McCain struggles to keep afloat in Bush states Agence France-Presse

Published: Saturday October 25, 2008





Print This Email This RENO, Nevada (AFP)  Barack Obama and John McCain will fight a weekend duel over states won in 2004 by President George W. Bush, a sure sign of the Democrat's edge heading into the last week of the White House race.



A heavy-hearted Obama arrived back on the US mainland in the early hours of Saturday after an emotional trip to Hawaii to visit the gravely ill grandmother who brought him up, possibly for the last time.



Madelyn Dunham, 85, is suffering from a broken hip, osteoporosis and other undisclosed ailments. She is the last elderly relative Obama, 47, has left, after his mother died of cancer more than a decade ago and he has said she might not live the 10 days until the election.



Obama is due to campaign Saturday in Nevada and New Mexico -- two swing states where polls show he has an advantage -- before heading on to Colorado on Sunday.



McCain, 72, was trying to shore up support in what is normally Republican territory, as polls show he needs a last minute boost in several swing states for any chance of pulling off a come-from-behind victory on November 4.



McCain is scheduled to campaign all day Saturday in New Mexico, then fly to the midwestern state of Iowa, where he trails Obama badly in the polls .



McCain trails in most New Mexico polls, where five electoral college votes are in play.



In the last two elections the state has been won by a razor-thin margin, with Bush defeating Democrat John Kerry by 0.7 percent in 2004.



However, the most recent New Mexico polls show McCain trailing Obama by an average of 8.4 percent, with one survey putting the Democratic candidate's lead in double digits.



The McCain campaign however is refusing to cede defeat, confident that McCain's familiarity in the region as a longtime Arizona senator will help him attrack votes.



"John McCain has been a 30-year United States Senator from Arizona, a border state senator, he understands the issues that are at play there, he understands natural resource policy which is very important there," campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds told MSNBC on Saturday.



For days McCain has tried to tar the Democratic presidential hopeful as a secret socialist. Obama "believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs," McCain told a rally Friday in Colorado Springs, Colorado.



Obama "may say he's trying to soak the rich, but it's the middle class who are going to get put through the wringer, because a lot of his promised tax increase misses the target."



At issue is Obama's plan to let temporary tax cuts expire for the top five percent of Americans in order to give tax breaks to everyone else.



McCain said raising taxes in a bad economy will "kill jobs," and warned that Democrats have already previewed their plans to "tax and spend."



Obama's campaign quickly snapped back.



"Senator McCain can continue to make these desperate and dishonest attacks, but the fact is that Senator Obama will cut taxes for 95 percent of working Americans while John McCain gives no relief at all to more than 100 million Americans," Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said in a statement.



National tracking polls have Obama up anywhere from four to 14 percentage points, with a solid lead in most battleground states -- though McCain had made slight gains.



NBC News reported that Obama was now leading in enough states to put him over the 270 electoral college votes needed to secure the presidency. The closely watched NBC estimate had the battleground states of Virginia and Colorado now leaning to Obama based on the latest surveys.



