Obama looks to regroup; Romney appears confident

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama speaks at the Cesar E. Chavez National Mon­u­ment, Mon­day, in Keene, Calif. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

JULIE PACE

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — As the White House race shows signs of tight­en­ing nation­ally, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s cam­paign is bank­ing on a mas­sive get-out-the-vote oper­a­tion and state-by-state shades of eco­nomic improve­ment to main­tain its appar­ent polling edge in bat­tle­grounds from Ohio to Virginia.

Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney, re-energized by last week’s debate, is flash­ing new con­fi­dence on the cam­paign trail and press­ing toward the polit­i­cal cen­ter on both for­eign and domes­tic issues. But aides have out­lined no clear path to win­ning the 270 Elec­toral Col­lege votes required to gain the White House.

“Things are going pretty good,” the usu­ally cau­tious Rom­ney said Mon­day with a smile.

Among Democ­rats, the swag­ger of the pre­vi­ous few weeks has all but van­ished since the debate.

“Ulti­mately this is a tight race, and it’s going to remain a tight race until the end,” said Bill Bur­ton, who runs Pri­or­i­ties USA Action, a pro-Obama “super” polit­i­cal action committee.

Indeed, one month from Elec­tion Day, polls show a close race. And with mil­lions of Amer­i­cans already vot­ing and the poten­tial for game-changing moments dimin­ish­ing, the can­di­dates have lit­tle room for error as they seek to sway a nar­row swath of unde­cided voters.

Obama aides acknowl­edge Romney’s strong turn on the debate stage helped him shift gears from a rocky Sep­tem­ber. But they also argue that Romney’s momen­tum was arrested some­what by a Fri­day jobs report show­ing the unem­ploy­ment rate declined to 7.8 per­cent, the low­est level of Obama’s presidency.

They say the pres­i­dent was thrown dur­ing the debate by what they call Romney’s will­ing­ness to aban­don his pre­vi­ous posi­tions, includ­ing his $5 tril­lion tax cut pro­posal. In the next debate — and in tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments before then — the Demo­c­rat and his aides are expected to accuse Rom­ney of lying about his own plans.

Romney’s team, mean­while, is tem­per­ing expec­ta­tions that tight­en­ing national polls will trans­late into suc­cess on the ground in the key states most likely to decide the race. Things may be mov­ing in the right direc­tion, they say, but sig­nif­i­cant work remains.

Still, they’re seek­ing to paint Obama’s cam­paign as desperate.

“It seems pretty clear that their new strat­egy is basi­cally just call us liars, to descend down into a mud pit and hope­fully, with enough mud­sling­ing back and forth and dis­tor­tion, peo­ple will get demor­al­ized and they can win by default,” said Rom­ney run­ning mate Paul Ryan.

Both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans say inter­nal cam­paign sur­veys fol­low­ing last week’s debate show Rom­ney has cut into the lead Obama had built up in many key bat­tle­ground states. But they say Obama still has an advan­tage in most of the nine or so crit­i­cal states, includ­ing Ohio and Vir­ginia. A lack of inde­pen­dent polling makes it dif­fi­cult to know whether that’s true. Rom­ney pulled ahead of Obama, 49 to 45 per­cent nation­ally, among likely vot­ers accord­ing to a Pew Research Cen­ter poll con­ducted after the debate.

In a for­eign pol­icy speech at Vir­ginia Mil­i­tary Insti­tute in Lex­ing­ton, Va., on Mon­day, Rom­ney cast him­self as a states­man who would be part of a long, bipar­ti­san tra­di­tion of Amer­i­can lead­er­ship in the world. He said the U.S. should use its power “wisely, with solem­nity and with­out false pride, but also firmly and actively.”

At the same time, he is mov­ing away from some of the more con­ser­v­a­tive posi­tions he pressed dur­ing the GOP pri­mary. The shift is aimed at appeal­ing to the inde­pen­dents and dis­af­fected mem­bers of both par­ties who could swing the race. He is to deliver at least two more pol­icy speeches in the com­ing weeks focused on job growth and debt and spending.

As Obama’s aides worked to poke holes in Romney’s for­eign pol­icy address, Obama declared a national mon­u­ment at the Keene, Calif., home of Latino labor leader Cesar Chavez, the United Farm­work­ers Union founder who died in 1993.

