Cindy McCain: Tough interviewers 'picked our bones clean'
(CNN) –Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, criticized the media at a weekend fundraiser, telling supporters that the hosts of The View “picked our bones clean.”
"In spite of what you see …in the newspapers, and on shows like The View - I don't know if any of you saw The View yesterday, they picked our bones clean - in spite of what you see, that's not what the American people are saying and what they are believing," said McCain, in a recording obtained by ABC News. "They are now seeing a clear difference with these candidates, and they are seeing who is going to make the best president, and that's why we're pulling ahead."
Earlier: CNN's Bill Schneider on Cindy McCain's tough tone at the GOP convention
John McCain had a tough exchange with the hosts of The View during a recent appearance, during which he was pressed on the credentials of running mate Sarah Palin, claims in his campaign ads that co-host Joy Behar called “lies,” and how many houses he and his wife own.
Watch John McCain get grilled on The View
Biden: McCain is dead wrong
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (CNN) – After two days off the trail, Joe Biden ventured back out on Sunday afternoon, driving home the “Republicans just don't get it” label the Obama campaign is trying to saddle John McCain and Sarah Palin with to portray them as out of touch.
“What I want to tell you is this: John was [in 2000] and is now and has been dead wrong,” Biden said in a high school gym in Charlotte. “Dead wrong about what we should do as a nation. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, he’s just dead wrong. John just doesn’t get it.”
As Obama has in the last few days, Biden brought up McCain’s comments at a forum on service in New York last week when the Arizona senator said in Washington it’s easy to be “divorced” from everyday challenges.
“Yo!” Biden exclaimed, “I couldn’t have put it better myself. The McCain ticket seems divorced from the economic realities facing average American families.”
Biden zeroed in on John McCain for most of his speech but drew loud boos from the crowd at the single mention of Palin’s name when saying that the Republican ticket doesn’t feel obliged to re-train workers whose jobs have been shipped overseas.
The Delaware senator’s standard jabs at McCain on health care, energy, and the economy were all there but perhaps looking to stem a potential tide of women crossing over to vote for the ticket with a woman on it, Biden added a hit on McCain for not supporting a study to look at the pay gap between men and women.
He also went beyond simply promoting his campaign's proposals for the middle class, highlighting the "chemistry" on the Democratic ticket. Not just between himself and Obama, but between the Obama daughters and Biden's granddaugthers who – as Biden tells it – had a sleepover during the convention and became fast friends.
"I believe that's a metaphor, a metaphor for what the country is looking for," said Biden. "They're looking for a sleepover with people they like."
Monday Biden will deliver an economic speech in Michigan that an advisor is calling the “Bush 44 speech”, looking to further tie McCain’s economic policies to President Bush’s and accuse McCain of running a “dishonorable and deceptive” campaign.
Analysis: Biden goes from hot to not since Palin came along
(CNN) – Sen. Joe Biden faces a paradox: He offers the most unfiltered contact with the media of any of the big four. But he's the least likely to be covered.
Over the three weeks since Sen. Barack Obama tapped Biden to be his running mate, Biden has seen coverage of his campaign slip from feverish to low-key.
The night before Obama announced his vice presidential choice August 23, the press staked out Biden's Delaware home and gave minute-by-minute updates of his every movement.
But then Sen. John McCain picked telegenic and nationally unknown Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, and the press corps traveling with Biden's campaign dwindled to a skeleton crew.
Rove: Some McCain ads don't pass '100 percent truth' test
(CNN) – Former Bush adviser Karl Rove suggested Sunday that John McCain had gone “one step too far” in some of his recent ads attacking Barack Obama.
Rove has leveled similar criticism against Obama. “McCain has gone in some of his ads - similarly gone one step too far,” he told Fox News, “and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the ‘100 percent truth’ test.”
Watch: The campaign ad wars heat up
The Obama campaign immediately leaped on the quote. "In case anyone was still wondering whether John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest campaign in history, today Karl Rove - the man who held the previous record - said McCain's ads have gone too far," said campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor, in a statement sent to reporters minutes after Rove’s on-air comments.
Listen: the Obama camp slams McCain in Sunday conference call
Rove masterminded both of President Bush’s successful White House bids, including a tough primary season battle with John McCain in 2000.
UPDATE: Rove said Sunday Democrats e-mailing around his quote without noting that he levels similar criticism against Obama were distorting his meaning. “Of course, they fail to say anything about the fact I said they were even more misleading,” he told Politico.
