by Mark Silva
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has carried the North Carolina Democratic primary election in a two-state contest with Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York that was still undetermined in Indiana soon after the polls’ closings tonight.
Regardless of the results, the outcome of these contests in North Carolina and Indiana would be a continuing contest between Obama and Clinton, carrying their fight to the remaining several party primaries ending on June 3 and ultimately to a battle for the backing of the party’s “super-delegates” who will settle the protracted contest between the candidates.
A two-front primary contest between Clinton and Obama played out today in two states that the GOP hopes to include in its winning columns in November. And in both places, Clinton and Obama had fought for the rural and working-class Democratic voters whom their party hopes to court in a heated fall contest with Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
In Indiana in particular, the two Democrats fought over a federal gas tax that Congress appears unlikely to suspend this summer.
Clinton played her support for a “gas-tax holiday” from the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal levy as a matter of sympathy for working-class voters facing soaring gas prices, and Obama dismissed the plan as another Washington “gimmick” that won’t really alleviate gas prices.
“What’s happened to Barack Obama,” the narrator of a Clinton campaign ad asked. “He’s attacking Hillary’s plan to give you a break on gas prices… because he doesn’t have one… Barack Obama wants you to keep paying, $8 billion in all… Hillary is the one who gets it.”
“Hillary Clinton, pandering for votes, and not telling the truth,” replied the narrator of an Obama-supporting ad run by Friends of Earth Action. “Clinton’s siding with John McCain on a gas tax plan that will do nothing to lower the cost of gas… On Tuesday it’s time for a change.”

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