By Jeff Zeleny & Elisabeth Bumiller
Published: 09-08-08
With their nominating conventions behind them Senators Barack Obama and John McCain on Friday opened their march to Election Day with a bleak unemployment report setting the tone for the final 60 days of their long campaign for the White House.
As both campaigns grappled for the edge in claiming the mantle of change Mr. Obama criticized his rivals for failing to offer economic solutions during the Republican convention that ended Thursday night while Mr. McCain and his running mate Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska barely waited until the last balloon dropped before heading to Wisconsin.
For his part Mr. Obama asked voters in the battleground state of Pennsylvania to tune out the static that has consumed the presidential race and reflect on which party would bring change vto Washington.
“If you watched the Republican national convention over the last three days you wouldn’t know that we have the highest unemployment rate in 5 years because they didn’t say a thing about what was going on in the middle class” Mr. Obama said. “They spent a lot of time trying to run me down and not necessarily telling the truth but what they didn’t talk about is you — what you’re going through in your lives what your friends and neighbors are going through.”
Mr. Obama in shirtsleeves and safety goggles toured a glass manufacturing plant in this northeastern Pennsylvania town just outside Scranton. He arrived at the factory hours after the latest report released Friday showing that the unemployment rate jumped to 6.1 percent in August its highest level in five years and his backdrop was intentionally planned to convey a message that Democrats are pushing above all else the nation’s deteriorating economy.
“This is not about personalities” Mr. Obama said imploring voters to weigh the issues and determine which party can bring change. “If you want it to be about personalities we’ll go out for a beer sometime and we’ll talk. But you don’t have time you’re spending time with your family.”
To prevent Mr. McCain from gaining ground on the theme of change that Mr. Obama has sought to control all year his advisers intensified their efforts to tie the McCain-Palin ticket to President Bush.
“Simply saying the word does not make you the agent of change” David Axelrod the Obama campaign’s top political strategist said in an interview Friday.
But that did not stop Senator McCain and Governor Palin — who got an ecstatic reception in Cedarburg Wis. at their first appearance after the Republican convention — from trying.
“Change is coming change is coming and with her there we will restore our strength and the prosperity of this great nation.” Mr. McCain told the crowd counted by security at 12000 — a far larger number than he has attracted on his own — in this solidly Republican area outside of Milwaukee. The crowd roared its approval but it was Ms. Palin who got the most cheers.
“John McCain doesn’t run with the Washington herd and that is one reason to take the maverick of the Senate and put him in the White House” Ms. Palin said in remarks that largely echoed her speech to convention delegates on Wednesday night.
But in a sign of the role she will play in the fall campaign she launched a new political attack on Mr. Obama citing comments he made on Fox News on Thursday that the troop reinforcements in Iraq or surge had succeeded more than people expected.
“Just last night Senator Obama finally broke and brought himself to admit what all the rest of us have known for quite some time” Ms. Palin said adding that “thanks to the skill and valor of our troops the surge in Iraq has succeeded.”
She went on: “I guess when you turn out to be profoundly wrong on a vital national security issue maybe it’s comfortable to pretend that everybody was wrong today but I remember it a little differently.”
At one point the campaign stopped at an ice cream parlor where Ms. Palin ordered a big scoop of moose tracks ice cream in a waffle cone not long before before heading for the battleground state of Michigan
In Cedarburg several women in the crowd said the draw for them was Ms. Palin not necessarily Mr. McCain and that the Republican vice presidential nominee the mother of five children whose 17-year-old unmarried daughter Bristol is pregnant gave voice to their own struggles. Ms. Palin’s youngest child has Down Syndrome.
“She’s me” said Tana Krueger 58 a mothger of six from Fond du Lac Wis. who said she drove an hour to see Ms. Palin.
Ms. Krueger a risk manager at a state hospital said that she might not have come out to see only Mr. McCain and that while she is a Republican she might have voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton had she been the Democratic nominee. Now she said she was now definitely going to vote for Mr. McCain because of his selection of Ms. Palin.
“I can just really relate to everything in her life children with disabilities teenage pregnancy” Ms. Krueger said.
Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Cedarburg Wis. and Jeff Zeleny from Duryea Pa.
