It’s too risky to to give Palin top post, warns her state paper

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With just seven days to go until polling, the pair were campaigning in the rust-belt states of Ohio and Pennsylvania after a weekend battleground blitz through western states tilting towards the African-American Obama, 47.

More than 150,000

A day after drawing more than 150,000 supporters to monster rallies in Colorado, Obama hammered McCain on the election’s defining issue – the stricken US economy – but also appealed to voters to choose “hope over fear.”

“It’s about a new politics – a politics that calls on our better angels instead of encouraging our worst instincts,” he said in a retooled stump speech that aides said was Obama’s “closing argument” as the campaign climaxes.

More than jobs, trade and financial stability had been lost under President George W. Bush, the Democrat said in excerpted remarks released by aides ahead of a rally in Canton, Ohio.

“That’s what’s been lost these last eight years – our sense of common purpose; of higher purpose. And that’s what we need to restore right now.”

Mr McCain convened top economic advisers in Cleveland before restating his economic manifesto and accusing Obama of secretly plotting to hike taxes.

“I know it’s pleasant to listen to Senator Obama’s rhetoric but look at the record -- he has voted to raise taxes on individuals making as little 42,000 dollars, those are facts,” McCain said.

“Today he claims he’ll tax the rich; but we’ve seen in the past that he’s been willing to hit people squarely in the middle class.”

Obama meanwhile berated his Republican foe for offering nothing new to what he called the discredited economic policies of the profoundly unpopular Bush.

“When it comes to the economy ... the plain truth is that John McCain has stood with this president every step of the way,” the Illinois senator said.