McCain, Palin hold joint rally; Obama says McCain 'out of ideas'

During rallies in New Hampshire and Ohio, Republican John McCain said Democrat Barack Obama favors taxes that will hurt the middle class and small businesses -- despite Obama's pledge to cut them for 95 percent of taxpayers. "Sarah Palin and I will not raise your taxes, my friends. We want you to get wealthy," McCain told 10,000 people gathered in a football stadium near Akron, Ohio. Palin, holding her first joint event with McCain since Oct. 13, derided Obama as "Barack the Wealth Spreader."

Earlier in New Hampshire, McCain said at a rally: " I love New Hampshire. ... "I'm asking you to come out one more time. Get out the vote."

Obama, campaigning in Richmond, Va., said remarks such as Palin's signified a losing campaign that was running out of time: "They have been trying to throw whatever they can up against the wall to see what sticks. They have run out of ideas." Obama told about 13,000 supporters at the Richmond Coliseum that "in the final days of campaigns, the say-anything, do-anything politics too often takes over. Obama leads in Virginia by an average of 7 percentage points in public polls.

For those keeping score at home, the price tag on the race for the White House now totals $2.1 billion.

This according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which projects that by the time it ends, the candidates and political parties will have raised and spent roughly $2.4 billion.

The major figure in all this spending is Obama, who has, through the end of September, raised more than $620 million since announcing his candidacy in February in Springfield, Ill. McCain has raised $272 million, for a combined total of $892 million raised by the two campaigns.

October and early November numbers will push that figure even higher.

His campaign is asking news organizations to pay anywhere from $410 to $1,870 depending on where they want to be and if they want phone or Internet service in Grant Park.

There is one press credential reporters can get for free. It will provide access to a standing-room-only outdoor press area with no services that "may have obstructed views."

Obama's campaign said that it's charging the media only for the services it will be providing them, not for coverage, and that such fees are "standard procedure" in presidential campaigns.

Media coverage of the presidential race has not always been glowing for Obama, but it has clearly been negative for McCain, according to a survey of newspapers, Internet and television news outlets since the end of the national political conventions.

Slightly less than one-third of the stories about Obama were negative, while more than one-third were positive and about the same number were neutral or mixed.

The media watchdog group assessed the tone of the campaign during the six crucial weeks from early September through the final presidential debate, examining 857 stories from 43 news outlets.