November 03, 2008

With voters making their way to polls across America, Barack Obama and John McCain plan to drag their tireless presidential campaigns into Election Day in a last-ditch bid to sway battleground votes. The Democratic presidential nominee plans to make a campaign stop in Indianapolis Tuesday after voting in Chicago.

Then he returns to Illinois for what has become an election day tradition -- playing basketball. McCain's schedule takes him first to Phoenix to vote, and then to Colorado and New Mexico -- both states President Bush won in 2004 but that are trending Democratic this year. Both candidates radiated determination Monday as they reached for the finish line of a two-year marathon. The polls, however, gave Obama more reason to be optimistic.

With the presidential race mostly being played on Republican turf, Obama sounded a confident tone as he toured Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. Obama began his speech in Jacksonville, Fla., with the line: "I've got one word for you: tomorrow." And in what sounded like hints of a victory speech, Obama even congratulated McCain "on the tough race that he has fought."

But he proceeded to criticize his rival, as he has done for months, as President Bush's "sidekick" for standing with him on economic issues "every step of the way." As he did so, McCain continued to sound alarms about Obama's alleged tax-and-spend policies and his "far left" tendencies. "Senator Obama's massive new tax increase would kill jobs and make a bad economy worse. I'm not going to let that happen," McCain said in Tampa, Fla.