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ASHEVILLE, North Carolina: Casting Democrat Barack Obama as a crony of "terrorists," Republican John McCain's White House campaign is unleashing its promised avalanche of vitriol a month away from election day.
The rivals for the November 4 election traded furious barbs over the weekend as Arizona Senator McCain battled to arrest his Illinois opponent's poll surge at a time of deep anxiety about the state of the US economy.
Democrats threatened to fight fire with fire by reminding voters of McCain's complicity in a 1980s scandal surrounding jailed savings and loan tycoon Charles Keating, raising the prospect of four weeks of bitter mud-slinging.
The war of words sparked by McCain's running mate Sarah Palin raised the stakes still higher as the presidential contenders prepared to face off at the second of three debates on Tuesday.
Alaska Governor Palin on Saturday accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists" - a reference to his ties in Chicago to former militant William Ayers, whose "Weathermen" group bombed government buildings in the 1960s and 1970s.
Palin told supporters the Democrat was therefore "not a man who sees America as you and I do, as the greatest force for good in the world."
That remark appeared to underline that the Hawaii-born Obama, the first African-American with a serious shot at the presidency, does not resemble the average white voter.
But while the McCain campaign insists it will not play the race card against Obama, it does intend to portray him as a wild-eyed liberal who is out of step with heartland values and unfit to lead.
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds alleged that university professor Ayers was part of a network of Chicago patrons including convicted fraudster Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a property tycoon who used to be a top fundraiser for Obama.
"The last four weeks of this election will be about whether the American people are willing to turn our economy and national security over to Barack Obama, a man with little record, questionable judgment, and ties to radical figures like unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers," he said.
Obama hit back with a new television spot that castigated the 72-year-old McCain's "erratic" behavior as Congress warred last week over a US$700-billion economic rescue package.
The Illinois senator, 47, said he would not fall prey to the kind of "Swift Boat" character assassination that helped to sink 2004 nominee John Kerry's campaign to unseat President George W. Bush.
"They'd rather tear our campaign down than lift this country up. That's what you do when you're out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time," Obama told a giant crowd of 28,000 people Sunday in Asheville, North Carolina.
Instead, Obama said he would hammer away at bread-and-butter issues with the US economy staring at recession after shedding 760,000 jobs so far this year.
For many Americans, losing a job means losing health care coverage for their families, and Obama said that McCain's policies would deprive 20 million more people of life-saving insurance.
Touting his own plan for universal health care through a mixture of tax breaks and subsidies, Obama said McCain wanted to deregulate the state-regulated insurance market in the same way as was done to US banking.
"And we've all seen how well that worked out. It would be equally catastrophic for your health care," he said at the Asheville rally.
"In the end, my opponent's plan reflects the same bankrupt philosophy he's subscribed to for three decades in Washington: take care of the healthy and wealthy, and good luck to everyone else."
Aides to McCain accused Obama of mendacious scare-mongering over his health care offensive, but the Democrat's camp says it will not back down on pressing its strongest suit: the economy.
With crisis sweeping through Wall Street and Main Street, the polls favour Obama both nationally and in battleground states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
No less an authority than Bush's long-time adviser Karl Rove said that based on current polling, Obama had 273 Electoral College votes - three more than needed to capture the presidency in the state-by-state ballot.
But speaking on Fox News Sunday, Rove stressed: "This race is susceptible to rapid changes, and we're likely to see in the remaining four weeks more (changes)."
- AFP/yb
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