McCain gains ground in new poll of battleground state
(CNN) — Barack Obama appears to be holding on to a significant edge in Iowa in new poll numbers released this weekend, but his advantage over John McCain in Minnesota, which hosted the Republican convention earlier this month, seems to have evaporated.
Obama, who won the Iowa caucuses in January, has 52 percent of the vote in that state to McCain’s 40 percent among likely voters in a Des Moines Register poll conducted September 8-10. A CNN/Time/Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted August 31-September 2, during the GOP convention, showed a 15-point advantage for Obama, 55 to 40 percent over McCain.
But in Minnesota, where McCain accepted the GOP nomination this month, Obama’s 12-point edge in the last CNN/Time/ORC survey – also conducted during the Republican convention - has disappeared in a new Star Tribune survey: that poll finds both men tied at 45 percent each among likely voters, with 10 percent unsure.
During the convention, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty said he thought his state "would be open to a candidate like Senator McCain" - but added that he believed "Democrats still have an advantage here."
Both surveys have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Election Center: Check out CNN's electoral breakdown
CNN/Time/Opinion Research Corporation surveys earlier this month also suggested tight races in four other battleground states: New Hampshire, Michigan, Virginia, and Missouri.
Those polls showed slim advantages for Obama in New Hampshire and Michigan, while McCain was narrowly on top in Virginia and Missouri.
Obama campaign confirms they raised $66 million in August
(CNN) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign raised $66 million in August, the campaign announced Sunday, topping its previous high mark and running well ahead of Obama's Republican rival.
The Obama campaign said more than half a million new donors contributed during the month, when the Illinois senator accepted the Democratic presidential nomination and named Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware as his running mate. The campaign had more than $77 million cash on hand at the end of August, compared with about $66 million in July.
Obama's previous monthly donation record of $55 million came in February, during his primary battle with New York senator and former first lady Hillary Clinton.
Earlier this month, the campaign of GOP presidential nominee John McCain reported raising $47 million in August. That haul also set a monthly record for the Arizona senator, whose campaign says it received a financial shot in the arm after McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to join the ticket.
Palin tweaks stump speech for different audiences
CARSON CITY, Nevada (CNN) - Sarah Palin's reputation for rarely deviating from a scripted stump speech as she travels from city to city is not entirely accurate.
She’s open to changing a few lines here and there - depending on the audience.
Consider her speech Saturday in Nevada, site of the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository, a controversial project that would store radioactive waste in Nevadans’ backyard. At nearly every campaign stop over the last two weeks, Palin has touted McCain’s plan to expand nuclear energy, including storage and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.
“In a McCain-Palin administration, we’re going to expand nuclear energy, expand our use of alternative fuels, and drill now to make this nation energy independent,” she said to cheers last week in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.
But in Carson City, where the Yucca issue hits closer to home, that remark about expanding nuclear energy disappeared.
Palin also gave a pair of modified stump speeches during her recent Welcome Home tour through Alaska that failed to mention the notorious Gravina Island Bridge, subject of her usual applause line on the campaign trail that “I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that Bridge to Nowhere."
The Alaska governor routinely cites her opposition to the bridge on the trail to reinforce her reformer reputation, but fact-check groups and the Obama campaign have noted out that Palin supported building the bridge before she came out against it.
Earlier: Palin stays firm on Bridge to Nowhere claim; Obama camp calls bridge claim a 'lie'
At rallies last week in Fairbanks and Anchorage, where Palin's original position in favor of the bridge is well-known, her “thanks but no thanks” was left behind in the Lower 48.
Why has a GOP Rep. been comparing himself to Obama?
(CNN) - Call Christopher Shays one of the last members of a dying breed. The Congressman from Connecticut is a moderate Republican - the lone remaining GOP member of the House of Representatives who hails from New England.
The overall political climate isn't helping either. An unpopular President, an unpopular war in Iraq, and an ailing economy are all working against the Republican Party this cycle.
House Democrats are again targeting Shays' seat this November.
So maybe it's no surprise that Shays is has been running a campaign commercial for the past few weeks that uses visuals of Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, as well as his party's presidential nominee, John McCain.
The ad, starts with pictures of Obama, with the announcer saying "the hopefulness of Obama, the straight talk of McCain. It's what Christopher Shays has always stood for."
The announcer continues the bi-partisan theme, saying that Shays "goes where the truth takes him, never afraid to take a stand or oppose his own party. In a sea of partisanship, Shays is different. It's not what is Republican or Democrat. It's what is right for America."
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