Racine, W.Va. ? Sen. John Kerry’s campaign has a new, unofficial strategy: To get even, get mad.

Across Ohio and into West Virginia this Labor Day weekend, Kerry supporters took to the campaign stage with mocking, scornful rhetoric directed at President Bush’s military service. Kerry stood by smiling, hands clasped, as the invective flew.

“When John Kerry was dodging bullets in Vietnam, George Bush and Dick Cheney were dodging the draft in the United States,” Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, declared Monday at a Labor Day picnic here.

In Akron, Ohio, Mayor Donald Plusquellic described Bush as “hiding in the woods in Alabama” while Kerry “was defending our country.”

The harsh words came as Democrats have expressed increasing nervousness about the Kerry campaign’s agility in responding to attacks on the nominee’s military service. With a new set of political operatives from the Clinton White House, however, Kerry and his operation are expected to move faster and more forcefully.

Also on Monday, Kerry unveiled another slogan to crystallize his message: “W stands for wrong. Wrong choices. Wrong judgment, wrong priorities for our country,” he said in Cleveland.

Kerry kept with the theme as he assailed Bush’s handling of Iraq.

“It’s the wrong war, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

During a campaign visit to Poplar Bluff, Mo., Bush took Kerry for comments on Iraq.

“My opponent woke up this morning with new campaign advisers and yet another new position” on Iraq, he said.

“Suddenly he’s against it again,” Bush said. “No matter how many times Senator Kerry changes his mind, it was right for America then and it’s right for America now if Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.”

He also told Missouri voters in his first of three stops in the state that new unemployment figures suggested “the economy is strong and getting stronger.”

Bush cheered the dip last month in the nation’s unemployment rate to 5.4 percent. The economy is rebounding, but unless 900,000 jobs are created in the next two months, the president will head into Election Day saddled with being the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs under his watch.

But on Bush’s watch, Kerry said in Racine, jobs have been lost, health care costs have risen, wealthy people have gotten tax breaks and schools have been undercut.

“It’s very simple,” said Kerry, who the Bush camp has criticized for his nuanced approach to policy issues. “If you liked these four years, and you want four more years like that, then you go tell people to go out and vote for George Bush, because that’s what you’re going to get.”