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Pittsburgh, PA — Sen. Hillary Clinton used some of her most direct language yet Thursday as she attacked Sen. Barack Obama for what she sees is his non-effort to resolve the Florida and Michigan primary conundrum.

“He doesn’t want the votes to count, lets not mince words here. Senator Obama has been very, very clear ‘do not count those votes, or come up with some kind of resolution that disenfranchises people by taking away their right to have voted for whom they have voted for and neither of those is acceptable to Michigan and Florida voters and I wouldn’t agree with that either,” she said during a media availability Thursday. “I did agree with a total re-vote and just throw it up in the air and see what happens and he wouldn’t do that.”

Asked if she planned to propose her own solution for ensuring that Florida and Michigan Democrats have a role in determining the ultimate Democratic nominee she said her campaign does not intend to offer a plan–outlining a potential battle at the Democratic Convention this summer.

“If it has to go to a credentials committee, then it has to go to a credentials committee, that’s what they are there for, you know, they’ve had to resolve credentialing and rules fights in the past and they will have to resolve this one,” she said.

The DNC stripped Florida and Michigan of their convention delegates last year after both states moved up their primaries and conflicted with the planned party voting schedule. Clinton won both state primaries (though she was the only major candidate on the MI ballot and no campaigning took place in FL) giving the Democratic underdog an opportunity to have a chance at catching up in the popular vote and delegate battle if she wins the fight to have both states represented at the summer convention.

During her press conference today, she couched the vote counting battle in language that slammed her own party for what she sees as a lackadaisical effort to resolve the primary dispute.

“I really don’t understand why the Republican party very clearly decided what they were going to do and the Democratic party can’t decide. I also don’t understand how you can disenfranchise voters in two states you have to try to win. I don’t think that is smart for the Democratic party,” she said. “This continuing call on my part (to count the votes) ….is in the best interest of the Democratic party.”

Today at a town hall meeting in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Barack Obama told voters they “face a clear choice in this election.” The Pennsylvania primary where Obama face off against Hillary Clinton will be held in 3 weeks, but Obama wasn’t referring to his Democratic competition, he was talking about John McCain.

“He’s on a biography tour right now, so I want to be clear that most of us know his biography and it is worthy of admiration. This is a man who’s a genuine American hero and has served this country with distinction, but my argument with John McCain is not his biography, it’s his policies,” Obama said, not mentioning Clinton.

Obama linked McCain with the current president by saying the presumptive Republican nominee was offering four more years of George Bush policies, including tax cuts for the wealthy and more trade agreements that don’t look after the American people.  He equated McCain’s response to the housing crisis to “little more than standing on the sidelines and watching millions of Americans lose their homes” and accused McCain of employing lobbyists as advisors.

And in what’s become a back and forth between McCain and Obama, the senator from Illinois continued to say his Arizona colleague would sustain war in Iraq for up to 100 years. “Senator McCain has been saying I don’t understand national security, but he’s the one who wants to keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq for as long as a hundred years, even though this war has not made us safer,” he said. “It may make sense to George Bush and John McCain, but it is the wrong thing to do, it is not right for our national security, it’s not right for our economy, and it’s not right for American leadership around the world.”

Of course he didn’t completely ignore Hillary Clinton. During the question and answer period, Obama was asked about how he would unite the Democratic Party after a long and protracted primary season. “I don’t buy this whole thing that people are super divided,” he replied.

“It’s true that Senator Clinton’s folks are passionate and my folks are passionate and some surrogates have said some things that create some bad blood, but look, when we’re at the convention and we as Democrats talk about our vision of the country and who we’re fighting for, if we stay focused not on the personal ambition of the politicians, but we stay focused on the fact that there are people out there who are counting on us to do something about health care, to do something about the home foreclosure crisis, to do something about the war in Iraq, then that will remind us of why we got into this thing in the first place,” he assured the crowd.

Campaign Manager David Plouffe made it clear that March 4th will be key in indicating who the next Democratic nominee for president will be — and the onus is on Hillary Clinton.

“This is the last big window of opportunity for them to erase what is a very, very serious delegate deficit, and we believe that we’re headed to close races in these states,” Plouffe said. The problem for Clinton, he says, is that she must win Texas and Ohio, and win big to erase that delegate deficit.

The Clinton campaign may not be expecting to catch up in terms of pledged delegates, but if they keep momentum alive by winning states (i.e. the popular vote), she would still be viable. Plouffe isn’t buying that argument, stressing this race is, has, and will be about the almighty pledged delegates. “They keep moving the goalposts, but at some point you run out of field and they have to start winning delegates and winning them quickly,” he said.

“The fact of the matter is there is the cold-hearted reality of the math and there’s 370 delegates at stake tomorrow……….if we can come out of Tuesday night’s contests with a pledged delegate lead still in our favor and if we’re able to maintain or even build on it, I think that’s going to be a major event in the nomination swing.”

Everyone goes after the leader.

John McCain says he’s been under attack from other candidates since his poll numbers started climbing in December. A day after winning the SC primary, McCain took a shot at Rudy Giuliani. The former mayor has been campaigning in Florida, criticizing the Senator’s record on taxes.

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McCain admits that it’s a whole new ballgame now. The Senator shines in the town hall format, sometimes getting into heated debates with voters. He held more than a hundred town halls in New Hampshire, and quite a few in South Carolina.

But now there are too many states and too little time to rely solely on face-to-face contact with voters.

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