The contest between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination is tight and getting nastier by the day.

Democratic strategist James Carville, who also is a friend to former President Bill Clinton and the senator from New York, said on NBC’s "Today" show on Thursday that the testiness on the campaign trail is just the nature of politics and that voters should not be distracted by the candidates’ “passionate” behavior in their effort to score points against one another.

All’s fair in love and war, it is said. But when war is being played out on the battleground of race, is all really fair? Or even true?

The Obama campaign has challenged Clinton’s candor and trustworthiness, while Bill Clinton has accused Obama of getting kid-glove treatment from the media. Both sides have accused the other of using race, with Obama supporters saying the Clintons claim to have done more for black people than they really did and are using words like “kid” (read “boy”) and implying that Obama’s community organization experience in black neighborhoods was unimportant work.

Bill Clinton, campaigning on the coast of South Carolina while Obama was inland, said Obama and the media had stirred up tensions over race in response to some Democrats' criticisms of the couple's strategies.

Earlier this week, Obama’s campaign announced a “truth squad” to correct what it said was misinformation about the Illinois senator being pushed by the Clintons. Bill Clinton, campaigning in South Carolina for his wife, said many voters in the primary would be guided mainly by gender and race loyalties -- a hedge, perhaps, in case Hillary Clinton loses to Obama in Saturday's primary.

Both sides say they just want to get the truth out to the American people.

“Well, I see the Obama campaign announced its truth squads to counteract the Clinton effect, and it appears that neither side is giving weight to the truth that they talked about earlier,” said Todd Shaw, an associate professor of political science and African-American studies at the University of South Carolina.

In fact, both candidates have told the stories they hope will stick. And that’s not particularly unusual in campaigns.

Obama’s political experience is relatively light compared to some other candidates, but not as marginal as Hillary Clinton has made it out to be. She may have two Senate terms under her belt, but Obama made some significant strides while a state senator in Illinois, including making inroads on fighting poverty and expanding early childhood education efforts.

Hillary Clinton boasts “35 years of experience,” but much of that was vicarious as First Lady of Arkansas and then the United States, although she was a key player in the establishment of the Children’s Defense Fund and has wielded great influence on policy matters as a lawyer, as well as an unofficial adviser to her husband.

However, senators Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd and Gov. Bill Richardson -- all of whom have dropped out of contention -- had significantly more experience negotiating the politics of Washington than Sen. Clinton. In fact, if experience is the standard by which candidates should be judged, hers may pale against leading Republican candidate Sen. John McCain, especially on matters of national security.

By boasting of their civil rights bona fides and their efforts on behalf of the black community, the Clintons and Obama are hoping to pull the significantly large black vote of South Carolina into their respective corners. In the fight for every vote, it can be easy -- and risky -- to overplay one’s hand.

“Both have something to lose if they overstress that, but one side feels the other side is doing just that,” Shaw told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

The former president suggested that his wife may lose Saturday's Democratic primary because many black voters will side with Obama. The unusually direct comment on the possible role of race in the election was in keeping with the Clintons' bid to portray Obama as the clear favorite, thereby lessening the potential fallout if it proves true.

The atmosphere grew more charged after the Clinton campaign aired a radio ad in South Carolina suggesting Obama approved of Republican ideas. Obama responded with his own radio spot that says, "Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected."

Shaw said that while splitting the black vote may create something of an opening for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, the real question is what does Obama win if he takes the South Carolina primary -- which plays to the Clintons’ strategy?

“Obama is still leading strongly in the polls,” Shaw said. “He seems to have converted a majority of the black vote to his side. At least in the short term, Obama seems to be the beneficiary” of the fight with Sen. Clinton.

Victory could feel less than total, however, as political strategists ask if the Obama campaign is really helped if he wins South Carolina with a racially divided vote.

“He does, however, have a small portion of the white vote,” which may diminish that argument, Shaw noted.

