Category: Barack Obama

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Barack Obama Mitt Romney Politics presidential

Washington/ABC Poll – Numbers Basically Unchanged As President Leads Again

There are a lot of polls out there and after the first presidential debate a majority of them showed Mitt Romney gaining ground and even overtaking the President. But now, just one day before the second debate between Romney and Obama, these polls are moving once again in the President’s direction.

A new Washington/ABC poll shows the numbers are back to what they were before the first debate:

Likely voters in the new poll split 49 percent for Obama to 46 percent for Romney, basically unmoved from the poll two weeks ago, just before the two candidates met in Denver for their first debate. On topic after topic, the survey portrays an electorate that remains deeply divided along partisan lines and locked in its views…

Nearly two-thirds say they do not need any more information before Election Day, and barely one in eight is undecided or says there is a chance he could change his vote. Even as voters overwhelmingly perceive that Romney won the first debate, the vast majority say their opinion of the president did not shift as a result.

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Barack Obama Politics

Morgan Freeman’s Ad For President Obama – “The Last Thing We Should Do Is Turn Back Now!”

Morgan Freeman lends his famous voice to the Re-election campaign for President Obama. In the ad below, Mr. Freeman spoke about where we were as a country when President Obama took office, where we are now and where we must go in the future.

“the last thing we should do, is turn back now,” Mr. Freeman said, as the ad comes to an end.

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Barack Obama Politics

Romney’s Bounce Is Over And I Bet You Didn’t Even Notice

Better yet, you probably thought that it started the day or two after the Denver Debacle on October 3. Nope. It actually began on September 26th, was accelerated, and probably prolonged, by the debate, and is now winding down, approximately two weeks later. It was a long bump by historical standards and was immediately preceded by Obama’s long convention bump.

The numbers? Obama was leading by about 50-42% when Romney’s bump began, and it’s ending with Mitt behind by 48-46%, which represents about a 3.5% improvement. That’s an impressive achievement for Mitt, given that he was all but written off by the national media and some influential people in his party. I don’t know why. This race was always going to be close and gaffes and debate horrors were not going to change that dynamic.

As for the electoral college, Mitt has again made gains by taking a lead in North Carolina, but that’s about it. Recent polls have shown him leading in Florida, Colorado and New Hampshire, but he’ll need a more sustained run of polls with him ahead to convince me that he’s got a solid margin. In addition, the electoral math is more difficult for Romney than the president. Even if he wins Ohio, Florida and Virginia, he’ll still need to win one of New Hampshire, Colorado or Iowa. None of those states is even remotely a given for him, with Ohio being the most difficult due to Mitt’s opposition to the auto bailout.

This brings us to Tuesday’s debate. It’s not possible for Mitt to do any better than he was perceived in Denver, mainly because he’s likely to get serious opposition from Obama. The best he can hope for is a small victory, but even that would be a loss because Obama’s performance will probably enthuse the Democrats to the point where the polls begin to rebound, much as they did towards Mitt after the first debate. If Obama is the clear winner, then his numbers should recover more substantially. Where will they land? If that scenario does indeed occur, I could see Obama ahead by 1.5-2.5% by next Sunday.

Speculative? You bet. But I can see it happening.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and on Twitter @rigrundfest

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Barack Obama Politics

Bruce Springsteen – On The Campaign Trail For President Obama

With a little over three weeks to go in the election and the polls dramatically tightening, Bruce Springsteen has decided to hit the campaign trail in support of President Barack Obama. Springsteen will campaign alongside Bill Clinton at a campaign rally in Parma, Ohio on Thursday, October 18th. That same day, he’ll appear at another event in Ames, Iowa.

“Bruce Springsteen’s values echo what the President and Vice President stand for: hard work, fairness, integrity,” said Jim Messina, Obama for America’s campaign manager, in a statement. “His appearances will help with our get out the vote effort in these critical swing states and we are thrilled with his ongoing support.”

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Barack Obama Politics Republican

Lifelong Republican Senator Explains Why He’s Voting For Barack Obama

By Larry Pressler:

[I am] a combat veteran of two tours in Vietnam with twenty-two years of service as a Republican member of the U.S. House and Senate, I endorse President Barack Obama for a second term as our Commander-in-Chief. Candidates publicly praise our service members, veterans and their families, but President Obama supports them in word and deed, anywhere and every time.

