Candidates hit hard in battlegrounds

Candidates hit hard in battlegrounds

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican John McCain declared “I’m going to win it,” dismissing polls showing him behind with little more than a week to go in the presidential race. A confident Democrat Barack Obama drew a jaw-dropping 100,000 people to a single rally and rolled out a new TV ad asserting his rival is “running out of time.”

Heading into the final nine days of the 2008 contest, the White House competitors campaigned in key battlegrounds that President Bush won four years ago as the state-by-state Electoral College map tilts strongly in Obama’s favor. Democrats and Republicans alike say it will be extraordinarily difficult for McCain to change the trajectory of the campaign before the Nov. 4 election.

The candidates sparred from a distance, each criticizing the other anew in hopes of swaying the roughly one-fourth of voters who are undecided or could still change their minds. The campaign trail images and rhetoric said perhaps more about the state of the race than any poll could.

In Colorado, Obama reveled in his largest U.S. crowd to date, with local police estimating that “well over” 100,000 people packed Denver’s Civic Center Park and stretched even to the distant steps of the state Capitol. The enthusiastic sea of people prompted a “goodness gracious” from Obama as he took the stage. Another enormous swarm — an estimated 45,000 — greeted him in Fort Collins later on the perhaps aptly named Colorado State University lawn; it’s known as “The Oval.”

At each rambunctious stop Obama portrayed McCain as more of the same.

In Cedar Falls, Iowa, McCain campaigned before a much smaller audience, roughly 2,000 people, and chided his Democratic rival: “He’s measuring the drapes. ... I prefer to let voters have their say. What America needs now is someone who will finish the race before starting the victory lap.”