Obama Campaign Begins Counterattack

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Obama, Biden Campaign In Run Up to Nov. 4

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his running mate Joe Biden continue their separate campaign tours. The pair focused on the swing states of Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, among other appearances to bolster support a mere eight weeks before the election.

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The McCain campaign also kept up its attacks on Friday, releasing an ad titled "Disrespectful" [See Ad Watch, A8] that kept up its celebrity attack on Obama even as it continued to play the victim card with Palin. The spot says "they" dismissed her as "good looking," said she was just doing "what she was told" and called her a liar.

"He was the world's biggest celebrity, but his star is fading," the ad intones.

The independent FactCheck.org weighed in quickly, saying the ad -- already airing in Denver -- continues a pattern of distortion, taking quotes out of context and twisting meaning. "The new McCain-Palin ad . . . goes down new paths of deception," the Web site concluded.

On the stump, Obama focused on his tax plan, which offers sizable breaks to middle-income families, while raising taxes on families earning more than $250,000. He said McCain has been "simply dishonest" about that plan, asserting repeatedly that an Obama administration would raise everyone's taxes.

"I will make a firm pledge: I pledge under my plan, no one making less than $250,000 a year will see any type of tax increase, not income tax, not capital gains taxes, not any kind of taxes," Obama said.

And he slammed McCain's proposal to tax the value of employer-based health-care plans as income and use that to help finance tax credits to buy health insurance. The senator from Illinois called that "a $3.6 trillion tax increase" on working families.

Convinced that McCain's message on taxes is doing serious harm to Obama, Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell (D) sent a memo on Friday to every elected Democrat in his state to get the word out that Obama's plan would cut taxes for the middle class far more than McCain's would.

In an interview, Rendell said the Obama campaign is beginning to push back successfully on McCain's character attacks, but the Republican's charge that Obama would raise middle-class taxes may be more damaging. The McCain ads are "just despicable, but nowhere are they lying more clearly than on the tax issue," he said.

Staff writer Robert Barnes in Washington contributed to this report.