Posted on 10/22/2004 12:39:09 AM PDT by familyop
DEMOCRAT John Kerry today takes his quest for votes to the western states of Nevada and Colorado that polls show could be up for grabs in the US presidential contest, as incumbent rival George W. Bush stumps in three eastern battleground states.
After addressing supporters in Milwaukee in the morning, Senator Kerry was to fly to Reno, Nevada, and Pueblo, Colorado, in hopes of energising minority voters, his core support base, ahead of the November 2 ballot.
Mr Bush will campaign for a second day in Pennsylvania before moving on to Canton, Ohio and Saint Petersburg, Florida.
Senator Kerry literally went hunting for the support of gun-lovers yesterday, then tapped the power of comic book and movie hero Superman to trade shots with the Republican president on health as the two scouted votes that could tilt a race still too close to call.
With every vote likely to count in the critical mid-western battleground of Ohio that Mr Bush won in 2000, the often staid Senator Kerry donned a camouflage jacket and picked up a shotgun to hunt geese in a carefully staged photo-op.
The Massachusetts senator emerged from a cornfield, shotgun breached and cradled in the crook of his elbow, flanked by companions holding four dead birds. Asked why he was not carrying one himself, he quipped, "Too lazy."
The event testified to the weight of the powerful National Rifle Association, which has endorsed Mr Bush and pledged to spend up to $US20 million ($27.2 million) to mobilise its four million members against the pro-gun control Kerry.
Mr Bush mocked Senator Kerry's hunting trip while stumping in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
"He can run - he can even run in camo - but he cannot hide," Mr Bush said, as the crowd laughed and cheered.
The line, without the reference to camouflage clothes, is one of Mr Bush's favourite slogans in attacking Kerry.
The Democrat later switched hunting gear for a business suit to attend a rally with Dana Reeve, widow of the recently deceased Christopher Reeve, star of the Superman movies, to promote stem-cell research as a possible cure for spinal-cord injury.
Senator Kerry lambasted Mr Bush's opposition to stem-cell studies and criticised the President's overall approach to science. "He has an extreme political ideology that slows instead of advances science," the senator said.
"You get the feeling that if George Bush had been president during other periods in American history, he would have sided with the candle lobby against electricity, the buggy-makers against cars and typewriter companies against computers."
Mr Bush was on his 40th trip to Pennsylvania, which he hoped to snatch out of the Democratic column, and took on Senator Kerry over one of the challenger's supposed strengths, health care.
He told a rally in the town of Downingtown that Senator Kerry "would move America down the road to federal control of health care which would lead to lower quality and health care rationing".
"When it comes to health care, Senator Kerry's prescription is bigger government with higher cost," Mr Bush said. "My reforms will lower costs and give more control and choices to the American people."
Mr Bush also met the Archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal Justin Rigali, in an attempt to woo Catholics, who represent about one fourth of the electorate and are present in key swing states.
Catholics voted narrowly Democratic four years ago. But the president, a born-again Methodist, took the majority of white Catholic votes in 2000 and leads among them this year.
Senator Kerry, the first Catholic candidate for president since John F. Kennedy in 1960, has struggled to boost his share of the denomination's vote.
Several analysts suggested the race was heading towards the same nail-biting climax as in 2000, when the south-eastern state of Florida handed the presidency to Mr Bush by 537 votes after a recount dispute decided by the US Supreme Court.
Most national "tracking" polls showed Mr Bush maintaining a statistically insignificant one-point lead over Senator Kerry. But the challenger was holding his own in states such as Ohio and Florida, which went Republican four years ago.
Andrew Kohut, head of the Pew Research Institute, wrote yesterday in The New York Times that polls might remain unreliable until the final days of the race because voter opinion was "highly unstable".
That wasn't a quip, it was a rare incident of Kerry telling the truth.
I think that is more that he does not want too many pictures out there of him carrying dead birds or killing things with a gun . That would not go well with much of his base. I can't see why he did this stupid fake hunting trip anyway. He is not fooling anyone. Most of the serious gun owners and hunters who's vote he is after will be persuaded by the NRA more than a picture or two of Kerry trying to look butch. He thinks this helps him but actually it is very clear that all he is doing is pandering
If you have seen the photos, count the ducks. There were only THREE ducks, each man carrying his own. Where was Kerry's if he really DID get one???
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