On the campaign trail

Palin will meet Karzai during U.N. opening

WASHINGTON --- Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai this week in New York, campaign officials for GOP nominee John McCain confirmed Saturday.

Mr. Karzai and other world leaders will be in New York for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly. Both Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin planned to be in New York during that time, in part so Mr. McCain can introduce the Alaska governor to the foreign dignitaries assembled there.

McCain campaign officials said Mrs. Palin might meet with other world leaders, but they declined to say which ones.

The campaign is working to assure voters that Mrs. Palin has sufficient understanding of foreign policy to be vice president. She's acknowledged having little experience in international affairs and got her first passport in 2007 to visit Alaska National Guard members serving in Kuwait and Germany.

Obama faces racial problems within party

WASHINGTON --- Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks -- many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles.

The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests the percentage of voters who might turn away from Mr. Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 -- about 2.5 percentage points.

The poll found that 40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Mr. Obama than those who don't have such views.

"There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn't mean there's only a few bigots," said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman, who helped analyze the exhaustive survey.

In other news

JOHN MCCAIN REPORTED raising $47.5 million in August, his biggest fundraising stretch of the campaign, with more than $9 million coming in the three days after he announced his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate Aug. 29, according to a report filed late Friday with the Federal Election Commission. Mr. McCain spent an afternoon away from the campaign trail Saturday, traveling to the U.S. Naval Academy for his 50th class reunion.

in DAYTONA BEACH, FLA., Barack Obama criticized John McCain on Saturday for his past advocacy of deregulation, ties to lobbyists and support for privatizing the Social Security system. He quoted Mr. McCain as saying in trade publication that opening the health insurance market to more vigorous competition nationwide, as was done with the banking industry during the past decade, would provide more choices.