 As a Vietnam vet, one of the reasons I support President Obama is because he has consistently shown he understands that our commitment to our servicemen and women may begin when they put on their uniform, but that it must never end.
This decision is not easy for any lifelong Republican. In 2008 I voted for Barack Obama, the first time I ever voted for a Democrat, because the Republican Party was drifting toward a dangerous path that put extreme party ideology above national interest. Mitt Romney heads a party remaining on that dangerous path, proving the emptiness of their praise as they abandon our service members, veterans and military families along the way.

What really set me off was Romney’s reference to 47% of Americans to be written off – including any veteran collecting disability like myself, as a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) veteran.

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Barack Obama Politics

“Re-Elect Obama” – The Music Video

Good Stuff!

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Barack Obama Mitt Romney Politics presidential

Team Obama Making Changes For Remaining Debates

Realizing that debate number one did not go according to plan, the President’s re-election team is making changes for the remaining debates, starting with the vice presidential debate on Thursday.

Perhaps most important as the president’s team struggles to put his campaign back on track is a renewed effort to win the three remaining debates, starting with Thursday’s face-off between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Paul D. Ryan. Mr. Biden began traveling to a Delaware hotel on Sunday for three days of debate camp.

Under the tutelage of David Axelrod, the president’s chief strategist who is personally overseeing the preparations, Mr. Biden will be counseled on how to avoid Mr. Obama’s mistakes and even correct them with a more aggressive prosecution of the Republican ticket. Mr. Axelrod’s involvement highlights the stakes the Obama campaign places on the debate, and Mr. Biden has been reading “Young Guns,” the book co-written by Mr. Ryan, and practicing attack lines that Mr. Obama avoided.

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Barack Obama Politics

Panic! At The Campaign (Part Deux)

Hey kids, remember in June when the Obama campaign was supposedly panicking? I sure do. That’s why I wrote about it.

Well here we are again at a crisis point in the race. The debate went very badly for the president. He seemed uninterested, unengaged, unfocused, blah, blah, blah. In fact, he was all of those things. But to think that this race is over or that the debate performance means that he’s going to lose is hogwash. Bunk. Horse puckey. Wrong.

Obama was losing some steam in state and national polls right before the debate as his convention bounce and Mitt’s 47% comments propelled him to an unsustainable lead. He’s lost even more steam over the weekend as polls that generally have a Republican lean (Gravis, Rasmussen and Claris Research) show him losing anywhere from 3-5 points off his lofty perch. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not dismissing those polls as unreliable or anti-Obama by choice. They could be the vanguard of a larger shift evidenced by more polls we’ll be sure to see this week. It’s just that these are the early polls and a fuller picture is sure to emerge after PPP, NBC/WSJ, CBS/Quinnipiac and ABC/WaPo weigh in. Those polls will also include any effects of the positive unemployment rate from Friday and Obama ads over the weekend that highlighted Romney’s, shall we say, evolution, on the issues.

Far be it from me to get in the way of a full-scale Democratic screaming, sweating freakout, as I enjoy irrationality as much as the next person (and if the next person is Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum, then it’s a gold star day as far as I’m concerned).

My point is that it’s not necessary to panic. Let’s not give too much credit to the Romney campaign. It wasn’t that he did so much better in the debate; it’s that Obama did so much worse. The polls will move towards Romney. Then they’ll move away from Romney because the movement is based mostly on GOP enthusiasm after the debate. This is the same enthusiasm gap the GOP was supposed to have from the beginning, but didn’t because Mitt was/is such an ineffective candidate. The media will have something to print (print; what a dinosaur I am). But in the end, all the GOP has is Romney, and that should brighten the day of every Democrat and liberal in the country.

And it doesn’t matter when Obama calls him on the 47% comment, as he surely will on October 16. Mitt’s tried to admit that the comment was wrong, but I think he had that line all cued up for the debate. Since Obama didn’t mention it, he never got a chance to deliver it in front of 80 million people (as if that would make up for its offensiveness). So he had to go on FOX to say it, and the comment was then promptly buried by the good jobs numbers. At the next debate the country will be reminded of Mitt’s policies and will find them lacking, just as they did before the debate. You could say that Mitt’s peaking a bit early and is set up for a fall. If you don’t want to say it, I just did.

