By John Sweeney
AFL-CIO President

As banks collapse, as retirement and college savings funds disappear, as working families fear that maybe a full-blown depression is coming, John McCain doesn't want to talk about the economy.

A top McCain campaign strategist told the New York Daily News recently, "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose." A "Republican operative" echoed the sentiment, telling The Washington Post, "There's no question that we have to change the subject here."

John McCain doesn't want to talk about the economy because he helped create the mess we're in - the mess our children will inherit. Voting with President Bush's devastating policies 90 percent of the time, preaching deregulation and free-market fundamentalism, supporting the unfair trade deals that have sent our jobs overseas, opposing unions that enable working people to bargain for a better life - McCain already has left enough of his stamp on the U.S. economy.

To change the subject, his campaign has resorted to dirty tactics based on spreading distortions about his opponent, Barack Obama. That's what you do when your campaign is bankrupt of ideas and devoid of integrity. Sling garbage and point in the other direction. It has worked for McCain's party in previous elections - think about Willie Horton and Swiftboat Veterans. Falsehoods and scare tactics.

Working families are scared all right, but not by the McCain-Palin desperation tactics. We've lost 760,000 jobs so far this year; last month alone, 300,000 of us lost our homes to foreclosure; and too many working families can't afford gas, rising food prices or health care.

Now that's scary.

Working families must not be frightened into voting for four more years of Bush-McCain attacks on working families. Lies and distortions won't push us to vote for a candidate who has more empathy for Wall Street than for Main Street. Falsehoods and mudslinging won't convince us to vote for a candidate who wants to tax our health care benefits and shove more people into the heartless private insurance market. We're not going to be fooled or scared into supporting a candidate who wants more financial deregulation, more job-killing trade deals and more power for corporations to deny workers their free choice to form unions and bargain.

There are just a few days left until the most important election of our lives. Every one of us who advocates for working families has a heavy responsibility right now: Talk to people about Barack Obama's plans to rescue our economy and about what the McCain-Palin campaign is doing instead of helping working families. Volunteer to phone bank, canvass neighborhoods, pass out fliers and bend the ears of your family members, friends and co-workers.

Don't let anyone you know be distracted from what matters or be fooled into casting the wrong vote.