Here are nine articles from both the US and international media about the US Presidential race. Highlights of each article provided with a link to the full article.
Anxious Party Tells McCain to Fight Harder
By Ewen MacAskill in the UK Guardian.
Republicans are urging John McCain to adopt more aggressive tactics against Barack Obama amid fears that the White House is slipping away from them.
With ballots already being cast in battlefield states from Virignia to Ohio, Republicans are panicking that voting is taking place against the backdrop of the catastrophic events on Wall Street and that McCain could be a casualty.
Although McCain has been pumping out negative ads throughout August and September, Republican state leaders and officials want to see him becoming even more personal, exploiting Obama’s links with figures he knew in Chicago. These include: William Ayers, a former member of Weather Underground, a group involved in a 1970s bombing campaign in the US; the Rev Jeremiah Wright, his controversial former pastor; and Tony Rezko, the land developer convicted of fraud and bribery earlier this year who had contributed to his campaign funds.
Palin’s Strengths Rooted in Alaska
By Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post.
They are experiences Palin will draw on to deal with crushing pressure of a different sort: her vice presidential candidacy and her debate Thursday night with her Democratic counterpart, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr (Del.). Friends and family insist that she will reassert her famous self-will when she takes the stage in St. Louis. “We all know what’s riding on it,” Chuck Jr. says. “But she has a history of coming through in big events.”
The Heaths have tried to ignore the contrail of their daughter’s political comet, the soaring upsweep from unknown governor to national celebrity, fashion heroine and triumphant stump speaker, followed by a swoon in popularity resulting from uncertain answers under hard questioning. On the evening Chuck Sr. quizzed his grandson about whether he had earned a soft drink, Palin was faltering badly in an interview with CBS News’s Katie Couric, in which she was less the huntress than easy prey.
“I can take anything but the blogs,” her father says uneasily.
But Chuck has seen his daughter handle herself in other perilous situations and come out all right. A few years ago, he watched her pilot husband Todd Palin’s commercial fishing boat in a storm. Todd was working at his oil-field job on the North Slope, and Palin and her father had been fishing on Bristol Bay. “It was the toughest work I’ve ever done, and it wasn’t only hard, it was dangerous,” Chuck says. At the end of the run, they had to get the boat on a trailer amid crashing surf. As cold, metallic-sheened waves tossed the trawler around, Chuck quailed.
McCain Talks to the Gay Press
An interview of John McCain by William R. Kapfer in the Washington Blade.
Blade: Do you have any role models who are openly gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender?
McCain: I had the humbling experience of speaking at Mark Bingham’s funeral after the attacks on Sept. 11. Mark had supported me during the 2000 campaign. Unfortunately, I barely knew him, but our country learned about him after 9-11. He was one of the heroes on 9-11 who tried to retake control of United Flight 93. His efforts along with the other brave patriots could have saved hundreds of lives. I honor and respect Mark. Memories of his sacrifice and the other victims from 9-11 motivate me everyday to make sure we keep our nation safe from the terrorists who want to attack our way of life because freedom is a threat to their message of hate.
Here’s what I said during his eulogy:
I love my country, and I take pride in serving her. But I cannot say that I love her more or as well as Mark Bingham did, or the other heroes on United Flight 93 who gave their lives to prevent our enemies from inflicting an even greater injury on our country. It has been my fate to witness great courage and sacrifice for America’s sake, but none greater than the selfless sacrifice of Mark Bingham and those good men who grasped the gravity of the moment, understood the threat, and decided to fight back at the cost of their lives.
On Small Stage, Palin Scored Big Debate Wins
By Alexander Burns writing for Politico.
After delivering halting, unsteady performances in recent interviews with ABC’s Charlie Gibson and CBS’s Katie Couric, expectations are low for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in Thursday’s vice presidential debate in St. Louis.
Yet a review of Palin’s experience during her 2006 campaign for governor, when she engaged in a long series of debates with her opponents, suggests she is a more formidable adversary than is widely thought.
Unlike her opponent Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, who has considerable presidential-level debate experience, Palin has never been involved in a debate where the questions were national and global in scope.
