Rivals stress differences, bipartisanship hopes

DAVID ESPO

JULIE PACE

Asso­ci­ated Press

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — Two days from judg­ment by the vot­ers, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama raced through four far-flung bat­tle­ground states on Sun­day while Mitt Rom­ney ven­tured into tra­di­tion­ally Demo­c­ra­tic Penn­syl­va­nia, seek­ing a break­through in a close race he mused aloud he might lose.

Appear­ing before some of the largest crowds of the cam­paign, the two rivals stressed their dif­fer­ences on the econ­omy, health care and more while pro­fess­ing an eager­ness to work across party lines and end grid­lock in Washington.

“You have the power,” Obama, the most pow­er­ful polit­i­cal leader in the world, told thou­sands of cheer­ing sup­port­ers in New Hamp­shire, his first appear­ance of a day not sched­uled to end until after mid­night in the East.

Later, in Cleve­land, boos from Romney’s par­ti­sans turned to appre­cia­tive laugh­ter when the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee began a sen­tence by say­ing, “If the pres­i­dent were to be elected,” and ended it with, “It’s pos­si­ble but not likely.” It was a rare pub­lic acknowl­edge­ment that despite expres­sions of con­fi­dence from him and his aides, defeat was a possibility.

In a cam­paign that began more than a year ago, late pub­lic opin­ion polls were unpre­dictably tight for the nation­wide pop­u­lar vote. But they sug­gested at least a slim advan­tage for the pres­i­dent in the state-by-state com­pe­ti­tion for elec­toral votes that will set­tle the con­test, includ­ing Ohio, Wis­con­sin, Iowa and Nevada.

Con­ced­ing noth­ing, Rom­ney flew to Penn­syl­va­nia for his first cam­paign foray of the gen­eral elec­tion. The state last voted for a Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in 1988, and Obama’s aides insisted it was safe for the pres­i­dent. Yet the chal­lenger and his allies began adver­tis­ing heav­ily in the campaign’s final days, and pub­lic and pri­vate polls sug­gested the state was rel­a­tively close.

The theme from “Rocky” blared from the loud­speak­ers as he stepped to the podium. “The peo­ple of Amer­ica under­stand we’re tak­ing back the White House because we’re going to win Penn­syl­va­nia,” Rom­ney told a large crowd that had been wait­ing for hours on a cold night.

Ear­lier, Rom­ney launched a new tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial, pos­si­bly his last of the cam­paign, as he appeared in Iowa, Ohio and Vir­ginia as well as Penn­syl­va­nia. “He’s offer­ing excuses. I’ve got a plan” to fix the econ­omy. “I can’t wait for us to get started,” he said.

In Des Moines, Rom­ney said he would meet reg­u­larly with “good men and women on both sides of the aisle” in Con­gress. Later, in Cleve­land, he said of Obama, “Instead of bridg­ing the divide, he’s made it wider.”

Obama had New Hamp­shire, Florida, Ohio and Col­orado in his sights for the day, and, judg­ing from the polls, a slight wind at his back. So much so that one con­ser­v­a­tive group cited a string of sur­veys that favor the pres­i­dent as it emailed an urgent plea for late-campaign dona­tions so it could end his time in the White House.

In Florida, the pres­i­dent said he wants to work across party lines, but quickly added there were lim­its to the sorts of com­pro­mises he would make.

“If the price of peace in Wash­ing­ton is cut­ting deals that will kick stu­dents off of finan­cial aid, or get rid of fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood, or let insur­ance com­pa­nies dis­crim­i­nate against peo­ple with pre­ex­ist­ing con­di­tions, or elim­i­nate health care for mil­lions who are on Med­ic­aid …. I’m not will­ing to pay that price,” he said, recit­ing some of the charges he has lev­eled against Romney.

The two rivals and their run­ning mates flew from state to state as the last of an esti­mated 1 mil­lion cam­paign com­mer­cials were air­ing in a costly attempt to influ­ence a dimin­ish­ing pool of voters.

More than 27 mil­lion bal­lots have been cast in 34 states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, although none will be counted until Elec­tion Day on Tuesday.

Nearly 4 mil­lion of them were deposited by Florid­i­ans, and Democ­rats cited unprece­dented demand for pre-election day vot­ing as they filed a law­suit demand­ing an exten­sion of avail­able time. A judge granted their request in one county where an early vot­ing site was shut down for sev­eral hours on Sat­ur­day in a bomb scare.

Obama and Rom­ney dis­agree sharply about the approach the nation should take to the slow-growth econ­omy and high unem­ploy­ment, and the dif­fer­ences have helped define the cam­paign. Most notably, Rom­ney wants to extend tax cuts that are due to expire with­out excep­tion, while Obama wants to allow them to lapse on incomes over $250,000.

At the same time, polls show bipar­ti­san­ship is pop­u­lar, in the abstract, at least, which accounts for the empha­sis the can­di­dates are plac­ing in the race’s final days on work­ing across polit­i­cal aisles.

Rom­ney fre­quently cites his abil­ity to work with the Democratic-controlled Leg­is­la­ture while he was gov­er­nor of Mass­a­chu­setts, although he rarely men­tions the veto bat­tles he had.

Obama’s term has been lit­tered with the leg­isla­tive wreck­age left behind by con­stant strug­gles with con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans. Yet his trip to New Jer­sey last Wednes­day was a model of non­par­ti­san­ship as he accom­pa­nied Repub­li­can Gov. Chris Christie on a tour of destruc­tion caused by Super­storm Sandy. The gov­er­nor repeat­edly praised the administration’s response to the storm.

One promi­nent Repub­li­can said the storm had worked to Romney’s dis­ad­van­tage in a dif­fer­ent way.

“The hur­ri­cane is what broke Romney’s momen­tum. I don’t think there’s any ques­tion about it,” for­mer Mis­sis­sippi Gov. Haley Bar­bour said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Any day that the news media is not talk­ing about jobs and the econ­omy, taxes and spend­ing, deficit and debt, Oba­macare and energy, is a good day for Barack Obama,” he said. “Now, whether it will be good enough remains to be seen.”

Romney’s cam­paign wanted no part of that. “I don’t look at what hap­pened with the storm and how it affected so many peo­ple through a polit­i­cal lens,” said a spokesman, Kevin Madden.

So intense was the cam­paign­ing that Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s plane and the one car­ry­ing Rom­ney were both on the tar­mac in Cleve­land at the same time in early after­noon. The two men did not see one another.

Biden’s assign­ment for the day was to rally vot­ers across Ohio. “These guys are try­ing to play a con game here at the end,” he said of Rom­ney and Ryan, whom he accused of pos­ing as more mod­er­ate than they are.

Ryan started out in his home state of Wis­con­sin. He donned a Green Bay Pack­ers jacket and a yel­low and green striped tie for a pregame tail­gat­ing party he attended briefly across the street from fabled Lam­beau Field.

Then, foot­ball or no foot­ball, it was off to Ohio, Min­nesota and Colorado.

Posted by AP News on Nov 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.