No Vacation From McCain's Attacks

With Obama off the stage, the Democratic National Committee next week will try to take up the slack, delivering birthday cakes on the Aug. 14 anniversary of Social Security to McCain and Republican state headquarters and hitting McCain's support for carving out private investment accounts from fixed Social Security benefits. On Tuesday, the DNC plans to hold what it calls a national day of action to paint McCain as a captive of Exxon Mobil.

For all the media attention on McCain's ads, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe argued that the most important event of the campaign this week was McCain's trip to Ohio amid coverage of his and lobbyist-turned-campaign manager Rick Davis's role in helping DHL take over U.S.-based Airborne Express, and the subsequent loss of Ohio jobs.

"John McCain can now become an emblem for what's wrong with Washington," Plouffe said, noting that McCain cannot win the White House without Ohio. "By November 4 in the Cincinnati and Dayton media markets, this will be something known by every voter."

During Obama's vacation week, his campaign will be focused on organizing in the 18 states his campaign has identified as battlegrounds, registering voters and focusing on local media.

"We have a game plan and a strategy, and we're going to continue to execute it. We're not going to be terribly worried about people playing armchair quarterback," Plouffe said. "By November 4, there are character dimensions to John McCain that are going to be clear."

McCain starts his week in Pennsylvania, where he will stump across the state with its former governor and possible vice presidential choice Tom Ridge. On Tuesday, he heads to New Jersey. McCain's campaign confirmed that the senator would will probably take his own vacation in the week before the Democratic National Convention. The senator plans to retreat to his home in Sedona, Ariz., where he owns a cabin and several other houses along a river, spending several days there before returning to the campaign trail during the Democratic convention in late August.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), still trying to squelch concerns about disunity among Democrats, campaigned for Obama yesterday in Henderson, Nev., and encouraged her supporters to fall in line.

"Anyone who voted for me or caucused for me has so much more in common with Senator Obama than with Senator McCain," she said. "Remember who we were fighting for in my campaign."