But she is familiar operating in a high-stakes debate environment against older, more seasoned pols who seemingly have better command of the issues.
Obama Floats Social Security Tax Hike
By Teddy Davis for ABC News.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is considering a major tax hike on the rich to shore up the nation’s Social Security system. “If we kept the payroll tax rate exactly the same but applied it to all earnings and not just the first $97,000,” Obama wrote this week in an Iowa newspaper, “we could eliminate the entire Social Security shortfall.”
Obama’s idea, which he described on the op-ed page of Friday’s Quad City Times as being “one possible option” and not a formal plan, would raise more than $1 trillion over 10 years by subjecting income of more than $97,000 to a 12.4 percent tax. Half of the tax would be paid by employees and half would be paid by employers.
Race, Unfamiliarity could Defeat Obama in Southeastern Ohio
By Catherine Candinsky in the Columbus Dispatch.
Tending to the busy lunch counter at Hickie’s Hamburger Inn on Rt. 52, Barb Hendrickson explains her dilemma in November’s presidential election.
Like most other Democrats in southeastern Ohio, Hendrickson, a single mother of two struggling to support her family as a waitress, voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton in the primary.
With Clinton out, Hendrickson says she plans to vote for Republican John McCain. She doesn’t trust Democrat Barack Obama.
“I just don’t feel comfortable with him,” said Hendrickson, 36, of neighboring Portsmouth. “I don’t think he’s being honest about what he’s going to do.”
The political landscape of the 14-county southeastern region, a swing area of Ohio where chronic unemployment and poverty have left many feeling forgotten, would seem to favor Democrats.
Biden vs. Palin Presents Risks and Rewards
By Marc Caputo in the Miami Herald.
One candidate needs to show how much she knows. The other needs to talk less about how much he knows.
The media hype and the stereotypes of the two vice-presidential candidates couldn’t be more different as Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden square off Thursday in their first and only prime-time debate.
The contest pitting freshness vs. experience, younger woman vs. older man and Republican vs. Democrat will take place at 9 p.m. EDT at Washington University in St. Louis. But it’s not a match of equals.
The spotlight shines more brightly on Palin, a media phenomenon who initially electrified the Republican ticket but whose poll numbers slid in Florida and the nation after she flubbed prime-time interviews and was mocked on late-night TV.
AP Poll: Obama Takes a 7-Point Lead Over McCain
By Liz Sidoti for the Associated Press.
Barack Obama has surged to a seven-point lead over John McCain one month before the presidential election, lifted by voters who think the Democrat is better suited to lead the nation through its sudden financial crisis, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that underscores the mounting concerns of some McCain backers.
Likely voters now back Obama 48-41 percent over McCain, a dramatic shift from an AP-GfK survey that gave the Republican a slight edge nearly three weeks ago, before Wall Street collapsed and sent ripples across worldwide markets. On top of that, unrelated surveys show Obama beating McCain in several battlegrounds, including Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania — three states critical in the state-by-state fight for the presidency.
Several GOP strategists close to McCain’s campaign privately fret that his chances for victory are starting to slip away.
In San Francisco, a Subtle Variety of Voters’ Views
By Jennifer Steinhauer in the New York Times.
Here in San Francisco, the western terminus of Interstate 80, is the edge of the continental United States, and, as many believe, the fringe of its professed values. Voters are long accustomed to serving as the bat with which many Republicans use their city to beat up on the Democratic Party. In large part, they wear with pride their reputation for being collectively unreasonable and unshaven.
But often invisible among the Silicon Valley fund-raisers, the Code Pink demonstrations and the seminude pageants — did you catch last Sunday’s “leather/fetish” street fair complete with acts of public sex? — are voters who, while largely Democrats, represent the shades, ever so slightly, of political diversity.
A walk through the streets here, talking with people as they go about their daily routine, reveals an anxiety about the state of the economy that has gripped most of the nation. One axiom emerging from the first day of this exercise: Worrying about one’s bank account — and trashing elected officials — in tumultuous times has no partisan claim.
I did see a McCain-Palin sign today. It was the second that I have seen so far. To count the Obama signs in San Francisco would be to count the stars.