Time to decide on America’s future

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. | The presidential nominees made their closing-argument dash to the finish line of the marathon campaign for the White House, as millions of Americans prepared to vote Tuesday in the most-watched election in decades, thousands of lawyers fanned out across the country to monitor polling places and an army of volunteers deployed to drive turnout.

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, who learned that his grandmother died before finishing his historic bid for the presidency with a swing through Northern Virginia, and Republican Sen. John McCain both played it safe on the campaign trail, avoiding reporters and sticking to their stump speeches.

Even still, Mr. Obama found himself taking heat for comments made in January that his climate-change plan could “bankrupt” the coal industry, which remains a critical part of the economy in contested places such as western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.

Meanwhile, the Alaska Personnel Board announced late Monday that it had cleared Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin of wrongdoing in the firing of the state’s public safety commissioner - a finding that contradicts a state legislative investigation.

Late Monday night, Mr. Obama ended his nearly two-year campaign with a final rally with a crowd of about 90,000 in Manassas, Va.

Virginia has not backed a Democrat for president since 1964 but is key to Mr. Obama’s strategy to redraw the electoral map.

Most of those in the crowd, waving blue Obama-Biden signs and some clutching umbrellas, waited more than six hours for Mr. Obama to arrive at the Prince William County Fairgrounds. The rally caused hours-long traffic jams on nearby roads, and some supporters parked their cars off the side of the road and hiked up to two miles to reach the event.

“It starts here in Manassas. This is where change begins,” Mr. Obama told the cheering crowd. “In these last 24 hours we cannot afford to let up one hour, one minute, one second. We cannot stop now because there is so much at stake. We will change America starting tomorrow.”

Mr. Obama’s final stump speech hit on familiar themes, with vows to end the war in Iraq and pitting his promise to rebuild the economy “from the bottom up” against what he said was Mr. McCain’s plan to continue failed Bush administration policies. He also struck a conciliatory tone for his rival, commending Mr. McCain for breaking with the president on such critical issues as torture.

But Mr. Obama said that “when it came to the central issue of the election, when it came to the economy, he has stood with President Bush every step of the way.”

Mr. Obama said he had been humbled by his “unlikely journey” and uplifted by the stories of hard work and sacrifice he heard from middle-class Americans. At that point, a man in the crowd yelled out, “We love you.”

Mr. Obama’s visit to Virginia was his 11th since he clinched the nomination.

On the eve of Election Day, the race in Virginia had narrowed but Mr. Obama had a 4.3-percentage-point lead in the Real Clear Politics average of polls in the state. The importance of winning Virginia for the Obama campaign was underscored by late plans for Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. to wrap up his campaign schedule Tuesday with a final stop in Richmond, the 16th time a candidate on the ticket visited the commonwealth.

Organizers from both Mr. Obama’s campaign and Mr. McCain’s campaign were warning people to expect long lines and to follow the rules at the ballot box.

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