-day. Obama has even more reason to do so since the story-of-the-day is his relationship to a bigoted (and somewhat crazy) black nationalist pastor.

CHICAGO (AP) - Strategists for the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton exchanged calculated barbs Sunday over accountability and ethics and who is engaging in personal attacks.

Obama communications director Robert Gibbs called on Clinton to release full post-White House tax returns; disclose all congressional "earmarks," or pet projects she had inserted into spending bills; and release all documents on the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Library, including a list of donors.

"What is lurking in those documents?" Gibbs asked as the two campaigns had dueling phone conference calls with reporters. "There are gaps that need to be filled," said senior Obama strategist David Axelrod.

"This is a tried and true technique of the Obama campaign that has repeatedly shifted negative when they find the momentum working against them," said senior Clinton strategist Mark Penn. He suggested the Obama campaign was trying to "deflect public opinion from their losses in Ohio and Texas" and faced with Clinton strength in Pennsylvania.

Obama was heading for Pennsylvania on Monday to campaign, with stops later in the week likely in North Carolina and Oregon. Clinton prepared to give a speech on the Iraq war on Monday in Washington.

The Obama campaign's move on Clinton came after a weekend in which the Illinois Democrat sought to ease public concerns about his ties to an indicted Chicago developer and to inflammatory statements by his former pastor.

The kind of harping that's going on now, and will go on at least through Pennsylvania (another five weeks), won't do either candidate much good. It will, however, do John McCain a lot of good.