"I guess I'm old-fashioned about these things: I prefer to let the voters weigh in before presuming the outcome," McCain told a raucous crowd of about 9,000. "What America needs now is someone who will finish the race before starting the victory lap . . . someone who will fight to the end, not for himself but for his country."
McCain and running mate Sarah Palin renewed their criticisms of Obama's plan to phase out President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. Palin referred to Obama as "Barack the wealth-spreader," while McCain dubbed him "redistributionist in chief."
McCain and Obama campaigned about 80 miles apart on a cold, wet morning. Polls show Obama with double-digit leads in Pennsylvania, which has 21 electoral votes, but both parties say they think the race is much tighter.
Obama rallied supporters in the Philadelphia suburb of Chester, telling 9,000 people gathered in a muddy college quad that although McCain was trying to distance himself from Bush, he would expand his economic policies.
"John McCain has ridden shotgun as George Bush has driven our economy toward a cliff, and now he wants to take the wheel and step on the gas," he said. "When it comes to the issue of taxes, saying that John McCain is running for a third Bush term isn't being fair to George Bush."
Both candidates later headed to states Bush won.
After visiting Harrisonburg, Obama held a nighttime rally at a ballpark in Norfolk, where he continued to paint McCain as a Bush clone.
"The last thing we need is four more years of the tired, old, worn-out theory of John McCain and George Bush, a theory that says we should give more and more to billionaires and big corporations and CEOs, and hope that prosperity trickles down on everyone else," he told a crowd of 22,000.
McCain headed to Fayetteville, N.C., near Pope Air Force Base and Ft. Bragg, where Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge broadened the rhetoric beyond economic issues to national security, perhaps previewing McCain's national security roundtable today in Tampa, Fla.
"You cannot be secure unless you're prosperous, and you cannot prosper unless you're secure," Ridge told a crowd of 8,600. "There should be no doubt in anybody's mind if you believe that there's only one real choice for commander in chief of the United States."
Although the candidates and campaigns stuck to their official talking points, two McCain surrogates went off message.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, in a fundraising e-mail for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), nearly predicted an Obama victory. And Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty told a radio station there that it would be tough for McCain to win the state.
Political director Mike DuHaime told reporters that the campaign's internal polls showed the race tightening, with Republicans consolidating behind McCain and "independents moving nicely."
"It's going to be close down to the wire," he said.
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seema.mehta@latimes.com
maeve.reston@latimes.com
