ELECTION 2004 Vice President candidate John Edwards. The Enquirer/STEVEN M. HERPPICH

• Edwards puts emphasis on plan to create jobs • Cheney says Bush election crucial to win terror war • Bush campaign raises $260 million, doubling previous contribution record • Kentucky poll finds Bunning well in lead • CBS apologizes for Bush military report ENQUIRER EDITORIALS • Kerry/Edwards offer plans for healing Iraq • Q&A: Edwards discusses war on terrorism, economic change • Election 2004 page

In a preview of a jobs proposal he'll introduce in Cleveland today, Edwards proposed tax credits for businesses that create jobs in specific places that have been hit hard by overseas job loss and high unemployment.

"It isn't by accident that I came to this place tonight," he said at a street party-style rally in Bond Hill after a short speech to a union convention downtown. "We don't just want to create jobs. How 'bout if we bring jobs to communities like this?"

While the top half of the ticket, Sen. John Kerry, was escalating his attacks on the Bush administration's handling of Iraq Monday, Edwards stuck mostly to bread-and-butter Democratic domestic issues.

In an outdoor event in Bond Hill - in contrast to the more carefully controlled invitation-only event held by the Republican vice president in Cincinnati 11 days ago - Edwards talked over ambulance sirens to a crowd of 1,500 people. The Democratic faithful waited nearly three hours, through warm-up speeches, gospel music and stepping, to hear his half-hour speech.

It was a friendly crowd. Democrat Al Gore won 89.6 percent of the vote in Cincinnati's Ward 7, which includes Bond Hill, in 2000.

There, Edwards spoke of expanding health care, raising the minimum wage, and rolling back upper-bracket tax cuts.

Earlier, in an unscheduled speech to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Edwards promised to ban permanent replacement workers, enforce a card-check system of organizing elections, and comprehensive labor law reform.

"We have gone from collective bargaining to collective begging in America," he told the 2,000 delegates known as "fighting machinists."

The union, which has hosted a member of the Democratic ticket at every quadrennial convention for 100 years, is meeting at the Cinergy Convention Center in Cincinnati this week. Max Cleland, a former Democratic senator from Georgia, will address the group today.

Edwards also derided Vice President Dick Cheney's remark in Cincinnati this month - in a smaller event at the same convention center - that federal job numbers aren't accounting for the 400,000 Americans who make a full- or part-time living by trading on Internet auction sites.

"The truth of the matter is, a job is a job," he told the machinists. "People in this room understand that, and George Bush and Dick Cheney don't. It's about more than a paycheck. It's about dignity and self-respect."

Both his speeches in Cincinnati were typical of the stump talks from Edwards, whose role is to attack the Bush-Cheney message of the day in a fiery southern style.

Edwards did try out a few new lines. Mocking the pharmaceutical industry, Edwards promised that a President Kerry would "do something" about drug company TV ads.

"You know these drug companies who say they're spending all their money on research and development? Right.

"You know these ads. You take their medicine, and that night, you and your spouse will be stepping through the fields," he said to uproarious laughter in Bond Hill.

Introducing Edwards in Bond Hill were Cincinnati Vice Mayor Alicia Reece and the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Echoing Edwards' attacks to his opponents' ties to the oil industry, Shuttlesworth said "Halliburton!" - the oil services company Cheney ran before running for vice president - has become the new "Hallelujah!" for Republicans.

"Halliburton means a lot of hell for a lot of folks," Shuttlesworth said.

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