ON THE TRAIL

The Associated Press

April 23, 2008

Former President Bill Clinton accused the Obama campaign yesterday of playing "the race card on me" after the South Carolina primary. Clinton told a Philadelphia radio station his comments were "twisted" after he likened Obama's primary victory to the Rev. Jesse Jackson's in 1988. Clinton was asked if he regretted that comparison. "No, I think that they played the race card on me," he said. "We now know from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it all along." Obama scoffed at 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's suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it?" he said to reporters at a Pittsburgh diner. "OK, well you better ask him what he meant by that." He denied there was any plan to use the comments for political purposes.

Republican John McCain made a risky argument in a hard-hit Ohio steel town yesterday, telling residents that free trade can help solve their problems. Though such communities have hemorrhaged jobs, McCain insisted that free trade is not the cause. "The biggest problem is not so much what's happened with free trade, but our inability to adjust to a new world economy," McCain said at Youngstown State University.