Trailing in Polls, Kerry Tries New Strategy

Domestic Focus

While Kerry once made foreign policy, terrorism and homeland security major parts of his stump speech, he has shifted to a focus on bread-and-butter domestic issues — the economy, health care and education. At a "front porch" event in Newark on Friday morning, Kerry teed off on the new job creation numbers, which indicated only modest job growth last month. "The president wants you to re-elect him for what?" Kerry asked. "Losing jobs?"

The state of Ohio has lost 230,000 jobs since Bush took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and next week in Newark, a local factory — The Longaberger Co. — is expected to lay off another 784 people. In total, Longaberger, which makes handcrafted baskets and home and lifestyle products including pottery, employs approximately 3,500 fewer workers today than it did three years ago.

On Saturday, Kerry called economic issues and jobs, "the most important part of this race," and charged that in Bush's Thursday night acceptance speech at the GOP convention, "the president mentioned jobs once. Once."

The president's speech actually contained 11 mentions of the word "jobs."

The Kerry team is clearly banking on domestic issues. In a new $50 million advertising campaign, Kerry's camp launched a series of new TV ads Friday that will stalk the president as he hops through six battleground states — Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. All of the ads discuss domestic issues — including health insurance in Ohio, manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin and the coal industry in West Virginia.