Hillary Clinton is now chiding Barack Obama for his refusal to debate. Declaring that “There’s all kinds of issues that we should be debating about right here in North Carolina,” Clinton frames Obama’s skittishness as both a lack of substance and a lack of political courage.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is getting personal, essentially calling Clinton a liar. David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, says this in an interview:

I think her electability issues are the following: she’s got a high unfavorable rating. It would be the highest unfavorable rating for any presidential nominee in recent history. Fairly or not, the majority of voters don’t trust Senator Clinton. Those two points are related, obviously: her unfavorable rating, and the sense that voters do not find her honest or trustworthy.

Well, we certainly aren’t hearing much of the old Barack Obama, the one who said in South Carolina:

We are up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents instead of coming together to make college affordable or energy cleaner; it’s the kind of partisanship where you’re not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea – even if it’s one you never agreed with. That kind of politics is bad for our party, it’s bad for our country, and this is our chance to end it once and for all.

Remarkable as it may seem we now have Clinton calling for debates on issues and Obama name-calling. Any wonder Paul Krugman is exasperated?