As US presidential campaign winds down, candidates drop their gloves

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As U.S. presidential campaign winds down, candidates drop theirgloves
15 hours ago
WASHINGTON — John McCain's presidential campaign has lurchedfrom day to day from one line of attack to another, seeminglydesperate to find something that would stick in a damaging way tohis opponent, Barack Obama.
Joe the Plumber, in fact, was one of the few constants of theRepublican's quest for the White House over the past two weeks. Adown-home working man, albeit a tax evader, he was all but adoptedby McCain as his campaign mascot and is believed to have given thecandidate a slight bump in the polls.
Then Joe the Plumber - Joe Wurzelbacher to his friends and familyin Ohio - apparently bit the hand that fed him. It was just thelatest in a series of wonky twists and turns in the tense, waningdays of a wild election campaign.
When McCain called out for Joe to join him on stage at an event inDefiance, Ohio, on Thursday, Joe wasn't there.
Wurzelbacher was soon complaining to CNN that the McCain campaignhad never notified him about the appearance, adding he was iffyabout even endorsing McCain. But by the Arizona senator's nextrally, Joe was on hand and assured the crowds he was votingRepublican.
"I was at an event earlier this morning and I introduced you andeven though you weren't even there, they cheered," McCain said.
It was yet another awkward misstep by McCain's handlers, seeminglyborne of a lack of communication and organization. But it hasn'tbeen the only odd moment as the campaign marches towards itsconclusion.
After weeks of treading carefully around issues of race for fear itmight alienate white voters, Obama is suddenly talking about it. Heeven made jokes on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart about how, asthe product of a white mother and a black father, he wasn't surehow to vote.
"I won't know what to do," Obama said after dismissing suggestionsthat white voters might not vote for him because he'sAfrican-American. "It's a problem. I've been going through therapyto make sure I vote properly on the 4th."
That's not the only hitherto unchartered frontier the Obamacampaign has been suddenly exploring.
After two months of treating the much-ridiculed Sarah Palin withkid gloves, the Obama campaign chose the final week to put out anad deriding her lack of experience and suggesting McCain's choiceof her as his running mate was irresponsible.
Other candidates dropped the gloves this week, including a Democratin the battleground state of North Carolina who took great offenceto an ad by longtime Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole.
Dole accused her of hanging around with a group of citizens almostas despised as terrorists by many Americans - the dreaded atheists.
"I believe in God. I taught Sunday school. My faith guides my life.And Senator Dole knows it," Kay Hagan, who's leading Dole in thepolls, said in a short, terse rebuttal.
"Sure politics is a tough business, but I approved this messagebecause my campaign is about creating jobs and fixing our economy,not bearing false witness against fellow Christians."
Religion, in fact, has made a startling appearance among blogs andmedia outlets with three days until the election, with one Catholicbishop suggesting voters will burn in hell if they cast theirballots for Obama.
"Judgment Day is on its way," Bishop Robert J. Hermann of St. Louiswrote on the Review Online.
"When my time comes, I will be measured by my saviour for thedecisions I have made. I will either be acknowledged by Jesus ordenied by Him in the presence of our heavenly father. The questionI need to ask myself is this: What kind of witness will I give toHim when I go into the voting booth this election day?"
Other media outlets have been the source of some news and oddallegations.
Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter for George H. W. Bush during hispresidency and now a Wall Street Journal columnist, joined a longlist of other conservative commentators and Republican heavyweights- including Lawrence Eagleburger, a longtime McCain supporter - whohave turned against the Republican in favour of Obama.
"His rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years,which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in anation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief," shewrote Friday in a near-reverential piece about Obama.
"He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father toguide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. Herose with guts and gifts."
Others were less poetic and thoughtful. A conservative blogger,Pamela Geller Oshry, wrote that Malcolm X was the Illinoissenator's true father, a claim seemingly based on nothing otherthan a vague physical resemblance.
"The physical mannerisms and speech cadence and tonal quality ofMalcolm X have an uncanny resemblance to Barack Hussein Obama Jr.,"she wrote.