With four days to the presidential election, Republican John McCain intensified his underdog message in must-win Ohio on Friday, trailing in the polls but promising “we’re coming back” in the race against front-running Democrat Barack Obama.
Obama has opened his lead in the polls by relentlessly linking his opponent to the unpopular President George W. Bush, a fellow Republican who is heavily blamed for the U.S. financial crisis, and whom voters perceive as the better choice to turn around the economy.
A new poll showed Obama leading McCain among all likely voters, 51 percent to 43 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The survey found, however, that one in seven or 14 percent can’t decide, or back a candidate but might switch.
Obama on Friday told supporters in Iowa to expect McCain’s campaign to end in a crescendo of attacks on him. “More of the slash and burn, say-anything, do-anything politics that’s calculated to divide and distract; to tear us apart instead of bringing us together,” Obama told 25,000 in Des Moines.
The Democrat said he admired a presidential candidate who said in2000, “I will not take the low road to the highest office in this land.”
“Those words were spoken eight years ago by my opponent, John McCain,” Obama said. “But the high road didn’t lead him to the White House then, so this time, he decided to take a different route.”
Meanwhile, McCain said in a morning interview with ABC television Friday, McCain charged that Obama’s economic policies were far to the left of average Americans.
“We’re going to fight it out on the economic grounds,” McCain said.