Washington: Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton faced some of the harshest criticism yet from Barack Obama, her rival for the party's nomination, who accused her of having no restraint and using tactics typical of Republicans.
The New York senator, who trails rival Obama by 10 percentage points nationally in the latest Gallup Poll tracking survey, meanwhile sought to cement working-class votes in the looming Pennsylvania primary by saying yesterday that her husband was wrong to push through a free trade deal with Canada and Mexico.
She vowed to change or walk away from the pact that many Americans hold responsible for a loss of US jobs.
Obama made his comments at an Associated Press annual meeting following a question about whether the long nomination battle was hurting the Democratic party's chances at the White House.
"I have tried to figure out how to show restraint and make sure that during this primary contest we were not damaging each other," he said.
Clinton "may not feel that she can afford to be so constrained" he said, adding at one point that she's "been deploying most of the arguments that the Republicans will be using against me in November."
Obama has sustained a weekend of criticism stemming from his comment that some small-town voters are bitter over their economic circumstances and "cling to guns and religion" as a result.
Earlier, he also questioned Clinton's truthfulness about opposing free trade agreements in a speech before the Alliance for American Manufacturing in Pittsburgh, once one of America's steel-making hubs.
