Obama raises record $66 million in August, outstripping McCain

Even as he has lost ground in the polls to Republican John McCain, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama announced Sunday raising a record $66 million last month - including donations from a half million first-time givers - and easily outstripping his opponent's August take by nearly $20 million.

Obama was taking the day off while McCain campaigned at a stock car race in New Hampshire, seeking to ride the wave of conservative support for his candidacy after he chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Obama's campaign said the most recent fundraising haul meant he had more than $77 million cash on hand, after he gambled against taking federal financing. McCain is taking the public financing, but is limited to spending only the $84 million he received in taxpayer dollars after the Republican convention earlier this month.

Obama's fundraisers have estimated that he still has to do better in September and October to remain on par with McCain and the Republican National Committee. The RNC has more money to spend on McCain's behalf than the Democratic Party has for Obama.

Obama has been scoring points with counterattacks on distortions and factual inaccuracies promoted by McCain's campaign, but the Democrat has lost ground since the Republican convention and the Arizona senator's surprise choice of Palin, whose conservative Christian views have made her a favorite of the party's base which had been wary of McCain.

Most polls now show McCain and Obama statistically tied in the race in which Obama had held clear but small leads since he captured the Democratic nomination 3 1/2 months ago.

On Saturday, Obama also campaigned in battleground New Hampshire, the small New England state where McCain brought his candidacy back to life in January with a victory in the year's first primary election. Only months before, McCain's campaign had virtually collapsed under internal bickering and his support for a revised U.S. policy on immigration that was anathema to conservatives in his party.

Obama scaled back campaign events on Saturday because of the devastation unleashed by Hurricane Ike as it battered Texas and Louisiana. He asked his supporters to help with relief efforts for hurricane victims and canceled a planned appearance on the TV comedy show "Saturday Night Live."

But Obama did not put aside his differences with McCain. At an outdoor rally attended by thousands in Manchester, New Hampshire, he discussed the "quiet storms that are taking place throughout America" as people lose their jobs, health care and pensions, and he argued that McCain is out of touch with the daily struggles of ordinary people.

His campaign criticized his Republican opponent in a new TV ad that notes the McCain campaign's ties to lobbyists in spite of McCain's pledge to end business as usual with the "special interests."

Obama's running mate Joe Biden, the longtime Delaware senator and a dean of the upper chamber's foreign policy brain trust, prepared to take on a more prominent role in attacking his old friend and rival in hopes of stopping McCain's advance in the polls.

Part of Biden's appeal as a running mate is his comfort in debating opponents and deflating their positions - something that is not always Obama's strong suit, although he is taking a more aggressive tone in the campaign's final weeks.

Biden has a formidable task in trying to cap McCain's surge in the polls after picking Palin, the 44-year-old mother of five who has faced harsh criticism from Democrats for not being qualified for the job.

Obama has called Palin a "phenomenon" and acknowledged she has given the Republican ticket a boost. But his aides say McCain is vulnerable to new criticisms because he has stretched the truth in recent comments and ads, and because Palin was shaky on foreign policy in a recent interview with ABC News.

The criticism intensified Saturday because of a discrepancy over whether Palin has ever been to Iraq, prompting a blistering memorandum to campaign reporters by Obama's aides.

"Since naming Gov. Palin as their vice presidential nominee, the McCain campaign has distorted, distracted and outright lied to the American people about her record in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that a McCain/Palin administration would be nothing more than a continuation of the failed Bush policies of the last eight years," the memo read.

At issue is whether or not Palin - whose foreign travel is apparently limited to a trip to Kuwait and Germany last year to visit U.S. troops and visits to Canada and Mexico - ever actually set foot in Iraq during her July 2007 trip to see members of the Alaska National Guard in Kuwait, on the border with Iraq.

The aide, who demanded anonymity before answering the question, told The Associated Press that Palin visited a "military outpost" on the Iraq side of the Kuwait/Iraq border.

That answer, however, appears to contradict one provided to The Boston Globe, which said campaign aides and members of the Alaska National Guard explained that she did not venture beyond the border when she visited the Khabari Alawazem Crossing on July 25, 2007.

The intensifying criticism follow several ads from the McCain campaign, one which said Obama favored comprehensive sex education for kindergarten students and another that suggested Obama had called Palin a pig. Both are factually inaccurate.

Biden who has known McCain for more than 22 years, was preparing arguments that the Republican standard-bearer is a man of character, but wrong on the issues, advisers said.

Biden is scheduled to give two major speeches framing the race before the presidential debates get under way - one on domestic policy Mondy in Flat Rock, Michigan, and another on national security Sept. 22 in Baltimore. He was campaigning Sunday in North Carolina.

He will be serving as the campaign's top fundraiser and will try to help validate Obama with communities that have been skeptical of his candidacy to varying degrees - especially working-class voters.

Polls have shown that McCain has strong support among that group, something he will be trying to cement Sunday by showing up at the NASCAR race, a popular pastime among that bloc of the electorate .