Obama stumps for McCaskill in Senate race with Talent

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, headlining a rally for Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, whipped a Democratic crowd into shouts and applause Saturday by criticizing President Bush and saying Democrats must do more than complain to win November's elections.

"The question is, how bad do we want it? The question is, are we willing to work for it?" Obama told about 1,000 people at the Uptown Theater. "The fact is, the other side has worked for it.

"Democrats complain all the time about this, and they complain about that," he said. "Let me tell you something, the time for complaining is over."

McCaskill is in a tight race with Republican Sen. Jim Talent on the Nov. 7 ballot.

Obama, who is seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2008, told the crowd to get out and work for the Democratic Party.

"Don't tell me you have had enough if you're not working. Don't tell me you've had enough if you're not volunteering," Obama said. "I want everybody here before you leave if you haven't signed up to get in that office and make some telephone calls, or lick some envelopes or knock on some doors and grab your cousin Pookie and take him to the polls."

A USA Today/Gallup poll of 577 likely voters, released Friday, showed 48 percent favor McCaskill and 45 percent favor Talent, with 7 percent undecided. The margin of error was plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Among registered voters, McCaskill led Talent 44 percent to 39 percent in the survey conducted Sept. 27 through Oct. 1.

Talent spokesman Rich Chrismer said it was "interesting" that McCaskill was campaigning with Obama, who worked with Talent on and supported the energy bill signed by Bush last year.

McCaskill opposed the measure and has "attacked Senator Talent for supporting the same bill," Chrismer said.

In his remarks to the crowd, Obama also took aim at the Bush administration, which he accused of pursuing a national security strategy "where we ramp up the war on terror somehow for three months between September and November every even-numbered year."

Instead, he said, "I think fighting terrorism should be a year-round thing. It should not be an election season thing."

Before the rally, Obama, who also spoke at a breakfast fund raiser, did not respond to reporters' questions about his presidential ambitions but said he was instead "focused on getting Democrats elected."

McCaskill also made an appearance Saturday with labor leaders in Kansas City and repeated the pledge she made Friday in suburban St. Louis -- that if elected to the Senate, she would not accept a pay raise until the minimum wage is increased.

"We should be ashamed of our national minimum wage," McCaskill said in the Friday event at the Laborers' District Council Hall in Bridgeton. "That's why as Missouri's senator I will not take a pay raise until we give one to our workers."

McCaskill clarified in an interview that she would donate the amount of any raise to charity -- probably boys' and girls' clubs and domestic violence shelters.

But Chrismer said Friday that Talent has consistently voted against increasing congressional pay.

"Claire McCaskill accepted pay increases as auditor," Chrismer said. "She's benefiting personally from taxpayer-funded low-income housing credits as well as nursing homes. So we are content to let the voters decide who can best represent Missouri interests in the U.S. Senate."