Candidates Focus on Battlegrounds, Spar on Tax Plans

SPENCER MICHELS, NewsHour Correspondent: John McCain campaigned in New Hampshire today, hoping to stage a comeback in the state where he turned around his primary campaign earlier this year.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), Arizona: I can't think of any place I'd rather be as Election Day draws close than running an underdog campaign in the state of New Hampshire.

SPENCER MICHELS: McCain stepped up his criticism of Barack Obama's tax plan at a morning rally near Manchester.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: My opponent has spoken about the reluctance of citizens and business owners to part with their earnings. He understands that, when it's time to "spread the wealth" around, quote, they're not going to give up those profits easily.

And readers of his book, "The Audacity of Hope," might recall that he wrote about the need to "spread the wealth around" there, too. He writes of the need for "labor laws and tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation's wealth."

He's talked elsewhere about how, in our day, "The distribution of wealth is even more skewed and levels of inequity are now higher." What are really skewed in all of this are my opponent's priorities.

He talks about our economy in a detached and academic way, forgetting that the goal is not to redistribute wealth, but to create it.

SPENCER MICHELS: Obama started the day in Richmond, Virginia, another battleground state, where he met with his national security advisers.

Afterwards, he took questions from reporters, including one about McCain's charge that Obama intends to redistribute wealth. Obama responded that he would give 95 percent of working families a tax cut and only raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), Illinois: Now, given that every time I go to a rally and I ask how many people are making $250,000 a year or more, not many hands go up.

And the overwhelming majority of Americans -- bus drivers, teachers, social workers, small-business people -- make less than $250,000 a year. They don't have a very good argument on their side.

So what they're trying to do is to fabricate an argument and to try to suggest that somehow what I'm proposing would hit the middle class or small businesses. Factually, it's just not correct. I mean, Senator McCain is running a campaign against somebody else, not me, because he's not speaking to my plan.