Esme's Blog: Minnesota Crucial In President's Campaign

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The President of the United States will come here on Friday to give a speech at Honeywell that the campaign says will be a plug for his congressional initiatives.

Minnesota has 10 electoral votes, but many political experts say  that anyway you put together the Electoral College math, the president will need Minnesota to win.

The president's campaign slogan is "the only candidate fighting for the middle class." And in the end, it is the middle class who will decide who wins the presidency. The difficulty for the president is that the past four years have not been kind to the middle class, with unemployment, underemployment and a depletion of home values that have dramatically lowered the net worth of millions of Americans.

The president will make the case that things were even worse before he took office, with the economy losing 800,000 jobs a month back in 2008. But in the rear view mirror, 2008 seems like a long time ago, as does the president's message then of "hope" and "change."

The promise of change won him the election last time. But if voters want "change" in 2012, the president's chances of carrying Minnesota and the nation are in doubt.