By GLEN JOHNSON and LIZ SIDOTI
Associated Press Writers
BOSTON – His health care plan in peril, President Barack Obama laid on a last-minute campaign trip to Massachusetts for Democrat Martha Coakley on Sunday with polls showing her struggling in an unexpectedly close race against Republican Scott Brown to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy’s Senate seat.
Vice President Joe Biden, trying to turn the focus of the race away from the president’s embattled health care bill, joined the fray, sending an e-mail to Democrats assailing the Republican candidate for opposing Obama’s just-announced plan to tax large Wall Street firms.
The late-game White House aggressiveness reflected a sudden deep concern among Democrats that they could lose a seat the party has controlled for more than half a century – and with it the 60th Senate vote that is all that has kept alive the health care overhaul that Obama has spent his entire first year pushing toward passage.