Featured Campaign '08 Content
Oct 15, 2008 8:00 am US/Central
Obama Camp: 'This Is John McCain's Last Chance'
WASHINGTON (CBS) ―
Falling behind in the polls, Republican candidate John McCain hopes to shake up the presidential race in his final debate with Democrat Barack Obama, who will be looking to close the deal with voters unhappy with the country's direction.
Both candidates are likely to emphasize pocketbook issues, a burning concern as financial institutions wobble and voters feel the pinch of a faltering economy. Each released proposals this week for how to boost the economy.
A copy of Obama surrogates' pre-debate talking points slipped out inadvertently on a campaign press list this morning, according to Politico.
"This is John McCain's last chance to turn this race around and somehow convince the American people that his erratic response to this economic crisis doesn't disqualify him from being President," say the talking points.
Wednesday night's debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., is slated to focus entirely on the economy and domestic policy. The candidates will be seated at a table with moderator and CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer.
Obama enters Wednesday's debate with a wide lead over Republican rival John McCain nationally, a new CBS News/New York Times poll shows. The Obama-Biden ticket now leads the McCain-Palin ticket 53 percent to 39 percent among likely voters, a 14-point margin, according to the poll.
With the economic crisis fueling public unease, Obama, who spent the last few days in northwest Ohio preparing for the debate, has built leads nationally and in key states as the turmoil has returned the nation's focus to the policies of the unpopular President George W. Bush. The burden now is on McCain to try to reverse his slide.
To that end, the Arizona senator took a new approach this week, positioning himself as a fighter for the American middle class and easing off his most direct attacks on Obama, an Illinois senator. McCain also took pains to separate himself from Mr. Bush.
"We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change. ... As president I intend to act, quickly and decisively," McCain said Tuesday in battleground Pennsylvania.
He announced a $52.5 billion economic plan Tuesday that calls for halving the tax rate on capital gains and reducing the tax on withdrawals from retirement accounts, among other measures. A day earlier, Obama unveiled a $60 billion proposal that includes an extension of unemployment benefits, a 90-day freeze on home foreclosures, penalty-free withdrawals from retirement funds and a $3,000 tax credit for each new job.
Both candidates call for doing away with the tax on unemployment benefits.
McCain has suggested that he is likely to bring up Obama's links to William Ayers, a radical during the Vietnam War era. Ayers was a member of the violent Weather Underground group but later became a university professor in Chicago and an expert on education. He and Obama both worked with some of the same charity foundations in Chicago, and Ayers hosted a reception for Obama when he first ran for the Illinois state Senate.
"We're always prepared for him to be hyperaggressive in his attacks," Obama campaign aide Robert Gibbs said of McCain. "I just think that doesn't work in an environment where so many people are concerned about the issues in front of them, not scare tactics they don't see as helping to pay the bills."
He said Obama will try to project an aura of calm leadership during the debate, which Gibbs said he achieved in two previous debates with McCain.
Obama's campaign also has taken some shots at McCain, increasingly labeling him "erratic" and "lurching" for solutions to the economic crisis. The words suggest unsteadiness by the four-term senator, who is 72.
Polls conducted after the earlier debates found that more people thought Obama had won both.
One week ago, prior to the Town Hall debate that uncommitted voters saw as a win for Obama, that margin was just three points.
Among independents who are likely voters - a group that has swung back and forth between McCain and Obama over the course of the campaign - the Democratic ticket now leads by 18 points. McCain led among independents last week.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
