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WORLD> America
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Final sprint is mostly on GOP turf
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-04 11:13 On the last full day of a nearly two-year US presidential race, the Democratic and Republican campaigns are kicking into overdrive.
Senators Barack Obama and John McCain are hurtling toward the finish line on Monday in a last-minute blitz to fire up their supporters and win over any remaining undecided voters, holding 10 rallies across four time zones and even appearing on MTV and Monday Night Football. The candidates are fighting the final round of the campaign almost exclusively on Republican turf, in states from Florida to Missouri to Nevada. McCain alone is charging through seven states on Monday as he tries to overcome Obama's lead in the polls and pull off an upset win on Tuesday. "The Mac is back," McCain told supporters in Indianapolis on Monday afternoon, "and we're going to win this election, and we're going start right here in the Hoosier state of Indiana, my friends." McCain has made familiar criticisms on his whirlwind tour, saying in city after city that his Democratic rival would raise taxes, increase spending and drive the country's struggling economy deeper into crisis. "Senator Obama's running to punish the successful," he said early in the day in Tampa. "I'm running to make everyone successful. This is the fundamental difference between Senator Obama and me." After appearing in Florida, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Mexico and Nevada, McCain planned to end the day with a rally in Prescott, Ariz. Even as the candidates make their final arguments to voters and strike themes of unity and bipartisanship, they continue to attack each other on taxes, energy issues and questions of leadership and judgment. In Jacksonville, Fla., Obama again criticized McCain for being out of touch on the economy. It was there that McCain told supporters on Sept. 15 that he believed "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." Democrats pounced on the statement, making it a central refrain when they attacked McCain. The crowd booed after Obama repeated the quotation, but he shushed them. "You don't need to boo, you just need to vote," he told them. Obama told the crowd that they were one day away from "changing the United States of America," and offered a coda to his closing arguments, which call for a more conciliatory tone in Washington and policies that focus on the middle class. And he warned not to ease up in the waning hours of the campaign. "Florida, don't believe for a second this election's over," Obama said. "We're going to have to work like our futures depend on it for the next 24 hours -- because it does. At this point, I've made the arguments. Now it's all about who wants it more, who believes in it more." After Florida, Obama was traveling to North Carolina and Virginia to pursue a strategy of trying to rack up electoral votes in states that voted Republican in the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Obama has been outspending McCain on television advertising in states like Florida and North Carolina. Late Monday afternoon, Obama issued a statement saying that his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, had died of cancer in Hawaii. Dunham, 86, helped raise Obama, who flew to Hawaii to visit her in late October when she became gravely ill. "She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility," he said in a statement, which he released with his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. "She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances." |