If you really want to panic, then go ahead. For me, good jobs numbers always beat debates. And truthers. And bad ideas like killing PBS and only covering people with preexisting conditions if they already have insurance but otherwise leaving them to the mercy of insurance companies. And turning Medicare into a voucher system. And being on the wrong side on women’s health and rights. And dismissing 47% of the country as being dependent on government aid and saying it was wrong to say it, but not wrong to think or act on it.

Gee, all of a sudden, I feel much better about this election. Go. Fight. Win.

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Barack Obama Mitt Romney Politics

Video Proof – Mitt Romney May Have Cheated During Debate

Both sides agreed to the rules of the debate, but Mitt Romney may have broken the most important rule – no written notes or “cheat sheet” allowed.

The video below shows Mitt Romney pulling a piece of paper out his pocket and casually tossing it on his podium.

Of course, his campaign already came up with an explanation. That was not a cheat sheet they claimed, it was a handkerchief. If that was a handkerchief, then it was a very stiff piece of handkerchief.

You be the judge.

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Barack Obama Mitt Romney Politics

The Narrative’s Changed, But The Song Remains the Same

Mitt Romney won the debate last night because he projected a presidential attitude, seemed to be more interested, and actually strung together answers in clear sentences. Barack Obama was clearly unprepared and stories about his lack of focus on the debates turned out to be true. The right-wing media is ecstatic. The left is crestfallen. The narrative has changed.

But it doesn’t mean that the election is over, anymore than Romney’s September swoon meant that it was over. This debate allowed Mitt to crawl out of the hole he dug himself with his 47% comments (there, I’ve mentioned it even if the president didn’t) and the overall lack of coherent message on the campaign trail. It’s probable that his debate performance changes his attitude and his crowd count, but let’s think this through a little more specifically.

Romney is still peddling the same Medicare voucher plan, the same tax cuts for the wealthy, the same dangerous foreign policy and the same noxious policies regarding women as he was yesterday afternoon. He’s still the same uninspiring politician he’s been for his entire career, though he will have a more jaunty step for the next week. The policies he proposed last night will not all of a sudden become more popular as Obama advertising will make sure, and Mitt is still against the auto bailout, which means he’ll still likely lose Ohio.

Mitt did himself a great favor in the debate and he was helped by an equal and opposite reaction from the president who did all he could to present a tired, ticked-off image on a day when he could have solidified his advantage and made the other two presidential debates superfluous. Friday’s jobs numbers could be the second half of a one-two punch that should have only been one punch. The press will make more of this because, after all, they need eyes on their websites and dollars in their pockets.

We now have a race, but my sense is that it will just be a closer version of the race we had on Wednesday afternoon. Obama still has the lead and he’ll likely keep it in the swing states that are critical to his reelection. Let the national polls show a Romney bump (and they will). My focus will be on Ohio, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada. If Wisconsin suddenly turns, then it’s bad news, but I don’t think that will happen. There are two more debates, and if my reading of history is keen, as it sometimes is, Obama can turn himself into the comeback kid who wipes the floor with the rich guy next time they meet.

Yes, the narrative has changed, but the song remains the same.

And really, isn’t it about time you followed me? Go towww.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and on Twitter @rigrundfest

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Barack Obama Mitt Romney Politics

My Take On The First Presidential Debate – Who Won?

I’m going to continue doing what I set out to do with this blog – be honest.

Last night’s debate was horrendous. As I write this post now, (and it’s not going to be a long post), I still cannot figure out what was on the President’s mind. This is the man who has been the leader of the free world for the last 4 years. He has met with, and had meetings with other world leaders. He has walked the walk and talked the talk in his commitment to capture and or kill terrorists. This president has dealt with an economy that was on the brink of collapse and because his leadership, he has stabilized this country and we are now on the right track to getting things back to where things should be.

Mr. Obama has faced pressures before and has always found ways to deal with and handle those situations. What happened last night in the debate left me believing that Mr. Obama came to this debate expecting that his title – Mr. President – would be enough.

