ABC has posted a story about two domains that the Clinton campaign has bought. They’re both aimed at Obama, but they’re also a tell as to who Clinton thinks her stronger primary opponent is. No shock, it’s Barry O, and she’ll use the web sites to label him a coward.

It’s the first time this election cycle a presidential campaign has launched a Web site with the express purpose of of launching serious criticisms on a rival.

Votingpresent.com and Votingpresent.org are domains hosted by the same IP address as official Clinton Web sites, such TheHillaryIKnow.com, which was launched with much fanfare this week.

The Clinton campaign intends to use these new Web sites to paint Obama as cowardly.

Clinton has attacked Obama for having occasionally voted “present” as an Illinois state legislator when it came to contentious legislation.

That first sentence in the quote is wrong. Edwards had a site up about Hillary’s agricultural habits called Plants4Hillary, that lasted all of a day. But it was an attack site connected to an official campaign. ABC even notes the Plants site, but doesn’t consider it a “first” for some reason.

Obama can easily turn this back on Clinton by arguing that her vote in favor of the Iraq was was cowardly. He can argue, persuasively to the Democrat base, that she went with the majority when she should have taken a brave stand against the “rush to war.” (Hillary’s problem on Iraq has always been that the hardest intel on WMDs was developed during her co-presidency so she can’t just dismiss all of it as “lies.”) Obama wasn’t even in the Senate at the time of the 2002 force authorization vote, so Clinton can’t hit back against that charge very effectively, either to tar him as a pacifist or for having cast yet another dodgy vote since he didn’t cast a vote at all. His Teflon coating remains unscratched, even though the “present” votes are a fair issue to bring up.

So, like her previous efforts to hit Obama, these websites are likely to backfire on her. The glacier just can’t sink him without taking some damage herself.

There is a third website in the Clinton arsenal that may also prove to be counterproductive.

Clinton’s campaign has also introduced, quietly, a Web site called Attacktimeline.com, which Clinton officials say chronicles the ways Obama and Edwards were criticizing her publicly long before she began returning fire.

That sounds as if it’s not unlike an Obama site, noted in the ABC story, that catalogs Hillary’s hits on Obama. Meh.

Update (AP): Yeah, but come on. If she launches Islamicmanchuriancandidate.com now, all she has to do is apologize later.