If anything is clear in this year's turbulent presidential campaign, it's that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is clinging to President Barack Obama like a drowning swimmer holds on to a life raft.

It's a risky proposition.

Clinton is hoping to retain the coalition that propelled Obama to two terms in the White House, so she is accusing Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, her competitor for the Democratic presidential nomination, of being disloyal to the incumbent. She wants to undermine Sanders' support with key Obama constituencies such as women, young people, Latinos and especially African-Americans, and run for the equivalent of Obama's third term.

Priorities USA, a political action committee that supports Clinton, is sponsoring ads in South Carolina arguing that Clinton is the true heir of Obama, the first African-American president, and that she would help African-Americans far more than Sanders would. The South Carolina Democratic primary is Feb. 27, and half the Democratic electorate in the state is expected to be black. So far, "it appears that her close connection to President Obama is one reason why Bernie Sanders has not made major inroads with black voters in South Carolina despite his strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire," writes political scientist Michael Tesler in The Washington Post.

She tethered herself even more firmly to Obama this week when she told a crowd in Harlem that racism might be involved in the opposition of Senate Republicans to any Supreme Court nomination Obama may make to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. "Some are even saying he doesn't have the right to nominate anyone, as if somehow he's not the real president," Clinton said. "That's in keeping with what we've heard all along, isn't it? Republicans talk in coded racial language. They demonize Obama. This kind of hatred and bigotry has no place in our politics."

During the recent Democratic debate in Milwaukee, Clinton complained that Sanders has said Obama is a disappointment and has "failed the presidential leadership test." She disagreed, adding, "I don't think he gets the credit he deserves."

Sanders reacted with outrage, declaring, "Madame Secretary, that is a low blow." He said he admires what Obama has done as president, especially in helping to bring about an economic recovery from the financial meltdown he inherited in 2009. But he added that he reserves the right to criticize Obama when he believes the president is wrong or hasn't gone far enough, such as in reducing income inequality. "Last I heard, we live in a democratic society," and senators are allowed to openly express their opinions, Sanders said.

Clinton, who was Obama's chief diplomat during his first term, also is courting other key elements of Obama's winning coalition. She not only condemns "really systemic racism" against African-Americans but, turning to Latinos, says she wants to change the reality of "hardworking immigrant families living in fear" of deportation. She says women's rights are "under tremendous attack." And she underscores rampant "discrimination against the LGBT community."

There are two problems with this strategy.

First, it could make Clinton look hypocritical by sending contradictory messages. At the same time she is praising Obama and what he has done, and blasting Sanders for his critique of the administration, she is also trying to capitalize on the anti-status quo mood of the voters by describing problems that Obama has not been able to solve and that Clinton says she would fix. They include income inequality, wage stagnation for the middle class, economic pain for African-Americans and the young who still suffer from a severe lack of jobs, high incarceration rates for minorities, soaring costs for college and fears of terrorism. And of course there is the virulent partisanship in Washington fueled by conservative animosity toward Obama that the president has been unable to reduce.

This duality may intensify Clinton's problem of seeming untrustworthy and insincere.

Clinton's second challenge in wrapping herself in Obama's mantle is that while most Democrats may like the connection, it might not be such a good matchup if she becomes the Democratic nominee in the general election. Obama is still a polarizing figure, and while most Democrats give him favorable ratings, Republicans dislike him and his policies intensely. And independents are divided on whether he has been right or wrong for the country.

"There certainly is a crisis of confidence in our country's institutions," conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in The Washington Post recently. "But that's hardly new. The current run of endemic distrust began with Vietnam and Watergate. Yet not in our lifetimes have the left and right populism of the Sanders and [Republican presidential front-runner Donald] Trump variety enjoyed such massive support. The added factor is the Obama effect, the depressed and anxious mood of a nation experiencing its worst economic recovery since World War II and watching its power and influence abroad decline amid a willed global retreat."

This fall, Clinton may want more than a bit of breathing room between herself and the incumbent so she can demonstrate her own forward-looking brand of leadership. But the way she's talking now, this may not be possible, and her current effusive praise for Obama may come back to hurt her.