US Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama clashed last night as their campaigns took an ugly personal turn on the Martin Luther King holiday.
Mr Obama's complaints about Bill Clinton's attacks on him on behalf of his wife's campaign boiled over at a rancorous televised debate. Hillary Clinton castigated her rival for his praise of the late president Ronald Reagan, a Republican icon reviled by many Democrats.
Former North Carolina senator John Edwards, running a distant third in the Democratic race, accused them of squabbling and often had trouble getting a word in edgewise. At times CNN host Wolf Blitzer had trouble maintaining control of the debate.
Mrs Clinton accused Obama of praising ideas from the opposition party over the past 10-15 years after Mr Obama said last week that Reagan "changed the trajectory of America".
"Now I personally think they had ideas. But they were bad ideas," said the New York senator who would be America's first woman president. "They were bad ideas for America."
Mr Obama said he was in no way praising Republican ideas, but simply saying that Reagan had been able to bring political rivals together.
When Clinton interrupted to say she had not mentioned Reagan, Mr Obama said, "Your husband did." "I'm here, he's not," she responded.
"Well I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes," Mr Obama replied.
US economic woes provided an important background in the debate, in which all three participants expressed fears of a recession and denounced President George W. Bush's $145 billion stimulus plan as too little, too late.
For Democrats, South Carolina is the next battleground in the race to find a candidate for the election in November. Mr Obama, an Illinois senator, holds a slim lead in polls in the state, where more than half of the likely voters on Saturday will be black.
On
the
Republican side, presidential contenders flooded Florida ahead of a crucial showdown on January 29th in a nomination race where three different candidates have scored wins and a fourth, Rudy Giuliani, is looking for a breakthrough.