National News
With visits and money, Obama narrows race in Mont.
HELENA, Mont. (AP) - Republican John McCain has history on his side in Montana. Democrat Barack Obama has 19 campaign offices.
Montana is typically safe territory for Republican presidential candidates. President Bush won the state by about 20 points in both 2000 and 2004, and only two Democrats - Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and Bill Clinton in 1992 - have carried the state since 1948.
But Obama staked out Montana early as a potential battleground state and he's sticking with it to the end. McCain, confident of winning the state's three electoral votes, is virtually ignoring it, although the Republican National Committee will begin airing ads in Montana for the first time Wednesday.
Obama's campaign didn't back off when the state appeared to be a shoo-in for McCain in September. And now McCain's lead appears to be in doubt. A recent Montana State University-Billings poll showed the race within the margin of error, with Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 40 percent among likely voters, and 10 percent undecided.
Obama's rise may be less about his appeal and more about dissatisfaction with McCain among independent-minded voters.
The Democratic presidential hopeful was the beneficiary of support for Constitution Party candidate Ron Paul. Paul is not campaigning - he even asked to be taken off the ballot - but some supporters still say they will support him over McCain.
Obama also has been advertising in the state at a rate of about $160,000 per week. The Republican Party was expected to double that ad buy for the last six days of the campaign.
Up in the Kalispell area, more than 30 percent voted for Paul in the June primary - well after it was clear McCain was the party's presumptive nominee. Many will vote for him again, said avid supporter and AM radio talk show host John Stokes.
"People are just fed up with the mainstream parties," Stokes said. "Folks see this country is on a downward slope and not adhering to the Constitution."
Paul garnered 4 percent of the vote in the recent poll, although he has not made an appearance in the state and has no office or volunteers.
McCain's campaign has never considered Montana a battleground state and still doesn't. His campaign has no paid staff in the state but operates out of six offices it jointly runs with the Montana Republican Party, which staffs them.
McCain is banking on the advice of state Republicans who told him to focus on more competitive states.
"John McCain has basically punted in Montana," said veteran pollster and political scientist Craig Wilson, who oversaw the MSU-Billings poll. "But I am still surprised that Obama is still playing to the extent he has in Montana."
That has left the state open for Obama to make his case. His campaign has been buying television ads for months, with no plans to scale back.
"If Montana can stay red and we can allow Sen. McCain to focus his money elsewhere and be competitive in the larger states, I think that's a plus," Heverly said.
In its bid for Montana, the Obama campaign has seized on Western issues and developed nuanced platforms for farm, wildfire and natural resource policy.
But the McCain campaign says Obama is too liberal for places like Montana and believes that in the end voters in the state will embrace the Republican.
While the GOP has history on its side, Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer gives several reasons this year is different: Obama has been here five times to ask for votes; he is pitted against a Republican who does not excite conservatives on key issues like guns; and Obama has articulated a comprehensive energy policy.
Guns are an important issue to Montanans, and Democrats like Schweitzer and Sen. Jon Tester, who ousted longtime GOP Sen. Conrad Burns, score high with gun owners. Obama has tried to neutralize the issue by saying he won't take away guns.
But that hasn't eased the fears of influential groups like the National Rifle Association, which has lashed out at Obama as "a poster child of the extremist, elitist gun-control movement."
In years past, Montana rarely received attention from presidential candidates. And if it did, the state never received the committed attention it has from Obama.
The Obama campaign says it has no plans to pull resources from Montana, where it has 19 offices with full-time staff across the state. The campaign boasts 14,000 active volunteers, according to Caleb Weaver, Obama's spokesman in the state.
Obama's ties to Montana go beyond his numerous visits this season. His campaign chief of staff, Jim Messina, previously worked for Montana Sen. Max Baucus. Messina has promised the campaign will spend whatever it takes in Montana to ensure Obama is competitive with McCain.
Palin: 'Far-left wing of the Democrat Party’ could takeover
LAKEWOOD, Ohio (CNN) – With her voice beginning to crack on this final marathon day of campaigning, Sarah Palin promised an audience in Ohio: “We will win!”
“You can just feel it here,” she said at a rally in the Cleveland suburbs. “You can just feel it here in Ohio, victory's coming, we can do this, we can win, we can win Ohio. And we must win for you.”
The crowd chanted “We will win! We will win!” throughout her remarks. At one point, Palin warned with urgency: “We must win.”
