With the race to the White House on the home-stretch, the contenders for the U.S. presidency traded barbs on the campaign trail Friday.
Democrat Sen. Barack Obama spoke at a specialty glass factory in Pennsylvania, telling workers that Republican rival Sen. John McCain's acceptance speech was proof the focus is on McCain's biography rather than the struggles of the middle class.
"If you watched the Republican National Convention over the last three days, you wouldn't know that we have the highest unemployment in five years because they didn't say a thing about what is going on with the middle class," Obama said.
Meanwhile in Wisconsin, Republican vice-presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin introduced McCain to a crowd of thousands as "the only great man in this race, the only man in this election ready to serve as our 44th president."
McCain and Palin hit the campaign trail immediately after his acceptance speech last night as the U.S. presidential race entered its final eight weeks.
But an American political expert wonders whether McCain's Thursday night speech did enough to draw in the critical Independent voters he needs to defeat Obama on Nov. 4.
"The Republican brand is very diminished," historian Allan Lichtman of American University told CTV's Canada AM on Friday, noting only about one-third of U.S. voters are Republicans these days.
"John McCain was as good as John McCain could be last night," he said, but added that Palin's "electrifying" speech of Wednesday overshadowed McCain.
A bigger problem for McCain is he needed to accomplish a deft balancing act, Lichtman said:
- positioning himself, like Obama, as a change candidate -- but McCain is the nominee of a party that has held the presidency for the last two terms and dominated Congress most of this decade.
- positioning himself as a bi-partisan candidate after presiding over a highly partisan convention.
The latter "didn't quite ring true after two days of sarcastic, mocking and sometimes very nasty attacks on Barack Obama,"Lichtman said.
McCain also delivered less substance in his speech before 20,000 Republicans than Obama did a week ago during his acceptance speech to more than 80,000 Democrats in Denver, he said.
"I think the Independents and crossover Democrats that (McCain) must get to win this election might still be a little skeptical," Lichtman said.
The Bush factor
McCain paid some indirect tribute to President George Bush, the incumbent Republican who is in the doghouse with the American public.
"They had to acknowledge him, but that's the bind John McCain is in. You can't totally disparage your president, but you know if this election becomes a referendum ... on the last four years, the voters are going to opt for change."
So McCain, a four-term Arizona senator, must try to position himself as a change candidate while leading a party burdened by Bush and the weight of Republican missteps, Lichtman said.
McCain also said that Republicans had lost the trust of the public, but he would win it back.
The polls show a close battle between McCain, 72, and Obama, the eloquent but relatively inexperienced 47-year-old senator from Illinois.
Most experts say the key battleground states are in the industrial Midwest -- particularly Michigan and Pennsylvania -- and the Southwest. In his speech, McCain talked about economic hardship stories he's heard from Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
The U.S. presidency is decided by Electoral College votes, which are earned on a state-by-state basis -- not the national popular vote. Some states are seen as solidly Republican or Democratic, meaning the candidates will be spending the most time and money on states where they stand a good chance of winning and getting over the threshold of 270 Electoral College votes.
The presidential and vice-presidential debates will occur later this month.
With files from The Associated Press
