Obama, Romney converge on Ohio
CBS News/AP
Exactly one month from Election Day, Republican Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama are both declaring they will win a race for the White House that remains anything but clear.
Their trails are crossing again in Ohio, the state that could decide the election, and signs of urgency are emerging from each campaign.
"I very much intend to win this election," Mr. Obama told donors in San Francisco Monday night. "But we're only going to do it if everybody is almost obsessive for the next 29 days."
Romney stood in a driving rain in Newport News, Va., his wet hair sticking to the side of his face, to join the kinds of die-hard supporters he needs for victory. "People wonder why it is I'm so confident we're going to win," he told them. "I'm confident because I see you here on a day like this. This is unbelievable."
Mr. Obama plans to rally support from students at Ohio State University on Tuesday, the last day for Ohioans to register to vote. Early voting is under way there and in many other states in one form or another.
Romney is set to campaign in Iowa and then Ohio, two of the nine contested states on the path to 270 electoral votes. Still riding high after a strong debate performance, Romney is expected to attend a midday rally in Van Meter, a small town 20 miles west of Des Moines. Tough-talking New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is scheduled to join Romney for a night rally near Akron, Ohio.
Mr. Obama maintains more paths to victory, but polling shows a tightening race after more than 67 million people watched Romney shine in the Denver debate last week. The challenger's path to victory is extremely narrow, particularly without Ohio. No Republican has won the presidency without carrying the state.
As negative ads blanketed the toss-up states, the Obama campaign on Tuesday unleashed one on national broadcast and cable networks featuring its favorite new weapon -- Big Bird.
Employing ominous narration, the spot ridicules Romney for singling out the "Sesame Street" character and PBS subsidies as examples of how he would cut spending. "One man has the guts to say his name," says the ad, flashing to Romney and then the feathered creature. "Big. Yellow. A menace to our economy. Mitt Romney knows it's not Wall Street you have to worry about. It's Sesame Street."
The competitors pivot to Ohio after closing out different missions.
Mr. Obama capped a two-day California visit that took him from the cliffside mansions of Beverly Hills to the golden fields outside Bakersfield to downtown San Francisco. The trip was mainly about raising millions of campaign dollars.
Romney sought to burnish his credentials as a potential commander in chief with a foreign policy address before Virginia Military Institute cadets
Mr. Obama's aides said the president was upbeat in private, well aware that he had to do better in next week's debate in New York, but steady and looking forward to another shot.
Based on the presumed outcome of the 41 non-battleground states and Washington, D.C., Mr. Obama enters the final period banking on 237 electoral votes. Romney is assured of 191.
On the road to 270, the battleground states account for the final 110 electoral votes: Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina and Colorado.
Both Democrats and Republicans say internal campaign surveys following last week's debate show Romney cut into the lead Mr. Obama had built up in many key battleground states. But they say Mr. Obama still has an advantage in most of them.
A lack of independent polling makes it difficult to know whether that's true. Romney pulled ahead of Mr. Obama, 49 to 45 percent nationally, among likely voters in a Pew Research Center poll conducted after the debate.
TV-watching voters in the contested states continued to get inundated with negative ads from both sides.
"He doesn't have anything to run on so he's running all of these ads, outspending us here in Ohio trying to basically call us liars," Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan told WTOL, a TV station in Toledo, Ohio.
Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden debate Thursday in Kentucky.
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-Paul Ryan
Paul, it would probably help your case if you didn't lie so much.
Obama is running on THE AMERICAN JOBS ACT
1. Tax Cuts to Help America's Small Businesses Hire and Grow
* Cutting the payroll tax in half for 98 percent of businesses
* A complete payroll tax holiday for added workers or increased
* Extending 100% expensing into 2012
* Reforms and regulatory reductions to help entrepreneurs and small businesses access capital.
2. Putting Workers Back on the Job While Rebuilding and Modernizing America
* A "Returning Heroes" hiring tax credit for veterans
* Preventing up to 280,000 teacher layoffs, while keeping cops and firefighters on the job.
* Modernizing at least 35,000 public schools
* Immediate investments in infrastructure and a bipartisan National Infrastructure Bank
* A New "Project Rebuild", which will put people to work rehabilitating homes, businesses and communities
* Expanding access to high-speed wireless
3. Pathways Back to Work for Americans Looking for Jobs.
* The most innovative reform to the unemployment insurance program in 40 years
o Work-Sharing: work-sharing over layoffs.
o "Bridge to Work" program
o Innovative entrepreneurship and wage insurance programs
* A $4,000 tax credit to employers for hiring long-term unemployed workers.
* Prohibiting employers from discriminating against unemployed workers when hiring.
* Expanding job opportunities for low-income youth and adults
4. Tax Relief for Every American Worker and Family
* Cutting payroll taxes in half for 160 million workers next year
* Allowing more Americans to refinance their mortgages
5. Fully Paid for as Part of the President's Long-Term Deficit Reduction Plan
LOL!
Obama and his followers spent over a Billion dollars trying to take Walker down in Wisconsin.
The People fought back.
If you turn this country over to Republicans, the job which gets off-shored may be your own.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-pressler/larry-pressler-obama_b_1948415.html
As 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........
http://www.year-4-change.com/you-decide.php
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-pressler/larry-pressler-obama_b_1948415.html
As 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........