Obama attacks McCain on negative ads

From combined dispatches

ST. LOUIS

Addressing a sea of 100,000 supporters Saturday, Democrat Sen. Barack Obama fired back against White House rival Sen. John McCain on negative campaigning 17 days out from Election Day.

Mr. Obama, who is riding high in polls, said Mr. McCain was positing false arguments including via automated “robo-calls” to voters that portray Mr. Obama as a secret radical bent on subverting democracy.

“You guys have seen the ads. Some of you have received the phone calls,” the Illinois senator told a crowd in St. Louis numbered by police at 100,000, his biggest yet in the United States.

Missouri voted for President Bush in both the last two elections, but Mr. Obama said the “winds of change” were blowing in the heartland state and across the nation.

He added: “With the economy in turmoil and the American Dream at risk, the American people don’t want to hear politicians attack each other. You want to hear about how we’re going to attack the challenges facing middle-class families each and every day.”

Mr. Obama was ahead of Mr. McCain by 50 percent to 42 percent in Saturday’s Gallup national tracking poll. In the Rasmussen tracking poll, the Democrat was up 50 percent to 45 percent.

Mr. Obama reiterated his message of recent days that supporters should not get “cocky.”

“Democrats have a way of snatching defeat from the jaws from victory. You can’t let up. You can’t pay too much attention to the polls. We’ve got to keep running through that finish line,” he said.

Mr. McCain is stepping up an offensive based on Mr. Obama’s ties to former 1960s radical William Ayers with automated “robo” phone calls in swing states, including Maine and Nevada, that also cite the Democrat’s votes against an Illinois bill requiring that babies who survive abortion attempts receive medical care.

“It’s despicable, especially coming from John McCain,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Linda Douglass told Agence France-Presse, alluding to the same technology having been used against Mr. McCain in the 2000 primary by Mr. Bush. “Voters around the country are offended and outraged at these calls. They want to hear about the issues.”

Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, urged Mr. McCain to cease the calls Friday, with her spokesman saying “these kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics.” Miss Collins faces a tough race for re-election and serves as a co-chairwoman of the McCain campaign in her state.

But the McCain campaign insisted the attack calls were rooted in fact and said Mr. Obama was hoodwinking voters over his past.