Obama Kicks Off Final Week With "Closing Argument" Speech
(CBS)
(CHICAGO) - In the last eight days of the election, Barack Obama is expected to play it safe and keep his message focused on John McCain and the economy. He will deliver his “closing argument” in Canton, Ohio today which will largely mirror the speeches that he has given for over a month now.
“Consistency is comforting to voters,” senior adviser Linda Douglass said last night on the flight from Denver to Chicago.
According to prepared excerpts released this morning, Obama will continue to link John McCain to Bush, arguing that McCain’s policies will be an extension of the last eight years.
“After 21 months and three debates, Senator McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he’d do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy.”
“Senator McCain says that we can’t spend the next four years waiting for our luck to change, but you understand that the biggest gamble we can take is embracing the same old Bush-McCain policies that have failed us for the last eight years.”
Both the timing and the location of the speech are significant. The campaign hopes that the speech will dominate coverage for the next two days, and expect that the rally with Bill Clinton on Wednesday as well as the 30-minute primetime ad buy to help them a mid-week push.
Delivering the closing argument speech in Ohio, a key battleground state, sends a signal that the campaign is confident about their chances in the state. According to an average of recent polls on realclearpolitics.com, Obama leads McCain in Ohio by 6%.
Senior adviser Robert Gibbs said that in the final push – they are not taking anything for granted.
“I’d rather be us than them, but I’m still anxious,” Gibbs said yesterday.
Obama’s schedule will pick up mid-week – with at least 3 events a day, sometimes in different 3 states. He is expected to head out west next weekend.
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He has shown true political skill and genius in the way he has run his campaign--starting with his brilliant march to the Democratic nomination, to a near flawless fall performance.
If Barak can run a country like he runs a campaign, it is going to be a very, very successful term.
John McCain offers nothing more to the American People other than something he calls %u201Creform%u201D but has yet to outline the fine points of what reform entails. The Republican Party Candidates John McCain and Sara Palin are not representing any change for the People of the United States and have not put forth any notion that the American Middle Class will see an improved lifestyle.
The Republicans will not change their Agenda and our economy will not see a significant improvement because why would another Republican Administration want to change what they%u2019ve already worked so hard to achieve?
Possibly more important, as the election nears, some conservatives have grown terrified at the thought that Sarah Palin might become president in a complicated and dangerous world where her incompetence would put the nation at unprecedented risk. Even with the hope that a Palin presidency would never occur, that same alarm has impelled them to lose faith in the judgment of Senator McCain, based on his selection of an unqualified candidate for the second place on the ticket. It would be a mistake to confuse their preference for Obama with a permanent shift in political allegiance. At this point, their overriding concern appears to be the nation%u2019s safety, but in future elections, their conservative philosophy is likely to dictate their voting the same way they have in the past.
Fred Moolten