At McCain's side for the first time was the campaign's chief symbol for his small-business argument -- Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, who became a central figure in McCain's campaign after Wurzelbacher's chance encounter with Obama outside Toledo, when he publicly criticized Obama's comment that it was best to "spread the wealth around."
"This business of, quote, 'spreading the wealth around, spreading your income around' -- that's been tried before by the far-left liberals; that's been tried in other countries; we're not going to do that in America," McCain told an audience of hundreds at an afternoon outdoor rally in Elyria, Ohio.
Obama, meanwhile, moved to cement his edge over McCain in states that voted Republican four years ago. On a daylong sprint from Florida to Virginia and Missouri, the Democratic nominee argued that McCain shared Bush's economic agenda and that the country needed a change in direction.
A day after his first joint appearance with former President Bill Clinton, Obama told a crowd in Sarasota that his own economic plans would produce results similar to those achieved under Clinton, who presided over eight years of economic prosperity.
"John McCain's got an economic plan that's similar to George Bush's," Obama told more than 13,000 supporters at the Cincinnati Reds' spring-training ballpark. "So all you have to do is just look and see what works and what doesn't."
Obama's stop at the ballpark on the Gulf Coast wrapped up a two-day visit to the closely divided state that swung the presidency to George W. Bush in the ballot-recount battle of 2000.
The trip's showcase event was the rally with Clinton late Wednesday night near Orlando. And former Vice President Al Gore, who lost the 2000 election to Bush, will campaign for Obama in West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale today.
Polls suggest that Obama holds a slight lead over his GOP rival in Florida and other key battleground states, and Democrats have dominated early voting across the nation. But Obama cautioned supporters against overconfidence. "Don't believe this election's over," he told the flag-waving crowd in Sarasota. "Don't believe it for a minute."
In that spirit, Obama has put a trip to Iowa -- where polls show him well ahead of McCain -- on his crammed schedule for the campaign's final stretch. He will stop in Des Moines today before a trick-or-treat outing with his two children in the family's hometown of Chicago.
