The level of ill will among the leading Democrats is pretty high, as shown in the most recent debate.

In the most intense and personal exchange of the presidential campaign, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama assailed each other’s integrity and voting records during a televised debate on Monday in South Carolina, the site of a critical primary in five days.

If the debate was full of memorable moments — Mrs. Clinton accusing Mr. Obama of associating with a “slum landlord,” Mr. Obama saying he felt as if he were running against both Hillary and Bill Clinton, the two candidates talking over each other — the totality of the attacks also laid bare the ill will and competitive ferocity that has been simmering between them for weeks.

“You know, Senator Obama, it is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern,” Mrs. Clinton said, drawing a chorus of jeers from a crowd at the Palace Theater in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Mr. Obama shot back that Mrs. Clinton was conducting a brand of negative politics that, he suggested throughout the night, she and her husband had perfected: “comb my 4,000 votes in Illinois, choose one, try to present it in the worst possible light.” He added that he had sought to maintain “a certain credibility” in the race.

Interestingly, Barack Obama is saying the same thing that Republicans have been saying for the last 16 years about the Clinton machine. Now that Hillary is facing the possibility of being denied her anointing as queen the Democratic nominee, she is willing to use every arrow in the Clinton quiver to destroy a fellow Democrat.

Contrast that with the relatively amicable relations between the GOP candidates. The debates have been much less personal. Could this signal that the GOP will emerge from the process much more united than the Democrats, with the same sort of divisions we saw after the Carter/Kennedy struggle in 1980 again afflicting the Democrats? And will the Democrats, as in 1988, supply the Republicans with all the ammo they need to take down the eventual Democrat nominee?