In a speech here, on the final weekend of campaigning before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on Tuesday, Mr. Obama urged voters to move beyond the political controversies that have dominated the Democratic nominating fight and stirred skepticism about his strength as a general election candidate.
“That’s the only way I can win this race,” Mr. Obama said, “if you decide that you’ve had enough of the way things are, if you decide that this election is bigger than flag pins or sniper fire or the comments of a former pastor — bigger than the differences between what we look like or where we come from or what party we belong to.”
As Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton appealed to voters in North Carolina, holding a breezy chat session with a few hundred mothers and later appearing before Nascar enthusiasts, she highlighted her support for suspending the federal gas tax this summer. Mr. Obama derided the idea as “a Shell game — literally,” drawing distinctions with Mrs. Clinton and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Mr. Obama’s speech here underscored his efforts to retool his campaign — and fend off what his aides acknowledged was unexpected strength from Mrs. Clinton in Indiana and North Carolina — by forcefully returning to themes that had served him well in Iowa and other states, presenting himself as an outsider and an agent of change. He did not, at least on this day, seem prepared to end the campaign with harsh attacks on Mrs. Clinton.
In television commercials and in his public appearances, Mr. Obama confronted the issue Mrs. Clinton has put at the front of her campaign — a three-month moratorium on gas taxes — and tried to turn it against her, portraying her as being politically calculating and cynical. That left the two rivals pointedly arguing over one of the few major policy areas on which they disagree.

nytimes.com