Obama Team Turns Its Focus to Tough Re-election Fight

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

WASHINGTON — After a month tied down in Washington by the bruising budget fight, President Obama breaks out to four battleground states this week and next, including a campaign-style bus tour in the Upper Midwest, stumping with a new urgency as global economic fears darken his re-election prospects.

Fifteen months from Election Day, Mr. Obama is gearing up his re-election effort with unemployment stuck above 9 percent, economic growth faltering, financial markets gyrating and faith in Washington depressed by the partisan debt limit fight. Now the creditworthiness of government bonds has been downgraded for the first time ever by one of the ratings agencies — a development with symbolic meaning as well as potential practical impact.

Mr. Obama’s approval ratings are below 50 percent in electoral battlegrounds like Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to recent polls there. His party’s political infrastructure has been weakened in crucial states where Republicans won statehouses last year, though the White House sees potential benefit in a reaction to the unpopular policies of new Republican governors in states like Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Despite an intensive effort by the White House since last November to recapture the political center, Mr. Obama continues to struggle to win back the support of moderate and independent voters, polls show. Having won with their help in 2008 in states where Democrats for years had not seriously competed — Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia and some mountain states — Mr. Obama will now have to struggle not just to duplicate that feat but also to prevail in traditional swing states like Pennsylvania.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/us/politics/07campaign.html?pagewanted=all

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Sidebar statistics:

[Scottybeamer70]

1. Re-election campaign?

Too bad he isn't as concerned about jobs for the common folk.

[ixion]

2. Yeah, for the next year we get to listen to him talk rot

so that he can keep HIS job...

Irony on so many levels.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[primavera]

3. Not one single word about energizing his base

It's all about pitching to independents and moderate Republicans. Apparently, we don't even get to have a primary anymore to decide whether we want to support Obama for a second term, it's just taken for granted, like our votes. I guess I'm naive, but I hadn't thought when I voted for him last time that I was committing to support him for eight years, whether I liked him or not.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

4. Never mind the left. Everyone knows I Iied to them in 2008.

I'm the best Republican you got. Thank you!

[primavera]

14. Wow, that's a really great way of putting it

"The best Republican we've got." That really sums it up: there simply is no Democrat to vote for and the best we can hope for is a more moderate Republican. Mind if I borrow that?

I can't help but wonder why it is that, on the Republican side of the aisle, politicians pander shamelessly to their base, whereas, on our side of the aisle, to borrow a phrase from Rachel Maddow, the only thing our politicians give us is "the middle finger salute." Why doesn't anyone ever pander to us?

[UnrepentantLiberal]

19. Ya know, I don't buy that there is a conspiracy theory to this...

We just ended up with one of the worst assholes in history at the worst possible time. Extremely bad role of the dice. He not only stayed bought, he's turned on by bondage.

[No Elephants]

22. Have you read the Citicorp memo on the plutonomy, parts 1 and 2?

Edited to change plutocracy to plutonomy, the latter being the relevant term.

[primavera]

27. I don't know about any "conspiracy theory"...

... but it doesn't take a conscious conspiracy for the cumulative effect of years of practice shaped by a particular policy climate to produce an effect. There may or may or may not be any formal conspiracy to make corporations more and more wealthy and powerful, but you get a few court rulings that extend to them legal personhood, bestow upon them the same rights as natural persons, you throw in tax breaks, a bunch of loopholes, eliminate any liability, well, those policies are going to go a long way towards concentrating wealth and power in the hands of corporations. It doesn't take a conspiracy to produce that result.

[No Elephants]

20. "The Left has nowhere else to go."

The quest for the permanent Republican majority has succeeded, as long as you pay no attention to the letter people arbitrarily choose to put after their names to get themselves elected.

Spectre knew the letter after the name was a matter of "Pick whichever letter is likeliest to help you get elected at the time in question. So did Lieberman.

Could a Republican African American man have won a state Senate seat running out of Chicago when Obama first ran for it?

