SUNRISE, United States (AFP) - President George W. Bush and Democratic rival John Kerry traded blows over key domestic issues and criss-crossed battleground states hoping to sway undecided voters as the campaign clock ticks down.
Just two and a half weeks before voters head to the polls on November 2, the Republican president and the Massachusetts senator were focusing their efforts with laser-like intensity on a handful of states where the outcome of the vote is still uncertain.
So Bush bolted back to vote-rich Florida, on his 12th visit to the southeastern state since March. Kerry intends to campaign there on Sunday.
"Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of Senator Kerry's vote against funding our troops," the president told a cheering crowd of thousands in a sports arena here. "He abandoned our troops in combat by voting against the funding."
For months, Bush has quoted with relish Kerry's clumsy but accurate explanation that he voted in favor of the 87 billion dollar funding measure for Iraq and Afghanistan in procedural vote before voting against final passage.
"He said the whole thing was a complicated matter. There's nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat," said Bush, who secured the presidency by carrying this state by 537 votes in the disputed 2000 election.
Florida's 27 electoral college votes, out of the 270 needed to win the presidency, make it the richest prize among the dozen or so states that are truly up for grabs in the November 2 election.
Recent polls have shown Bush and Kerry deadlocked in Florida, which Bush is scheduled to visit again on Monday and Tuesday -- and probably several more times before US voters go to the polls.
Kerry was spending Saturday stumping in the midwestern state of Ohio, sometimes called the bellwether state because no Republican president ever won without carrying Ohio. Kerry has been there 22 times since March. Bush also won Ohio in the 2000 election against Al Gore.
The two rivals used their respective national radio addresses early Saturday to take aim at each other's domestic policies.
Kerry blasted Bush over his 2001 decision to limit federal funding to the research of existing stem cell lines.
Scientists believe embryonic stem cell research may lead to cures for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and to ways to repair crippling spinal cord injuries.
"By restricting stem cell research, President Bush has turned his back on this hope," Kerry said, as he again invoked late actor Christopher Reeve, the "Superman" star and stem cell research advocate who died Sunday, nine years after a horseback riding accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down.
Kerry said Bush has "made the wrong choice to sacrifice science for extreme right-wing ideology."
"President Bush just doesn't get it," the Democrat said. "Faced with the facts, he turns away. Time and time again, he's proven that he's stubborn, out of touch, and unwilling to change course."
Bush accused the senator of repeatedly voting for tax increases and against health care reform.
An ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll of 1,203 likely voters taken October 12-14 showed the two contenders tied at 48 percent. The latest Zogby International survey showed Bush opening a 48-percent to 44-percent edge among likely voters, with a margin of error of 2.9 percent.
The two rivals on Friday scouted votes in the heartland states of Wisconsin and Iowa, which narrowly went Democratic in 2000 but are closely watched in this year's election.
In a new swipe at Bush's muscular foreign policy, Kerry renewed his pledge to return the United States to the internationalism that marked its foreign policy for the second half of the 20th century.
"The world is waiting for the United States of America they know and love," Kerry said.
Kerry told some 5,000 supporters, braving chilly temperatures and sleet, that their judgement on election day would be watched around the globe.
"The world is waiting for what you are going to do. You don't just get to chose the president of the United States, you get to decide the leader of the free world."
Kerry has accused Bush of ruining long-term US alliances with his policy of pre-emptive strikes against potential threats to the United States, while Bush has charged that foreign states would wield control over US action abroad under a Kerry administration.
Bush Friday lashed out against Kerry's social platform as outdated.
"This economy is moving forward and we're not going back to the old days of tax-and-spend," Bush said during a campaign stop in central Iowa early Friday.
"On issue after issue, from jobs to health care, to the need to strengthen social security, Senator Kerry's policies fail to recognize the changing realities of today's world and the need for fundamental reforms," Bush charged.