Sure to appeal to some His­panic vot­ers in swing states, Obama’s move came at the start of a day in which he also was rais­ing polit­i­cal cash at events in San Fran­cisco, as his cam­paign closed in on $1 bil­lion in dona­tions. Democ­rats said the $181 mil­lion they raised in Sep­tem­ber would allow Obama to keep adver­tis­ing heav­ily on tele­vi­sion in all bat­tle­ground states and fully fund major reg­is­tra­tion and early vot­ing efforts in the campaign’s cru­cial final weeks.

The pres­i­dent has more get-out-the-vote offices than Rom­ney in every com­pet­i­tive state; some offices never closed after the 2008 cam­paign. Democ­rats say that net­work helped them reg­is­ter more than 130,000 new vot­ers — most in bat­tle­ground states — in the week before the debate. There are more reg­is­tered Democ­rats than Repub­li­cans in nearly every com­pet­i­tive state with party reg­is­tra­tion, includ­ing Florida and Nevada.

Romney’s team is work­ing hard to chip away at that margin.

Democ­rats have an edge in Iowa, where 62 per­cent of the 111,000 vot­ers who have cast absen­tee bal­lots so far were reg­is­tered Democ­rats. Twenty-percent were Repub­li­cans and 18 per­cent were unaf­fil­i­ated, accord­ing to the Iowa sec­re­tary of state’s office.

In Ohio, a peren­nial bat­tle­ground state, Democ­rats have an edge over Repub­li­cans among peo­ple who have requested absen­tee bal­lots, though rel­a­tively few com­pleted bal­lots have been sub­mit­ted. Among the 691,000 peo­ple who have requested absen­tee bal­lots in 49 of the state’s 88 coun­ties, 30 per­cent are Democ­rats and 24 per­cent are Repub­li­cans. Forty-six per­cent are unaf­fil­i­ated vot­ers, accord­ing to data col­lected by the AP.

But Romney’s early vot­ing efforts are show­ing signs of pay­ing off in North Car­olina and Florida, two com­pet­i­tive states that the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee can ill afford to lose.

Despite a strong debate per­for­mance, Romney’s path to the pres­i­dency remains nar­rower than Obama.

Par­tic­u­larly wor­ri­some for Repub­li­cans is Ohio, a state that every Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date has needed to win the White House.

If Obama wins Ohio’s 18 elec­toral votes, Rom­ney would need to win Florida and in all like­li­hood secure sev­eral up-for-grabs states such as Vir­ginia, Iowa, Col­orado, New Hamp­shire and Nevada to take the White House.

Rom­ney, fol­low­ing his selec­tion of Wis­con­sin Rep. Ryan as his run­ning mate, has tried to put Wis­con­sin into the toss-up cat­e­gory, but pub­lic polling has shown Obama ahead, giv­ing the pres­i­dent more breath­ing room.

In the sea­son of debates, next up is the only match-up between Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Ryan.

A strong per­for­mance by Biden, a for­mer sen­a­tor who essen­tially made a career out of debat­ing col­leagues, could quell ner­vous­ness among some Democ­rats, though nei­ther party expects unde­cided vot­ers to be swayed by the face-off between the run­ning mates. Ryan’s chal­lenge is to over­come his lack for­eign pol­icy exper­tise or national debate expe­ri­ence against Biden, who has exten­sive expe­ri­ence on both fronts.

“Believe you me, I under­stand this man is extremely expe­ri­enced, he’s a gifted speaker, he’s a proven debater,” Ryan said on “The Frank Beck­mann Show” on Detroit radio sta­tion WJR. “So we def­i­nitely have our work cut out for us. But the prob­lem the vice pres­i­dent has that he just can’t get around is he has to try and defend Barack Obama’s record, and it’s not a very good record to defend.”

Biden was prepar­ing for the face-off in his home­town of Wilm­ing­ton, Del., where he has held two mock debates with Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who is play­ing the role of Ryan.

Obama and Rom­ney will face off again on Oct. 16 in Hemp­stead, N.Y. in a town hall debate.

Posted by AP News on Oct 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.