After Rev. Wright's experience and Rahm's tenure as Mayor, woo knows? But back then? Very unlikely

[Javaman]

5. He can't energize a base he threw under the bus...

unless he believes in Zombies.

[CelticThunder]

6. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

[Iliyah]

7. He is talking about jobs and has been

I'll vote him again. Shit all this effing complaining. Maybe the cure is a tea bagger as president, maybe you guys will be happy then.

[UrbScotty]

10. Indeed. He's also been ACTING on jobs.

I just wish I could find an updated version of this graph:

[No Elephants]

21. Wonder why you can't find an updated one?

By the way, who is responsible for putting out the data on jobs from which charts like the one you posted are prepared?

And who decides when a job has been created?

Giving states the money to keep paying police and firemen already on the state payroll for another year could be considered a jobs program or temporary welfare payments to states. Ditto throwing money and tax incentives to corporations.

But, hey, keep looking for that updated chart. It will probably impress someone.

[a simple pattern]

31. I looked for that chart at BLS.

Specifically, I wanted to verify that the jobs were created in the U.S., and going to U.S. citizens.
I couldn't find it, though. Does anyone have a link?

[CelticThunder]

29. How's he been acting? By giving speeches?

[CelticThunder]

28. Glad you're happy. I expect more than a Republican enabler/appeaser.

[emilyg]

8. He better turn his focus to JOBS!

[msongs]

9. it's the ONE job he really cares about lol. Bartcop has the right idea for what Obama should do....

send a new jobs bill to congress every month, via the dems in the house, and dare the repubs to shoot it down. Every month.

[Doctor_J]

34. He will never dare the teabaggers to do anything

Can you name a single thing he's challenged them on?

[bowens43]

12. .

.

[bowens43]

13. he started concentrating strictly on the 2012 campaign

about 2 1/2 years ago....it's what his entire presidency has been about.

[No Elephants]

23. +1 I was going to post that he and his team have been working on his re-election since 2004, but

January 2009 is a good response, too.

[orbitalman]

15. Obama makes everything harder than it needs to be....

including his own reelection.

[Demeter]

18. +1000

In fact, he's been making the easy problems insoluble by adding to them, and neglected the difficult ones, which are eating everybody's lunch in the meanwhile.

[No Elephants]

24. Either that, or he pretends things are harder than they are.

If a Democrat doesn't want to take credit for breaking a campaign promise, the way to go is "You really expect a Democratic President to be have influence over a Democratic Congress?"

Or, better yet, "Republicans left me NO CHOICE!" even when Democrats control Congress.

Either works. We're very well trained to see two separate teams, one doing all it can to beat the other.

We are not well trained to see both teams working together to stick it to everyone in the stands, except for those in the REALLY good seats.

[applegrove]

16. The people who will be most traumatized by all the unemployment will be the

unemployed. At 10% how could they vote for Republicans who are keeping the domestic economy crap in the USA? They need to be educated by Obama. As of yet I have not heard him say publically that the rich are sitting on cash and not creating jobs because they are monsters. He needs to do that.

[No Elephants]

25. Please see Reply 24.

[Middle finga]

17. As a progressive what am I suppose to look forward to

in an Obama 2nd Term? Nothing!

[yurbud]

26. if he and Dems in Senate had done their jobs, it wouldn't even be close

it's only a tough race because he did the Republicans jobs for them instead of the job we elected him to do.

[underpants]

30. It's not a tough race - he will win

he has more money than GOD (Wall Street knows what he has done to save the economy) and there is no competition and he killed OBL ---over

[FreeStateDemocrat]

32. He made a deal with the devil and he will reap the whirlwind- definite one-termer.

War monger, Obama tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy and Social Security de-funder, ain't no Democrat and needs to run as an independent so he can truly exercise the non-partisanship that he values so highly, the compromise candidate. Fuck him the ass-wipe. You people are in another universe if you think this clown deserves another term.

[Tansy_Gold]

33. ditto

he'll probably get that second term, but he won't deserve it. two different things.



TG