Political analysts have said the same people who would not vote for a black man, particularly in the south, probably aren’t likely to vote for a woman either, so the strategy of throwing the race card down on Obama’s side of the table won’t necessarily help Hillary Clinton in the general election.

“People’s knowledge, to some degree, is based on experience. If you’re in South Carolina, your experience is white people won’t vote for a black man. If you live in Massachusetts, you know white folks voted for a black governor (Deval Patrick) and a black U.S. senator (Edward Brooke). If you live in Colorado, Colorado has had a number of black people elected statewide. It depends on where you are,” David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, told BlackAmericaWeb.com in an interview in December about Obama’s electability.

“He won’t win South Carolina (in the general election),” Bositis said, “but neither is Hillary.”

“It is a dilemma of the south but, of course, it is a dilemma for the Democratic Party,” Shaw said Thursday, because black voters are a core constituency of the party, but it must also consider whether the black vote can counteract the white vote and throw party unity into disarray.

Additionally, the Clintons face closer scrutiny of their record on the issue of civil rights and the benefits black people enjoyed during Bill Clinton’s administration.

“I think the Clintons can claim that they have been sympathetic with regard to issues of civil rights, but I think they have to be careful because they face a credible and formidable black candidate,” Shaw said. “That talk about Clinton being the first black president is very much tongue-in-cheek now. If they don’t recognize this is a slightly different playing field, they could be in trouble.”

Many black people tend to view Hillary Clinton as an extension of Bill Clinton’s policies. The former president enjoyed strong support from the black community, and some hope a Hillary Clinton administration might actually be a closet third term for her husband.

That said, Bill Clinton’s record doesn’t necessarily square with the good feelings he tends to engender among black Americans.

“There’s plenty of evidence that, with respect to blacks and Latinos, there were many, many missed opportunities at home and abroad,” Christopher Edley, Jr., dean of the Boalt Hall law school at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a December interview.

He cited the Clinton administration’s failure to do more to reverse HIV in Africa or to intervene during the Rwandan genocide. Bill Clinton signed a crime bill that disproportionately landed black Americans in prison as a result of increased penalties for crimes, expanded disproportionate sentencing for crack cocaine-related crimes over powdered cocaine-related activity and reduced habeas protection under the law.  

And even though the economy improved under Bill Clinton, and there were more jobs available for everyone, unemployment still was higher for black Americans than for whites.

The Clintons, Edley told BlackAmericaWeb.com, are personally comfortable around black people in a way that previous presidents and candidates have not been, however “there’s no shortage of evidence that the Clinton administration often failed to translate that comfort with black people into aggressive advocacy on behalf of black people.”

“A hopeful African-American electorate was at the core of Bill Clinton’s successful bids for the presidency. In many ways, the scandal-marred, deeply partisan years of the Clinton administration proved disappointing in the face of such early optimism. Welfare reform, the growth of black imprisonment, and the public abandonment of progressive African-Americans like Lani Guinier are some of the most memorable racial disappointments of those years,” Melissa Harris-Lacewell, an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University, wrote in an article for Slate magazine published Thursday.

“Even through these disappointments, African-Americans were among Clinton’s strongest supporters because many believed Clinton’s era was an economic boon.”

Harris-Lacewell said she analyzed five national surveys from 1984 through 2000 and co-authored a report in the Journal of Black Studies that reported that by the year 2000, many black Americans incorrectly believed black people were doing better economically than whites.

Even though some black people did prosper during Clinton’s presidency, the rate was nowhere near what many believed it was. Bill Clinton became an expert, Harris-Lacewell wrote, at using cultural markers convinced people that he really understood the black experience.

“As Clinton performed blackness, real black people got poorer. The poorest African-Americans experienced an absolute decline in income, and they also became poorer relative to the poorest whites,” Harris-Lacewell wrote.

Still, she said, many black people felt an emotional attachment to Bill Clinton and believed that black people had fared better during his administration than they actually did.

“It is hard to vote your interests,” she wrote, “if you can’t judge your circumstances.”

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Associated Press contributed to this report.