McCain makes final push in Indiana
MCCAIN | Marathon trek picks up 'mo' from Indy 5,000
INDIANAPOLIS -- "We've got the 'mo,' we've got the momentum, my friends, we've got it!" Republican presidential candidate John McCain shouted to a crowd of 5,000 red-shirted fans on an airport tarmac here this afternoon.
It was the fourth of seven stops McCain is making in seven battleground states in a marathon last day of campaigning -- most of them on tarmacs with the sound of planes overhead and the smell of jet fuel exhaust in the air.
(AP)
His running-mate Sarah Palin was simultaneously speaking just across the Illinois border in Dubuque, Iowa, on her own last-day marathon of swing states.
Indiana has not been in play this late in the election in decades but Barack Obama is hopeful enough about stealing this state from Republicans that he will make a tradition-breaking Election Day stop here Tuesday. Two of the last three polls here show the race a dead heat. The third shows McCain five points ahead.
The news about the death of Obama's grandmother was not released until McCain boarded his plane to leave so he was still in full attack mode against Obama, warning the faithful here that Obama would raise their taxes and kill their businesses.
Without specifying that both he and Obama voted for the $750 billion bail-out of Wall Street banks last month McCain said, if elected, "We're not going to spend $750 billion of your money bailing out Wall Street bankers and brokers who got us into this mess. Sen. Obama will. I'm going to make sure we take care of the working people who were devastated by the excess, evil, and greed of Wall Street and Washington."
McCain also trotted out the Adler Planetarium's video projection system that Illinois' Democratic and Republican legislators sought $3 million for.
"My friends, Sen. Obama's massive new tax increase would kill jobs, make a bad economy worse," he said to "Boos" from the audience. "He wanted $3 million for an overhead projector in a planetarium in Chicago. My friends, when you need to stay in your homes, when you need to have your taxes lowered, we're going to spend $3 million for an overhead projector in a planetarium? Not on my watch."
More than 20 times McCain urged his followers to "fight" for him. Speaking in a raised voice, he said, "My friends, Indiana is now a battleground state but it's battle we're going to win. In the next 24 hours, volunteer! Knock on doors! Get your neighbors to the polls! I need your vote! We need to bring real change to Washington and we need to fight for it! ... I am an American and I choose to fight! America is worth fighting for!"
McCain said the pollsters have got it wrong, and he will win Tuesday. And his fans here seemed to believe him, saying he would keep Indiana in the red, if only narrowly.
"If you go in the inner cities, you'll find some liberal Democrats, but we're a farm people, we're close to the land. We'll go with McCain, said Melanie Bussell, 46, of New Palestine, Ind.
"I love my country and I love the Lord," Diana Hall, 65, an Indianapolis realtor said, explaining her support for McCain.
McCain was headed from here to New Mexico, Nevada and even a rally in his home state of Arizona, where polls show Obama coming very close to him.