Edwards: Bush has taken US to the edge of the cliff

The Democrats are not taking the assaults from the Republicans lying down, or windsurfing as John Kerry was at the beginning of the week. At midnight last night, an hour after George Bush was due to finish his speech in New York, Mr Kerry and running mate John Edwards were back on the trail.

The Democrats are not taking the assaults from the Republicans lying down, or windsurfing as John Kerry was at the beginning of the week. At midnight last night, an hour after George Bush was due to finish his speech in New York, Mr Kerry and running mate John Edwards were back on the trail.

The two challengers were expecting a large, late-night crowd in Springfield, Ohio, where they will launch the final stage of their campaign leading to election day in November. After their joint appearance, they will go their separate ways. Mr Kerry will remain in Ohio, a critical state, for two days. Mr Edwards will tour the Midwest.

Yesterday Mr Edwards, made the rounds of the morning radio and television shows. After merciless attacks on Mr Kerry by Dick Cheney and Senator Zell Miller at Madison Square Garden on Thursday, he scorned the Republicans for negative campaigning. "What we heard from the Republicans in that hall last night was an enormous amount of anger," he said on CBS's The Early Show.

"If you went to the refrigerator to get a Diet Coke, you would have missed any discussion of what they're going to do about health care, what they're going to do about jobs, what they plan to do about this mess in Iraq."He accused the Bush administration of leading the nation from "the edge of greatness to the edge of the cliff".

The Democrats plan a multimillion-dollar television advertising blitz in key states.