Last week a caller to Talkback, Northern Ireland's popular radio phone-in programme, accused Gerry Adams of selling out.
A hard-line republican, annoyed at Sinn Fein's warm embrace of partitionist institutions? No, the caller's complaint was that Sinn Fein had sold out on socialism and was becoming too middle class.
Adams denied the accusation of abandoning socialism but then proceeded to make a strong play for middle-class votes. He was glad of anyone's support, he said. Sinn Fein wanted as broad a electoral endorsement as possible.
Their campaign certainly bears that out. The party has fielded candidates right across the North.
In the local government campaign, with polling on the same day as the Westminster vote, SF canvassers are knocking on doors with expensive brass furniture in leafy suburbs where no one has seen SF before.
They are toe to toe with the SDLP in a tetchy slugging contest across the North. Both parties need to stand everywhere to keep their share of the vote up. In the past, SF has lost out to the SDLP in the overall share because the SDLP stood in areas like North Down and picked up the odd thousand votes to boost its total.
This time, SF is challenging the SDLP everywhere. The SDLP has no longer a free run for the nationalist vote in any constituency.
Two sets of figures to watch in this battle: on the one hand 24 and 16; on the other three and two. In the last Westminster election, fought on the same constituencies in 1997, the SDLP got 24 per cent of the vote and SF 16 per cent.
Since then, SF has never fallen below 17 per cent. Now standing in every nook and cranny, SF cannot afford to slide back to 16 per cent. The SDLP cannot fall below 24 per cent. Either result will be a defeat.
The parties do not hope to advance by converting each other's voters. SF has been contesting elections against the SDLP now for 20 years but detached few voters.
The parties' supporters consist of tribes in the nationalist community as distinct but as similar as Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Both parties hope instead to attract new voters and here SF has the edge.
The Catholic population is a young one; in most areas, half the population is under 25. This young population has been coming onto the electoral register in increasing numbers since the mid-1990s. Ominously for the SDLP, a substantial chunk of SF's vote comes from the 18-35 age group.
With five nationalist constituencies sewn up 3:2 in the SDLP's favour, the most intense contest for that new young vote is joined in West Tyrone and Fermanagh/South Tyrone. Both constituencies have massive nationalist majorities, particularly in the young age group. In both constituencies, SDLP and SF accuse each other of splitting the vote. The constituencies are vital because SDLP has three Westminster seats and is determined to prevent SF gaining a third.
People may not pay much attention to percentage share of the vote, but three SF MPs would be powerfully symbolic, placing the party on equal footing with the three SDLP MPs.
Naturally, SF is equally determined to win that third seat. They believed its name is West Tyrone, theirs for the taking after Pat Doherty opened several lengths of green turf between himself and the SDLP in 1998. The SDLP is gambling Brid Rodgers's high public profile against Doherty's organisation. SDLP people tell journalists West Tyrone is the party's Stalingrad. They point out the Russians took a pasting, clung on by their fingertips, but in the end defeated the Germans.
SF hotly rejects the analogy, saying SDLP are the interlopers and Brid Rodgers a carpetbagger. They claim local SDLP people aren't working for her and accuse the SDLP of preferring an anti-agreement unionist to a pro-agreement SF person. Rodgers hopes to benefit from about 1,000 votes donated by the Alliance Party who have withdrawn.
They may make the decisive difference in avoiding the SDLP's nightmare scenario, namely, Pat Doherty beats Brid Rodgers but unionist Willie Thompson slips in ahead of Doherty. If that happens, the electorate will never forgive the SDLP. All of which overshadows the contest in neighbouring Fermanagh/South Tyrone, where for the first time in 18 years, there is a split in the unionist vote. In 1997, there was a dead heat between SF and the SDLP, with Ken Maginnis 13,000 votes ahead.
It would require a massive swing to the anti-agreement unionist candidate to allow a nationalist win, which reinforces the crucial importance of West Tyrone as the only place there is a possible nationalist gain.
Meanwhile, alongside the Westminster tussle, SF is working assiduously to take some council seats from the SDLP on the same day. They hope to wipe out the SDLP in the Lower Falls, but the party's burning ambition is to have the mayoralty of Belfast which, as the largest party in the city, they believe they are entitled to. They need to win votes in the suburbs to do that.
Out there, SF canvassers are the best dressed and always carefully and quietly close the gates at the end of driveways. In those areas, however, half the population is not under 25. They need SDLP voters to switch, or at least give SF a preference, an option not available under the Westminster system.
In previous elections, SF have polled a high first preference vote but stuck there as transfers leapfrogged opponents over them. No wonder Gerry Adams would like middle-class votes.
He knows the SDLP has to beat SF every time: he only has to beat the SDLP once. To do so he has to move to the centre ground. It's going to mean more accusations that SF is becoming a middle-class party. It also means the war really is over.
Dr Brian Feeney, a former SDLP councillor, is a writer and commentator