Bush and Kerry continue hunt for votes

Senator John Kerry returned to domestic issues today, criticising cuts in after-school programs, health care coverage and jobs lost in the last four years.

Making his fifth consecutive Sunday appearance at a predominantly black church in Ohio, the Democratic presidential nominee quoted the Bible and criticised his White House rival without naming him.

“There is a standard by which we have to live,” Kerry said. “Coming to church on Sundays and talking about faith and professing faith isn’t the whole deal.”

President George W Bush opened his day in a battleground to the south, at worship services at a Roman Catholic church in Miami.

Bush, who has assiduously courted Catholics during his term, was accompanied by first lady Laura Bush, his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and other relatives. He was all but endorsed by Monsignor Jude O’Doherty. Bush isn’t Catholic, but Kerry is.

“Mr President, I want you to know that I admire your faith and your courage to profess it,” O’Doherty said.

Bush planned three campaign rallies across the length of Florida, followed by another in Cincinnati.

After Ohio, Kerry planned a stop in New Hampshire before following Bush to Florida, where he earned a narrow victory in 2000.

With the race too close to call, Bush and Kerry also sought to turn to their advantage the re-emergence of bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

“The terrorists who killed thousands of innocent people are still dangerous and they are determined,” Bush told supporters at a Wisconsin rally on Saturday, the day after bin Laden’s newest videotaped message was broadcast.

Campaigning not far from the president, Kerry responded to bin Laden’s re-emergence with his months-old criticism of Bush’s post-September 11 tactics in Afghanistan, bin Laden’s base.

“As I have said for two years now, when Osama bin Laden and al Qaida were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, it was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them to Afghan warlords,” Kerry said on Saturday. “It was wrong to divert our forces from Afghanistan so we could rush to war with Iraq without a plan to win the peace.”

A Newsweek poll showed the president moving ahead of Kerry in the popular vote, 50% to 44%, after being tied in the same survey a week ago. Democrats said their private surveys hinted at momentum for Bush.

White House chief of staff Andrew Card, interviewed today on CNN’s “Late Edition,” predicted a Bush victory on Tuesday night.

“We’ve got over a million volunteers in key battleground states helping the president get the vote out,” Card said. ”I really see tremendous momentum for the president.”

On the campaign Saturday, the two candidates responded to bin Laden’s tape in ways reflecting their long-held campaign strategies.

The president – who throughout the campaign has sought to deflect voter concerns about the war in Iraq, his handling of the economy and his job performance overall by fuelling fears about terrorism – continued that theme.

At his first stop in Republican-leaning western Michigan, he reminded supporters of the 2001 attacks. “Americans go to the polls at a time of war and ongoing threats unlike any we have faced before,” Bush said.

In response to the videotape, the Bush administration warned state and local officials that the tape may be intended to promote or signal an attack.

Kerry has tried to tap anti-war sentiment within the ranks of the Democratic Party while assuring swing voters that he would keep them safe. The decorated Vietnam War veteran pledged anew to “destroy, capture, kill Osama bin Laden and all of the terrorists.”

With a touch of swagger, Kerry began one sentence by saying, “When I am president,” and pledged to provide ”leadership and hope” to US troops seeking a quick return home from Iraq.