Obama, McCain each campaign in other's stronghold areas

— -- Presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama each stumped in their rival's traditional strongholds Tuesday, hammering away at economic issues with only two weeks before Election Day.

McCain, shrugging off Democratic efforts to paint the economy as a losing issue for Republicans, called Obama's tax policies an attempt to take money away from one group of taxpayers and give it to another.

McCain, quoting Obama as saying he wanted to "spread the wealth around," criticized the Illinois Democrat as favoring socialist economic policies.

Obama, he told a rally in Bensalem, Pa., is "more interested in controlling who gets your piece of pie than in growing the pie."

For their part, the Democrats have hammered away at a comment by a top McCain strategist in an interview with the New York Daily News that "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."

McCain challenged that depiction during an interview on CBS' The Early Show on Tuesday. "We're focusing on the economy," McCain said. "Listen to me. I'm the candidate, and this campaign is about the economy."

In Florida, Obama shot back at McCain during a second day of campaigning in the voter-rich southern state.

"After eight years of Bush-McCain economics, the pie is shrinking, it's not growing," Obama said at a jobs summit he hosted with the participation by the governors of Michigan, Ohio, New Mexico and Colorado, states that went Republican four years ago.

"We've seen what happens with their policies," he said.

Also attending the summit in Lake Worth, Fla., were Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, an Obama campaign adviser.

In other developments:

•Obama will leave the campaign trail Thursday and Friday to visit his ailing 85-year-old grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, in Hawaii. Her brother, Charles Payne, said Tuesday that Dunham broke her hip recently and is "gravely ill."

Obama told CBS News earlier this month that he had only able to visit his grandmother, who helped raise him, once during 19 months of campaigning.