In an outbreak of class warfare, Republican Senator John McCain likened Democratic Senator Barack Obama to European socialists who advocate redistributing wealth as he desperately tried to reverse his declining poll numbers.
With just over two weeks remaining to election day, the campaign heated up on Saturday as Obama countered by accusing his rival of being “out of touch” with the struggles of middle-class Americans who need “a break.”
The rivals swapped sharply worded charges over tax cuts, each accusing the other of shortchanging middle-income Americans at a time of economic hardship for millions.
McCain has become increasingly aggressive in debates, personal appearances and automated phone calls as the polls showed him falling behind nationally as well as in several key battleground states.
Obama attacks his rival heartily, and his rhetoric is backed by a late-campaign TV advertising blitz that McCain has been unable to match.
The candidates’ itineraries underscored McCain’s mounting problems holding on to states that traditionally have been safe for Republicans.
Obama spent Saturday in Missouri, a bellwether state that voted for US President George W. Bush in 2004. Campaign aides, citing local police, estimated 100,000 people turned out to hear him at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, on the banks of the Mississippi River.
Only once since 1904 has the Midwestern state failed to vote for the ultimate presidential election winner. The US election is not a national ballot; it is won or lost on a state by state basis, with the most populous states holding the most electoral votes.
McCain campaigned in North Carolina and Virginia, a pair of traditionally Republican states he is struggling to hold. Aides estimated his North Carolina crowd at 4,000 to 5,000, a number he matched later in the day during an outdoor appearance in Woodbridge, Virginia.
The last Democratic candidate to win North Carolina was Southerner Jimmy Carter in 1976. Virginia has not voted for a Democratic nominee since president Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964.
McCain fired the first volley on Saturday, accusing his rival of wanting to “convert the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] into a giant welfare agency, redistributing massive amounts of wealth at the direction of politicians in Washington.”
“At least in Europe, the socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives,” McCain said in his radio address. “They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Senator Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it’s just another government giveaway.”
Obama responded a few hours later in his appearance before one of the largest crowds of his campaign in St. Louis, saying his Republican rival “wants to cut taxes for the same people who have already been making out like bandits, in some cases literally.”
“John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people ‘welfare,’” Obama said.
Obama said McCain “wants to give the average Fortune 500 CEO a US$700,000 tax cut but absolutely nothing at all to over 100 million Americans. I want to cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all workers.”
Both campaigns were waiting for former US secretary of state Colin Powell’s appearance on NBC TV’s Meet the Press yesterday morning to see if he would endorse anyone.
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