US:VOTING was brisk across Pennsylvania yesterday as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton made final pitches to voters in the state's Democratic primary.
The candidates continued to snipe at one another yesterday morning and former president Bill Clinton stoked up fresh controversy by accusing the Mr Obama campaign of playing the "race card" against him.
Mr Clinton made the remark during an interview on National Public Radio, during which he recalled the storm of protest that followed his comparison of Mr Obama's win in South Carolina with Jesse Jackson's victories there in earlier presidential campaigns.
Mr Clinton was asked if he regretted that comparison, which some Democrats perceived as an attempt to marginalise Mr Obama as the "black candidate" and dismiss the significance of South Carolina's primary because more than half of the voters were black.
"No, I think that they played the race card on me," Mr Clinton said. "We now know from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it all along."
Speaking to reporters at a Pittsburgh diner, Mr Obama expressed bewilderment at Mr Clinton's remarks. "Hold on a second. So former president Clinton dismissed my victory in South Carolina as being similar to Jesse Jackson and he is suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it. Okay, well you better ask him what he meant by that. I have no idea what he meant," Mr Obama said.
The Illinois senator, who is ahead of Mrs Clinton in national opinion polls and among the delegates who choose the Democratic nominee, said he expected the race to continue until the final primaries on June 3rd. "I have come to the conclusion that this race will continue until the last primary or caucus vote is cast. And that's not that far away," he said.
"And, in the meantime, what we're doing is making sure that every single voter in America has a chance to participate in the primaries and the bright side of that is we're seeing record turnouts, record involvement. We're building organisations that are getting tested. Should I end up being the nominee, the work that we've done here in Pennsylvania I think will be extraordinarily helpful in the general election."
Mr Obama predicted that Democrats would unite around their nominee and dismissed the suggestion that his failure to win over white working-class voters meant he would lose them to Republican John McCain in a general election.
"There is going to be a clear contrast between the economic message of the Democrats and the Republicans. This whole notion that somehow because there are some voters, whether it is older voters or blue-collar voters who prefer Senator Clinton over me, that that means I can't get their vote, that just isn't borne out by the polling and it is not borne out by the history of the people's voting patterns. The party is going to come together after the nomination is settled," he said.
Mrs Clinton told a television interviewer yesterday that the US could "obliterate" Iran if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel. "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Mrs Clinton told ABC's Good Morning America.
"In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.
"That's a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic."