Obama camp: Clinton obsessed with GOP “attack machine”

A top adviser for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said Friday that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the front-runner for her party’s presidential nomination, is obsessed “with what she calls the Republican attack machine.”

“I think we need a candidate who is obsessed with unifying this country again,” said Obama adviser David Axelrod. He added that Obama could break “the sort of decades-long battle we’ve had over this jagged divide — red state, blue state, American against American — and try to bring people together and attract disaffected Republicans and attract independent voters so that we could build not just a victory, but a governing coalition in this country.”

{mosads}Axelrod also took a swipe at former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), who is third among Democratic presidential candidates in national polls. Edwards, the party’s vice presidential nominee in 2004, said this week that the country needs more than rhetoric about change in what was viewed as a jab at Obama.

Axelrod, prompted by a question during an MSNBC interview, said that Edwards’s attack on Obama and Clinton could be a sign of desperation.

Responding to reports this week that Michelle Obama had attacked the Clintons’ marriage, Axelrod only said that the story was “nonsense.”

“This was not about Hillary Clinton,” Axelrod said about Michelle Obama’s remarks.

At a campaign stop, she had stated that if one can’t run his or her own house then one also cannot run the white House. This was perceived by some as a commentary on the Clintons’ marital woes.

“I know for a fact that she really admires — I mean, the Clintons raised a splendid daughter,” Axelrod said. “And Michelle, I think, is very admiring of Hillary for that. So this was not an attack.”