WORLD> America
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WORLD> America
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Final sprint is mostly on GOP turf
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-04 11:13 Obama's running mate, Senator Joseph Biden, and his wife, Michelle Obama, are campaigning separately on Republican turf that includes Missouri, Nevada, Colorado and Ohio. Biden is ending the day with a rally in Philadelphia, hoping to block the McCain campaign's attempts to flip the traditionally Democratic state of Pennsylvania. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton offered an assist in a spirited speech in St. Charles, Mo., urging the crowd there to support Obama in order to undo eight years of Bush administration policies and "take back our country." "I think the Republicans are out of time, out of luck, and tomorrow, we will show them out of the White House," she said. On the Republican side, McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, derided Obama's tax proposals at a rally in Lakewood, Ohio. She said that events in the last weeks of the campaign, such as Obama's conversation with "Joe the Plumber," indicated that Obama planned to raise taxes on small businesses and regular Americans. "You would be so surprised to find out what we found out, even in the last couple of days, 11th hour of this campaign, after two years," Palin said. "Eleventh hour here, and more and more light though. Thank the Lord, more and more light is being shown on his plans!" She also assailed Obama for criticizing coal plants during an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board in January. Obama said then that capping greenhouse-gas emissions, an idea he supports, would make traditional coal-fired power plants prohibitively expensive to develop. But he added that the notion of abandoning coal altogether was an "illusion." "You've got to hear this tape," Palin said. "You're gonna hear Obama saying it, talking about bankruptcy there in the coal industry. He's explaining all of this to The San Francisco Chronicle." "Liberals!" a man in the crowd shouted. "And there must be something about San Francisco and he," she continued, drawing laughter and cheers from the crowd. "Because it's like I heard on Fox News today, it's like a truth serum, where when he's there he seems to be more candid. Remember it was there that he talking about, there you go, the bitter clingers. The cling-ons, all of us, I guess, hanging on to religion and guns." Like McCain, Palin was shuttling across the country on Monday, with planned stops in Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. Palin planned to fly to Alaska just before midnight so that she can cast her vote at the Wasilla City Hall on Tuesday, then travel to Arizona to spend election night in Phoenix. This barrage of eleventh-hour entreaties may sway some voters, but millions of votes have already been locked away in a flood of early voting. One in four registered voters has already cast a ballot, according to a CBS News poll released Sunday night, and the early voters favor Obama by a 15-point margin. In some battleground states, the wave of early voters more resembles a tsunami. In Colorado, the number of ballots already cast this year equals 74 percent of the state's total turnout in the 2004 election, according to data compiled by Michael McDonald, an associate professor at George Mason University. Voting in Georgia has already reached 60 percent of the 2004 mark, and in nearby North Carolina, the figure is 73 percent. "It's pretty incredible," Dr. McDonald said. "We're at a loss for words, quite frankly." (Special Courtesy of The New York Times)
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