“We must win,” she said, “because Ohio, the far-left wing of the Democrat Party, not mainstream Democrat ideology, the values, the planks in the platform of the Democrat Party. It's the far-left wing of the party is getting ready to take over the entire federal government.”
Palin again accused Barack Obama of wanting to bankrupt the coal industry, citing an interview the Democrat gave to the San Francisco Chronicle in January in which he discussed his “aggressive” cap-and-trade proposal to limit carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.
“Just yesterday, revelation, an audiotape surfaces,” Palin argued, despite the fact that the Obama interview has been posted online for nine months. “People are starting to hear in his own words what Sen. Obama’s intention is for the coal industry. You got to hear this tape. You’re going to hear Obama saying it, talking about bankruptcy, bankruptcy there in the coal industry. He’s explaining all this to the San Francisco Chronicle, and he says …”
Palin was interrupted by an audience member who shouted “Liberal!”
She continued: “And there must be something about San Francisco and he 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, and remember it was there that he talked about, there you go, the bitter clingers, the cling-ons, all of us, I guess, you know holding on to religion and guns and, um, so something about he being there in San Francisco.”
Obama says attacks on wife 'completely out of bounds'
CNN – Looking back at his two-year marathon for the presidency, Barack Obama told CBS he was most angered by "right-wing" attacks on his wife, Michelle, and said many of them were "completely out of bounds."
"I do believe there is a Republican or right-wing media outlet, or set of media outlets, that went after my wife for a while in a way that I thought was just completely out of bounds," Obama told CBS' Katie Couric in an interview that aired Monday morning.
"Frankly, I would never have considered or expected my allies to do something comparable to the spouse of an opponent. I just feel like family are civilians."
Mrs. Obama took particular heat from conservative circles for comments she made during the primary season, when she said that for the first time in her adult life "I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback." Those comments were highlighted by several Republican state party chapters in an effort to paint the potential first lady as angry, leading the Democratic presidential nominee to call on them to "lay off my wife" in an ABC interview in May.
Mrs. Obama was also been labeled "Obama's baby mama," by Fox News and "Mrs. Grievance" by the conservative National Review. Some conservative outlets also buzzed last summer about the possibility of a tape, which has never appeared, that showed her using the word "whitey" from the pulpit of Trinity United Church. The Obama campaign said Mrs. Obama had never uttered the word and that no tape existed.
"I just feel like family are civilians, and they don't sign up for this stuff… They really should be bystanders in this process, even if they're campaigning for you," Obama told CBS in the interview that aired Monday.
Protesters make noise at Biden event
TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) – Just two days after completing a three-day bus tour of central and southern Florida, Joe Biden is back in the state for three events Sunday, this time in the north as part of campaign’s final battleground state push before Tuesday’s election.
On the campus of Florida State University Sunday morning, Biden continued to deliver the campaign’s ‘closing arguments’ that include a plea to supporters to reach out to Republicans after the election in order to bridge the partisan divide.
For the first time since being named the Democratic vice presidential nominee, a small group of McCain and Palin supporters tried to interrupt the Delaware senator’s remarks from the public sidewalk about 150 yards from the podium. Their chants inaudible through a megaphone, they took to using the device’s siren to disrupt.
Biden referred to “the people in the parking lot” four times, using them as an example of those that Democrats will have to reach out to after Tuesday.
“I mean it literally. Not a joke. I know you find some of that obnoxious,” said Biden. “We gotta end this. Somebody's got to be big enough to stand up and end this.”
There’s also a practical reason, Biden argued, legislation won't be able to pass without bi-partisan support.
“You think we're going to get education reform? You think we're going to re-establish and end this war and re-establish our place in the world without getting a significant portion of Republicans to agree with us as well? No one party can do this.”
Barack Obama and Biden have been targeting McCain and Palin over the past two days for the endorsement they received from Dick Cheney on Saturday, asking if any more proof is needed that this Republican ticket would be a continuation of the Bush-Cheney administration.
“Folks, John McCain and Sarah Palin can have Dick Cheney’s endorsement,” said Biden, We’ll settle for people like Warren Buffett and Colin Powell.”
After Sunday in Florida, Biden continues the swing state tour in the campaign’s final hours, heading to Missouri Monday morning, Ohio in the afternoon and Philadelphia at night. After voting at home in Wilmington Tuesday morning, he will visit at least one more swing state before joining Barack Obama in Chicago.
