In Final Days, Tours Converge
McCain, Obama Work Many of the Same Battleground States

By Michael D. Shear and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 31, 2008

DEFIANCE, Ohio, Oct. 30 -- Sen. John McCain launched a two-day bus tour of the Buckeye State on Thursday in a spot that offered a good measure of his mood as he continued his pursuit of the White House in the face of polls suggesting it is quickly slipping away from him.

His Democratic rival, meanwhile, exuded confidence as the two toured many of the same battleground states. Sen. Barack Obama is all but taking for granted states that Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) won four years ago and is spending the last few days in George W. Bush country, forcing McCain to defend what was friendly territory for the GOP just four years ago.

Both men worked through 15-hour days as they moved toward the conclusion of almost two years of campaigning, their presidential ambitions fueled by a belief that Tuesday will be a turning point for the country.

"I know history. I know the last time anyone was elected president of the United States without carrying the state of Ohio was John F. Kennedy," McCain told several thousand people who packed the town square here. "My friends, we are going to carry Ohio and we are going to win the presidency, and we need you out there working every single moment for the next five days."

McCain's campaign bus pulled out in below-freezing temperatures early Thursday for three outdoor rallies, the beginning of a five-day swing that advisers say will take McCain back to Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Missouri, and culminate in a six-state spree on Monday.

He campaigned with Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher, who urged voters to "just get out and get informed" so they can "hold our politicians accountable and take back our government. It's all ours."

Obama spoke to 13,000 people in Sarasota, Fla., before flying to Virginia Beach and to Columbia, Mo., where he continued to focus on the economy on a day when government figures showed that the nation's gross domestic product shrank in the third quarter.

"If you want to know where John McCain will drive this economy, just look in the rearview mirror," he said, "because when it comes to our economic policies, John McCain has been right next to George Bush. He has been sitting there in the passenger seat ready to take over."

McCain ordered his brain trust onto the trail this week for a final set of briefings and strategy sessions. Advisers Mark Salter, Steve Schmidt, Charlie Black, Matt McDonald and Nicolle Wallace joined the candidate, while political director Mike DuHaime left Wednesday to return to the campaign's headquarters in Arlington.

On the flight from Florida to Ohio on Wednesday night, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) offered a peek from inside the campaign hierarchy, telling reporters that tracking polls were showing steady improvement by McCain. In many battleground states, surveys show McCain trailing but well within the margin of error, he said. And if McCain enters the weekend in that position in Florida and Ohio, Graham said, advisers believe they will win in those states. The same goes for Virginia and North Carolina -- places he said the campaign believes are closer than public polling suggests. Public polls gave the optimism a bit of a boost Thursday, showing the race tightening in Pennsylvania and Virginia -- a four-point lead in each state for Obama.

Graham, McCain's best friend and a fixture at his side on the campaign trail for much of the past two years, said the most critical numbers will be the ones their internal tracking polls show on Friday. If those reveal Obama receiving more than 50 percent in those states, "then we lose," he said bluntly.

But like other top aides, he expressed optimism in the two messages McCain has been pushing: Obama's desire to "spread the wealth" and running mate Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s riff to a group of Democratic donors this month that Obama would undoubtedly be tested by the nation's enemies as a novice president. Both feed the narrative that Obama is not ready to be president, he said.

DuHaime, who is charged with implementing the campaign's strategy, offered reporters his own frank assessment, saying McCain's hopes are tied to winning a clutch of states that have historically leaned to the GOP: Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia and Missouri. If he can do that, DuHaime said, then he can win the election with one of two endgames: a victory in Pennsylvania or a combination of wins in New Hampshire, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado.

The target demographic, aides said, will be older whites, who seem to be coming home for McCain. In a strategy memo this week, the campaign asserted that "our long identified target of 'Walmart women' -- those women without a college degree in households under $60,000 a year in income are also swinging back solidly in our direction."

Senior Obama advisers were dismissive of the McCain calculations. "What are you going to say on the Thursday before the election, 'We're all out of bullets?' " strategist David Axelrod said in an interview. "We're not going to let up one bit, but it's nice to see so many opportunities."

The Obama strategy from the start was to create a wide variety of potential combinations that would carry the campaign to the 270 electoral votes needed for victory. Rather than fight on the same map that Kerry chose in 2004, Obama's team built organizations in the Rocky Mountain West, as well as Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana, areas Democrats had rarely contested.

"We've been playing this election on Bush turf for a long time. Remember we said we would target Montana, North Carolina and Indiana and they said we were crazy? Now they're competing there," strategist Robert Gibbs said. "I'd rather be us than them."

McCain strategists say they see a path to victory by winning the most reliably Republican states, minus Iowa, which gets them to 260, then finding 10 more votes from the 23 belonging to New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico. Asked about this, Gibbs answered, "I'd tell 'em good luck."

In the campaign's final phase, Obama's team has concluded that all the states Kerry won are safely in their column. They remain confident about Iowa, where Obama will make a stop Friday, more as a thank-you for the January caucus victory that made him a contender than out of strategic concern, aides said.

As he picks up the pace before Election Day, Obama will continue to press in states Bush won. On Thursday, he was in Florida, Virginia and Missouri. Friday will take him to Indiana and Saturday to Nevada, Colorado and Missouri. He will spend Sunday in Ohio.

Campaigning with Obama, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said the Obama campaign is employing a different strategy than the one Kerry used when he lost the Sunshine State four years ago. Nelson pointed to trips by Obama, his wife, Michelle, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Biden and his wife, Jill, to central and northern Florida, not just southeast Florida where Democrats traditionally perform well. As for Nelson, he will campaign with Biden in Tallahassee, Gainesville, Fla., and Dayton, Ohio, on Sunday.

Despite public and internal polls that show Obama with a comfortable lead in the race for electoral votes, the candidate himself has been the leading voice in telling his supporters the campaign "cannot afford to slow down or sit back or let up one day, one minute, one second in this last week."

"They may need an inside straight," Axelrod said of McCain and his followers, "but sometimes people pull an inside straight, so we need to be vigilant."

Slevin reported from Florida, Virginia and Missouri.