A Positively Negative Home Stretch

With a few hours left, Obama's closing addresses feature a blistering final assault on McCain.

He said Cheney's endorsement in Laramie, Wyo., on Saturday was evidence that a McCain presidency would mean the perpetuation of the Bush administration.

"Yesterday, Dick Cheney came out of his undisclosed location and hit the campaign trail. He said that he is, and I quote, 'delighted to support John McCain,' " Obama told the crowd in Columbus. When he was repeating his lines later in Cleveland, rain started to fall.

"You notice what happened when I started talking about Dick Cheney," Obama said with a chuckle. "But a new day is dawning. Sunshine is on the way."

But Obama's schedule, and much of his message, speaks to a more immediate concern, getting voters to the polls on Tuesday. The campaign has been able to test its vaunted field organization during early voting, and Plouffe said "we're thrilled with what we're seeing."

Obama appeared concerned that his lead in the polls -- the Washington Post-ABC News daily tracking poll gives him an advantage of 54 percent to 43 percent, larger than many other national polls -- will inspire overconfidence in his supporters.

"Don't believe for a second this election is over. Don't think for a minute that power concedes. We have to work like our future depends on it in these last few days, because it does," he told the Cleveland crowd.

Clinton was making the case for Obama in Northern Virginia, where Obama is scheduled to campaign Monday night. "I hear that John McCain and the Republicans are trying to mislead voters and use my words against Senator Obama," Clinton said at a rally at George Mason University. "My name is Hillary Clinton, and I do not approve that message."

McCain put his faith in a battle-tested Republican get-out-the-vote effort and a defiant underdog message that acknowledged only those polls that showed the race tightening.

"My friends, the Mac is back," he told an audience in suburban Philadelphia. He also campaigned in Scranton and in New Hampshire, the state that saved his campaign during the Republican primaries. It was more than a nostalgic trip -- the state's four electoral votes could be key to McCain's strategy.

"I came to say thank you, but I came to ask for one more effort," McCain said in Peterborough. "We will disagree on a specific issue, but I will put my country first, and I will never let you down."

Although McCain's pitch to voters in his final days focuses primarily on the theme that he is more experienced and would manage the economy better than Obama, he has also increasingly shifted to the right in recent weeks as he courts voters in swing states.

In one of the clearest indications of that move, the candidate who once spoke repeatedly of the need to curb climate change now devotes his speeches to touting the need to boost oil and coal production, two of the biggest contributors to global warming, while campaigning in those coal-producing states.

Indeed, the one new line he unveiled Sunday -- which his aides said he would use several times during his seven-state swing in the run-up to Election Day -- was to make fun of something Obama had told a reporter, "The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster."

Speaking before a crowd in Scranton, McCain said, "My friends, I've been a coal booster, and it's going to create jobs, and we're going to export coal to other countries and we are going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs."

Murray was traveling with the Obama campaign, Eilperin with the McCain campaign; Barnes reported from Washington. Staff writer Christian Davenport in Fairfax County contributed to this report.