Obama camp slams Clinton ‘lunacy'

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe argued to reporters Wednesday that the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign has virtually no hope of moving ahead in the delegate count after the climactic Texan and Ohio primaries two weeks from now.

“This is a wide, wide lead right now,” Plouffe said on a conference call following Sen. Barack Obama’s blowout win in the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday.


“I am amused when he Clinton campaign continues to say: 'Well, it’s essentially a tie.' I mean, that’s just lunacy. We have opened up a big and meaningful pledged delegate lead. They are going to have to win landslides from here on out to erase it.”

Showing a new aggressiveness and focus on Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) as the likely Republican nominee, the Obama campaign held a conference call with foreign policy adviser Susan Rice to “respond to Sen. McCain’s foreign policy attacks on Barack Obama.”

Rice called the argument that Obama lacked experience "specious."

"He's shown the judgment that's necessary, and that's what we need," Rice said.

The Clinton campaign on Wednesday opened a new website, The Delegate Hub, to push its case about delegate counting.

Plouffe said Clinton aides “keep offering alternative theories for why they can win the nomination that have nothing to do with the votes that are happening in these contests.”

“Now, when they don’t like the delegate math they rewrite the rules — and I gotta tell you, voters are tired of that,” he added.

“In order for them to begin to really erode the pledged delegate lead, they probably need to win both of these states by well over 20 points,” Plouffe said.

“We would encourage you all to ask the Clinton campaign in great detail, state by state, how they would intend to erase this pledged delegate lead... ."

Nevertheless, Plouffe said Obama will campaign ferociously in Texas and Ohio as well as the other two states voting on March 4 — Rhode Island and Vermont.

“We have no doubt what we’re in store for,” he said. “We know these are going to be a challenging couple of weeks — a lot of negative attacks flying and attempts to disrupt us.”