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.
Also See: Race is a crucial factor in the US presidential race
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS