U.S. & World

Dems Assail GOP As Bush Touts Big Finish

WASHINGTON (CBS News) ― On the eve of midterm elections, Democrats criticized Republicans as stewards of a stale status quo while President Bush campaigned into the evening in a drive to preserve GOP control in Congress.

"They can't run anything right," said former President Clinton, taunting Republicans about the war in Iraq, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and even the scandal involving the House page program that complicated GOP efforts to win two more years in power.

Bush campaigned on Monday from Florida to Arkansas and Texas. But the day brought one more reminder of his poor standing in the polls when Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist skipped the presidential rally in Pensacola, Fla., to make a speech of his own hundreds of miles away.

Bush made no mention of the evident snub in public, but not so his aides. "Let's see how many people show up in Palm Beach on 24 hours notice, versus 8,000 or 9,000 people" expected for the president's speech, said Karl Rove, the White House's top political strategist.

A CBS News analysis shows 52 competitive House races, nearly all of them involving Republican seats. Democrats need to pick up 15 seats in the House and six in the Senate to take control of Congress.

"The question now is whether it's going to be a good or a great night for the Democrats," said CBS News political consultant Stu Rothenberg.

But polls out this weekend and Monday show Republicans nationwide are closing the gap, reports CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer. The new USA Today-Gallup poll reflects that trend.

Democrats come out on top, but the margin has shrunk in that poll from 13 points several weeks ago to just seven now -- 51 percent to 44 percent.

But Republicans are still behind, reports Schieffer. They are running with a President whose own approval ratings remain low and all polls show Americans still believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Democrats steadfastly refused to say so in public, but some Republicans signaled privately they expected to lose more than 15 seats, and control of the House with them.

Among GOP-held open seats, those in Arizona, Colorado, New York, Ohio and Iowa seemed likeliest to fall. Republican Reps. John Hostettler, Chris Chocola and Mike Sodrel of Indiana; Charles Taylor of North Carolina; Curt Weldon, Don Sherwood and Melissa Hart of Pennsylvania; and Charles Bass of New Hampshire were in particularly difficult re-election struggles.

Democrats also boasted of several election targets in New York, where Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Eliot Spitzer, the Democratic candidate for governor, were expected to win landslides at the top of the ticket.

Easily two dozen more Republican seats were in jeopardy, including one in Texas that may not be settled until next month. There, Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla and former Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, a Democrat, were the leading contenders in an eight-candidate field. A run-off between the two top vote-getters would follow if no one won a majority on Tuesday.

In contrast, only a few Democratic incumbents appeared in jeopardy, including Reps. John Barrow in Georgia; Melissa Bean in Illinois and, in a race that bore no impact on the broader party struggle, William Jefferson in Louisiana. Jefferson, ensnared in a federal corruption investigation, faced a likely runoff on Dec. 9, possibly against fellow Democrat Karen Carter.

Among the key Senate races to watch:

•  In Rhode Island, Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, who had been written off by some observers, has narrowed the gap with Democratic challenger Sheldon Whitehouse to 3 points in the latest USA Today/Gallup poll.

•  In the battle for Maryland's open Senate seat, Democrat Ben Cardin, who had held a comfortable lead over Republican Michael Steele, now leads by just 3 points in the latest Mason Dixon poll, while a SurveyUSA poll shows the race even.

•  In Montana, where Republican Sen. Conrad Burns had been struggling, polls are inconclusive, either showing Burns and Democrat Jim Tester tied (Mason-Dixon), or Tester with a 9-point lead (USA Today/Gallup).

•  In Tennessee, Republican Bob Corker may be pulling away from Democratic Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., in the race to replace retiring GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Corker leads by 12 points in the latest poll from the Chattanooga Times Free Press & Memphis Commercial Appeal.

After months of pursuing the Republicans, Democrats declined to say they would catch them.

"From the Iraq war to the economy to how the Congress does its work, the American people want a different direction -- and that's what Democrats offer," Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the head of the House Democrats' campaign committee, said Monday.

"We have never said we're going to take control of the Senate. We have said we're on the edge. That's where we are," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Senate Democrats' organization.

Democrats needed to gain six seats to win control of the Senate. GOP Sens. Mike DeWine in Ohio and Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania appeared in deepest trouble, Sens. Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island and Conrad Burns in Montana somewhat less so.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, in line to become the first woman speaker in history if Democrats win, was in Washington after a weekend of campaigning for candidates in Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Neither Bush nor Clinton, the president and ex-president, was on Tuesday's ballot, but both campaigned energetically toward the finish line.

"The Democrats want to raise taxes when you're born, when you're working, when you retire and when you die," Bush said in Florida as his audience laughed appreciatively. "In other words, the Democrats' philosophy is this: 'If it breathes, tax it. And if it stops breathing, find their children, tax it."

Campaigning in Missouri, Democratic senatorial candidate Claire McCaskill said it wasn't so. She was in a supermarket meeting voters when one shopper asked her whether she wanted to raise taxes.

"There's nothing to that allegation," she replied. "We're going to cut taxes for the middle class."

She added that previous tax cuts "that just help the very wealthy should be retargeted to the middle class."

As he has repeatedly, the president attacked Democrats for their position on the war in Iraq.

"Oh, they've got some ideas. Some of them say, 'get out right now.' Some of them say, 'get out at a fixed date,' even though the job hasn't been done. One of them said, 'let's move our troops to an island some 5,000 away."'

Clinton, the former president, provided the rebuttal to that charge from a stage in Rochester, N.Y.

"On this 'stay the course in Iraq' deal, they say we're the cut-and-run crowd," he said. "These people don't look like cut and run to me," he said, gesturing at Eric Massa, a House candidate and Navy veteran, and former Sen. Max Cleland, a triple amputee from war wounds suffered in Vietnam a generation ago.

The campaign's final hours brought fresh evidence of the enormous cost.

Spending by the two national parties surged in the final week as Democrats and Republicans invested in television commercials designed to sway the outcome in more than 60 House races and 10 Senate contests. In all, the two parties have spent about $225 million thus far in campaign activities independent of the candidates themselves.

(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)