It wasn’t.

Or maybe the Obama reelection team bought into the pre-debate hype by the media that Romney would be armed with zingers, and they advised the president to stay ‘presidential,’ and stick only with facts. Yes, in the ideal world with a Republican candidate who is grounded in reality, staying presidential would be okay. But Mitt Romney is not grounded in reality. He has decided to run a campaign based on lies and deceit, a fact that was evident from the very first ad his campaign produced where they intentionally misrepresented a quote the president was making.

Faced with such a wishy-washy flip-flopping candidate who changes his position and panders to every single group, it was imperative that Mr. Obama came on stage prepared to show the stark differences between his policies and those of Mr. Romney. It was imperative that he stopped Romney in his tracks when Romney opened his mouth and lied about the $716 billion of waste taken out of Medicare. The president needed to let the American public know each time Romney told a lie. He needed to drive the debate, be aggressive in defending his policies over the last 4 years and in pointing out that Romney’s policies amounts to a trust, wait and see con game. The president of the United States needed to be strong. He had to be assertive.

But instead I sat in my living room like millions of Americans nationwide and watched a dejected man on stage. I watched Mr. Obama – the man who holds the most powerful position in the free world – hang his head, refusing to look Mr. Romney in the face. And I watched in amazement as Mr. Romney directed the flow of the debate, lying at every turn, going unchallenged.

After the debate, Al Sharpton from MSNBC was heard taking a more optimistic view of the President’s performance. Sharpton said that the way the president allowed Romney to dominate the debate was masterful, because the positions Romney adopted last night “are not positions he preached in his campaign.” These new positions Sharpton concluded, will be more ammunition for fact-checkers and Democrats who will now be able to once again, point out the fact that Romney is a flip flopper… a liar… a spineless little man who panders to every group to get elected.

“We have his previous positions on tape!” Sharpton said.

Well I hope Sharpton is right, but I don’t know if I could sit through another lack luster performance by the president.

Will I vote for Mr. Obama in November? Of course I will. I’m not crazy! I agree with the policies he’s put in place so far and I believe Mr. Romney was serious when he said he’s not concerned about the very poor then degraded 47% of Americans as lazy moochers who rely on the government for food and shelter. Yes, Mr. Obama still gets my vote, but I want him to fight in these debates like his reelection depends on it, because it does!

Debate video.

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Barack Obama Mitt Romney Politics

New Poll Suggest Even Bigger Lead For President Obama In Swing States

The Romney campaign is still saying they’re not panicking. Why? What exactly are they waiting for? Their blindness to see the reality just shows the inept leadership of this Romney campaign. They don’t even know when to start panicking!

Jeeze!

Mr. Obama holds a 10-point lead in Ohio among those who say they will definitely vote, a lead propelled by a 25-point advantage among women. Romney holds an 8-point lead among men. The president holds a 35-point edge among voters under 35 years old, and a 5-point lead among those ages 35-64; the two candidates are effectively tied among Ohio seniors. Sixty-two percent of Ohio likely voters say the auto bailout, which had a significant impact on the state’s economy, was a success, while just 30 percent say it was a failure. Both candidates will campaign in Ohio Wednesday; the president led Romney by six points in the state last month.

Mr. Obama also holds a huge lead among women in Pennsylvania, where his advantage overall stands at 12 points. The president leads his opponent by 21-points among women, and they are split among men. The two candidates also split the support of whites, but the president holds an 87 percent to 11 percent lead among nonwhites. Romney holds a 5-point lead among Pennsylvania seniors, but that is more than offset by the president’s 14-point lead among those ages 35-64 and 34-point lead among those under 35.

In Florida, Mr. Obama’s edge over Romney has risen from three points before the political conventions to nine points today. His gains are due to improved performance among women, white voters and seniors. Nearly half of Florida Democrats now say they are more enthusiastic about voting than in the past – up from 24 percent at the start of August, and only slightly less than the percentage of Florida Republicans who are more enthusiastic. Two in three Florida likely voters support the DREAM Act policies put in place by the president to allow young illegal immigrants who came to the country as children to obtain work permits and not face deportation.

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