The air was hot and the mosquitoes were biting as Tom Brown sweatily trudged from house to house on the leafy suburban street. An elderly woman opened her door and eagerly took a leaflet from the Republican campaigner. Her next words brought a grin to Brown's face.
"I was going to vote for you anyway," she said, before adding: "And I'm a Democrat, too."
Brown is campaigning on the streets of Clay County, Missouri, one of the most crucial battlegrounds in the US elections. The message was loud and clear: President George W. Bush is winning in the swing states.
That is a key development as the election enters its final stretch. Most of the US is starkly divided into red and blue, but the swing states are the only place where the political palate is mixed. They are the places where the battle for the White House will be won or lost. They mainly stretch in an arc from the rust belt of Pennsylvania through Ohio and down into the Midwest. This is purple America, and nowhere is more purple than Clay County.
In the 2000 election Al Gore won Clay County by a single vote, making it the narrowest victory in the US. But things do not look so close this time around. Clay County's Republicans are openly confident of victory. In fact, Brown knows things cannot stay this good.
"It is going so good right now it's scary. That will change. There is no way Bush can maintain this level of support," he said.
All across the swing states, Bush has moved ahead as Republicans have begun to win the fierce ground war of the election. Republicans have taken leads in Pennsylvania and Ohio, which should have been firm Democratic territory. At the same time they have secured their own turf, taking double-digit leads in states like Nevada and Missouri.
That is bad news for Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry. Missouri is the most reliable bellwether state. It is a unique crossroads of American demographics: where north meets south and east meets west.
Missouri has the same percentage of black Americans as the US as a whole, the same goes for union members, and its rural and urban mix is also a reflection of the national average. In all presidential elections but one since 1900, Missouri has backed the winning candidate. And at the moment Missouri is backing Bush. He has an 11-point lead.
The reason is simple: the "war on terror." It is the centerpiece of the Bush campaign, and Clay County's Republicans are ruthlessly on-message.
"The biggest issue is keeping America safe. It is keeping our families safe," said Kate Porter, an attorney who is the Republican county chairwoman.
That echoes what the Bush campaign is saying nationally. The threat to the US from terrorism has been used as the focus of the campaign. Bush's stump speech, repeated each day, pumps the terrorism theme relentlessly. Democrats have accused the Republicans of scaremongering, but the move has struck a chord. Even here, in the pretty county seat of Liberty, seemingly so far removed from any outside threat, fear of terrorist attack is rife.
America's heartland is afraid. As Maggie Boyd, 66, sat in the picturesque town square she spoke of the recent school massacre in Russia as having a direct relevance to life in Clay County.
"You just don't know if someone is going to go into my grandson's high school and do that here," she said.
Boyd is voting for Bush. She sees the war in Iraq as an integral part of the "war on terror." For her, the pictures aired daily on TV news of bombs in Baghdad are part of the same fight that brought down the World Trade Center.
"Eleven September changed everything for me. Bush was right to go into Iraq," she said.
For Democrats, however, there is now relief that the war in Iraq has at last become an electoral issue. After weeks of damaging insults over Kerry and Bush's respective Vietnam records, political debate has finally tackled the real war that is happening today. Kerry has re-emerged as aggressive on the war. Last week he openly attacked Bush for creating the Iraq mess. It is now Kerry's mission to win the election by slamming the Iraq war. It is no simple task. Bush has consistently held healthy poll leads over Kerry on issues of national security. But the new Democratic strategy mirrors the ploy used by Bush's campaign guru, Karl Rove: hit the candidates on their strengths, not their weaknesses.
Certainly, anti-war opinion is out there. Both campaigns in Clay County admit that the war has polarized people like nothing else in a generation. Mike Springer, a local businessman, is not shy about his thoughts on Bush.
"I loathe him," he said as he drew on a cigarette outside his office. "I grew up in the Vietnam era. I see a lot of the same stuff as then. The lies, and you see all these boys coming home with no arms, no legs," he said.
There is deep anger about the war in the swing states and on the streets of Clay County. Phil Willoughby is a local Democratic candidate. His father, a lifelong Republican and a Korean War veteran, is now about to vote Democrat for the first time in his long life.
"He feels like he is being sold out. He thinks his president lied to him," Willoughby said.
But the Republicans are not just a one-trick pony, hammering away on terrorism. They have amassed a formidable campaign machine that outguns and outspends the Democrats in most states. They have been organized in Missouri far longer than the Democrats, and have more staff. The Democrats are relying on outside campaigning organizations, like America Coming Together, to do much of the crucial legwork of voter registration.
Republicans have also fine-tuned their campaign to play on local issues. Much of the swing-state battlefield is rural or semi-rural.
Clay County is typical. At one end it bleeds into the metropolis of Kansas City and at the other is farmland and small towns.
These are the "exurbs": the new political front line. Religious and moral issues play big here, and Bush's folksy style and religious rhetoric go down well. Kerry's liberal northeastern manners do not.
"I believe Bush is a Christian man and that pleases me. It is not fashionable these days to say you are being led by a higher power," Boyd said.
Much has been made of gay marriage, which Bush has pledged to make a constitutional issue. The swing states, even where they are Democratic, are often conservative in their social values. Clay County is no exception. Republicans in Missouri organized a ballot last month on banning gay
marriage in the state. It passed overwhelmingly, galvanizing the local Republican party.
"Since we got them out to vote once, it is easier to get them out to vote again," Porter said. "There are still some Democrats we haven't run out of Clay County. But we are working on it."
Willoughby believes the Democrats can still win.
"Missouri is still a swing state. We are more mobilized in Clay County than we have been in a generation. It is still early. We have six weeks left," he said.
That is true. As the election moves into its final stages, many voters are starting to pay attention for the first time. Messages that took months to deliver earlier in the year can now be got across in just days as every newspaper and television station is full of election coverage. With the crucial presidential debates about to start, Kerry can still turn around the swing-state battle.
But the backdrop is still one of fear and terrorism. No one is immune. Margene Thorpe, doing a volunteer shift in the Liberty local museum, voiced her fears.
"We wish we could go back to where we do not have to be so afraid. But that will never happen again," she said.
She, too, is voting for Bush. Her husband, Derle, sat beside her and echoed her thoughts.
"Freedom is not free," he said. "It has high costs."
If the Democrats' new strategy of making the election a referendum on Iraq is to succeed, then the Thorpes' fear and support of the Iraq war as part of the "war on terror" will have to be overcome. It will not be easy.
"How do you tell someone not to be afraid of terrorism?" Willoughby asked. "We are all afraid of terrorism."
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