Candidates favor attacks on behavior, character

Obama calls rival 'erratic'

McCain revisits Democrat's ties to 'terrorist'

Election 2008

More bluntly than he has in the past, McCain conceded yesterday what political analysts have suggested for weeks: that his campaign is in trouble, and time for a shift in fortunes is diminishing.

"In case you missed it, this is about the seventh or eighth time that pundits have said 'McCain's campaign is in trouble,'" the senator said at an event in Mosinee, Wis., in a reference to his Lazarus-like resurgence to win his party's nomination. "We fooled them then, and we'll fool them again."

Policy matters took a back seat to character issues yesterday, but the campaigns did bicker over McCain's mortgage plan. The plan would spend as much as $300 billion to buy up troubled mortgages to stabilize the housing market. As initially announced Tuesday, the plan would have made lenders responsible for "the loss that they've already suffered." By Wednesday morning, the McCain campaign said that line was a mistake.

Obama pounced on the change yesterday as evidence that McCain favored banks over homeowners. "We have to act to fix our broken economy and restore the credit markets, but taxpayers shouldn't be asked to pick up the tab for the very folks who helped create this crisis," Obama said in Dayton.

For Obama, the back-and-forth over policy was less important than pressing the notion that McCain had moved unpredictably on an economic issue. He has been drumming the same theme for weeks.

"We need a steady hand in the White House. We need a president you can trust in times of crisis," Obama told a crowd in Cincinnati. He said McCain was "lurching all over the place" on the economy.

McCain, for his part, has used the Ayers issue sporadically in recent days, raising it in interviews and in new television ads but declining to do so in rallies or when on the same stage with Obama in Tuesday's debate.