High-flying Barack Obama was on Monday set to present his “closing argument” to voters as the Democrat’s epic White House duel with beleaguered Republican John McCain entered its final full week.
With just eight days to go until polling, the pair were to hold competing rallies in the rust-belt states of Ohio and Pennsylvania after a weekend battleground blitz through western states tilting towards African-American Obama (47).
A day after drawing more than 150 000 supporters to monster rallies in Colorado, Obama was to give a “closing argument speech” in Canton, Ohio that would urge voters to choose “hope over fear, unity over division”, aides said.
“In his speech, Senator Obama will tell voters that after 21 months and three debates, Senator McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he’d do differently from [President] George Bush when it comes to the economy”, a campaign statement said.
Obama, fired up by an astonishing prowess at fundraising, was to follow up his Ohio speech with a 30-minute advertisement airing on national networks at huge expense on Wednesday evening.
Republican National Committee spokesperson Alex Conant said Obama’s “closing argument” amounted to an appeal for voters to hand Washington over to one-party rule as the Democrats prepare to tighten their grip on Congress.
“Obama’s latest speech is more of the same empty rhetoric repackaged with the urgency of tightening polls and still-undecided voters,” he said, attacking the senator as “untested and inexperienced”.
McCain’s electoral map is shrinking as he battles to hold on to states won by Bush in 2004 such as Iowa, where Sunday he shrugged off national and pivotal state polls that suggest Obama will triumph on November 4.
An ABC News-Washington Post national poll gave Obama a 52% to 45% lead over McCain among likely voters, down from his 54% to 43% margin last week.
McCain will kick off the final full week of his campaign with an economic roundtable in Cleveland before holding rallies later on Monday in Ohio and Pennsylvania, key states where the Republicans believe they can win.
McCain is expected to use the run-in to ram home his attempts to portray Obama as a left-wing closet socialist who is secretly planning to raise taxes to pay for increased spending.
The former Navy pilot will also return to his theme of painting Obama as lacking the experience to be an effective commander-in-chief when American troops are embroiled in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Responding to Obama running-mate Joe Biden’s remarks last week about the likelihood of a new president facing an international test in office, McCain has repeatedly reminded voters of his war-hero status.
“I’ve been tested,” he told rallies at the weekend.
The White House contenders flew east after sparring in the western states of Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, which could seal victory for Obama if he can win all the states that Democrat John Kerry captured against Bush in 2004.
But the Democrat is also pursuing a multi-pronged strategy to keep McCain on the ropes in Republican bastions out east, including Virginia and North Carolina.
The strategy appears to be bearing fruit. A new Washington Post survey out on Monday showed the Illinois senator now leads his Arizona counterpart in Virginia by 52% to 44%.
The result represents a big gain for Obama. A similar poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News late last month showed Obama with only a slim three-percentage-point edge among likely Virginia voters.
McCain, though, struck a defiant stance as he told supporters he relished the election battle, and repeated his contentious claim that the Democratic nominee had already drafted his inauguration speech.
“What America needs now is someone who’ll finish the race before starting the victory lap, not for himself but for his country,” he said.
Nevertheless, McCain is having to fend off reports of panicked dissent from within his camp as top aides reportedly turn their fire on his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
The Republican camp has been embarrassed by revelations that $150 000 were lavished on chic designer outfits for Palin when the first-term governor was being sold to voters as an average “hockey mom”.
Insisting in Florida on Sunday that she would stick to her own attire from now on, Palin said “enough about clothes and hairdos and high heels”.
In another blow to the Republican campaign, the Anchorage Daily News, the biggest newspaper in Palin’s home state of Alaska, endorsed Obama — as did the Financial Times in its Monday edition. — AFP