In the mail, on the phone and in courtrooms across
the nation, activists, lawyers and partisans of all kinds intensified their
efforts to shape the outcome.
With their agendas laid out, Bush and Kerry are going for spirit over
substance in the final days, trying to create an aura of excitement in
get-out-the-vote rallies and snag the dwindling pool of voters who haven't taken
sides.
Rockers Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi were rejoining the Kerry campaign,
minstrels in his fast-moving gallery. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is
bringing his star power — and moderate GOP reputation — to Bush's side later in
the week.
Bush turned to the iconoclastic Democratic Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia to
introduce him Wednesday at Pennsylvania and Ohio events, in keeping with his
late-breaking appeals to Democrats who aren't sold on their own party's nominee.
The president has been talking up the "great tradition of the Democratic
Party," citing the steeliness in crises shown by the likes of Franklin Roosevelt
and John Kennedy, to make the point Kerry doesn't measure up.
Kerry mentioned those presidents and more, saying great U.S. leaders built
alliances that protected this country while Bush "has failed in his fundamental
obligation as commander in chief to make America as safe and secure as we should
be."
The Democrat was focusing on economic troubles of the middle class in a Sioux
City speech Wednesday before stumping in Minnesota and back in Iowa, at a Cedar
Rapids event. Aides saw that speech and one Friday that will blend his
campaign's economic and foreign policy proposals as his "closing arguments" for
change.
After ripping Kerry for weeks as an equivocator, Bush planned to close the
contest with a 60-second commercial meant to show he's steady, trustworthy and
compassionate in these dangerous times.
Aides said the ad includes footage of an emotional president telling the
Republican National Convention about meeting the children of slain U.S.
soldiers.
Still, neither campaign was going upbeat, nor were their supporters.
Hard-hitting leaflets lined mailboxes in a dozen or so hotly contested
states. A glossy mailing by the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee showed
burning roadside wreckage in Iraq, with U.S. soldiers looking on, and the
headline "Wrong Choices ... Less Secure."
A Republican National Committee mailing showed pictures of Jane Fonda and
Michael Moore, two anti-war liberals supporting Kerry, and the headline, "John
Kerry's heart and soul of America?"
Kerry's latest ad accuses the Bush administration of failing to secure nearly
400 tons of explosives that disappeared from a military installation south of
Baghdad around the time U.S. forces were toppling Saddam Hussein's government,
and he pressed the point at rallies Tuesday.
He said in Green Bay, Wis., the explosives "could be in the hands of
terrorists, used to attack our troops or our people."
Going beyond the known facts, he said later in Las Vegas that the explosives
have actually been used against U.S. troops.
"We're in a bigger mess by the day and this president can't see it or can't
admit it, but either way, America is less safe," Kerry said.
Vice President Dick Cheney, campaigning in Florida, called Kerry an "armchair
general." "If our troops had not gone into Iraq as John Kerry apparently thinks
they should not have, that is 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that would
be in the hands of Saddam Hussein, who would still be sitting in his palace
instead of jail," he said.
New state polls suggested the race was deadlocked in Florida, Ohio and
Pennsylvania, the three most important battlegrounds in the race for 270
Electoral College votes. A Los Angeles Times survey joined a pile pointing to a
national dead heat. Bush and Kerry were 48-48 in that poll.
With the possibility of another inconclusive election night looming, lawyers
were already deep in courtroom entanglements in a variety of states over
problems either anticipated or already experienced in states with heavy early
voting.
In one example, a federal judge in Miami ruled against Democrats in saying
Florida election officials will not be required to process incomplete voter
registration forms.
