McCain will close campaign with slash and burn attacks on him, says Obama

Washington, Nov 1 : Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama told supporters to expect rival John McCain's campaign to end in a crescendo of attacks on him.

"More of the slash and burn, say-anything, do-anything politics that's calculated to divide and distract; to tear us apart instead of bringing us together," Obama told 25,000 in Des Moines, Iowa.

The Illinois senator said he admired a presidential candidate who said in 2000, "I will not take the low road to the highest office in this land."

"Those words were spoken eight years ago by my opponent, John McCain. But the high road didn't lead him to the White House then, so this time, he decided to take a different route," CBS News quoted Obama, as saying.

McCain was spending a second straight day touring economically ailing Ohio, a swing state with 20 electoral votes that McCain aides acknowledge is central to a victory on Tuesday. McCain was behind Obama in polls in the state.

In Ohio's hard-pressed southeast, McCain whipped up a crowd of several thousand at the county courthouse in Steubenville, telling them, "You're going to be the battleground state again. You're going to be the one who decides. I need Ohio and I need you." n what could be a final ignominy for McCain, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said the campaign would begin airing ads in Arizona, a state McCain has represented in Congress for 26 years.

Plouffe said the race has tightened in Arizona, Georgia and North Dakota, and that the campaign was mounting ads in all three states. A recent poll from McCain's home state showed the two candidates in a statistical dead heat.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis derided Obama's moves: "We encourage them to pick other states that we intend to win" to spend their money.

The combined efforts of the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee have been closing the advertising advantage that Obama has enjoyed since the two party conventions this summer.

ANI