Obama camp finds a line of attack on McCain healthcare plan

Barack Obama arrived at a Harrisonburg, Va., rally yesterday. (JAE C. HONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

HARRISONBURG, Va. - Barack Obama yesterday seized on what his campaign sees as a new opening to attack John McCain's health plan as risky and wrong-headed, but McCain's campaign accused its Democratic rival of spreading a lie.

At issue is a CNN interview during which McCain's senior economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said that young, healthy Americans would be unlikely to leave their employer-based healthcare plans under a McCain administration, which would offer new tax credits to families to buy insurance on the private market.

"Why would they leave?" Holtz-Eakin was quoted as saying. "What they are getting from their employer is way better than what they could get with the credit."

Obama labeled this a "stunning bit of straight talk" and an "October surprise." "This is the point I've been making since Senator McCain unveiled his plan," he said at James Madison University. "It took until the last seven days of this election for his campaign to finally admit the truth. But, better late than never."

Holtz-Eakin fired back in a memo to reporters, saying Obama was using his fund-raising advantage to launch "a sustained campaign of half-truths, distortions, and outright lies about healthcare reform."

"The Obama campaign deliberately took the quote out of context," he said. "When the truth is so ugly on your side, it takes a lot of money to mount an attack misleading enough to fool the American public."

SCOTT HELMAN

Obama TV ad will preempt Series pregame show
Barack Obama's half-hour TV ad tonight will preempt the World Series pregame show, after all.

Major League Baseball announced that the resumption of Game 5, which was suspended by a deluge Monday night, will not happen until tonight. If Philadelphia and Tampa Bay had managed to play last night, and if the Phillies had won, they would have clinched the series, and Obama would have been off the hook.

After Obama scheduled his ad for 8 tonight, Fox and Major League Baseball agreed to postpone the start of the World Series game if there was one played. The ad is also to air on CBS, NBC, and Univision.

John McCain told voters in Pennsylvania yesterday, "No one will delay a World Series game with an infomercial when I'm president."

The Obama campaign points out that a Fox executive says that there's no delay because the first pitch this World Series has been happening between 8:22 and 8:35 p.m., so the only thing that is being preempted is the pregame show.

FOON RHEE

Romney fund-raising e-mail suggests doom for McCain
Onetime rival and now chief cheerleader Mitt Romney suggests John McCain is a goner in a fund-raising appeal for an imperiled Republican US senator.

The e-mail, reported by Talking Points Memo, urges donors to aid Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican in the Senate. Democrats are hoping to swing enough seats to reach a filibuster-proof majority of 60 in the Senate.

McConnell's challenger "will be a reliable vote for the Democrats. And as we face the very real possibility of an Obama presidency, that's the last thing we need," the e-mail says. "It's more critical than ever that we have a strong Republican leader to act as a 'firewall' against bad legislation, tax increases, and increased spending."

Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney spokesman, downplayed the language in the e-mail.

"It shouldn't surprise anyone that there is a very real possibility that Barack Obama might be elected president. He's one of only two people in line for the job, out of 300 million," Fehrnstrom said in a statement.

"It's why Mitt Romney is pouring all his energy into electing the only other guy with a real possibility, John McCain," Fehrnstrom said.

McCain this week has been making an argument similar to the e-mail's, saying that Democrat Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader Harry Reid would be a "dangerous threesome."

But he has not been admitting that he's going to lose.

FOON RHEE

Fearing socialism, Joe the plumber backs McCain
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Joe the plumber endorsed Republican John McCain for president yesterday.

Samuel J. Wurzelbacher has become a staple of McCain's stump speeches since Democrat Obama told him during a campaign stop that he wanted to "spread the wealth around." McCain points to Wurzelbacher as an example of the middle-class worker who would be hurt economically by an Obama presidency.

During a McCain rally at a flag store, Wurzelbacher said he feared that Obama would turn the United States into a socialist nation.

ASSOCIATED PRESS