“President Obama held nothing back in his return to the campaign trail on Thursday, ticking off Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s policy proposals -- repealing health care reform, lowering tax rates, easing financial regulations -- and blasting each one at a rally in Green Bay, Wisc.,” the Boston Globe writes.
Said Obama: “Governor Romney has been using all his talents as a salesman to dress up these very same policies that failed our country so badly, the very same policies we’ve been cleaning up after for the past four years. And he’s been offering them up as change. Well let me tell you, Wisconsin, we know what change looks like, and what the governor’s offering sure ain’t change.”
AP on Obama’s closing argument: “President Barack Obama has spent months urging Americans to move forward. Now he’s asking them to look back. Back to the last Democratic president, who presided over a booming economy. Back to his Republican predecessor, whose policies he says GOP rival Mitt Romney would repeat. And back to 2008, when Obama ran as a champion of change who was willing to work across the political aisle. That’s how the president wants a divided, economically anxious nation to see him again now, as he makes his closing argument in the final days of his final political campaign.”
Ron Brownstein: “In the campaign’s final days, President Obama’s hopes of reelection may turn on his ability to assemble very different coalitions of support in the Sunbelt and the Rustbelt, a wave of new battleground state polling this week suggests. In diverse Sunbelt states like Virginia, Florida and Colorado, Obama is drawing enough backing from minorities and upscale white women to remain step-for-step with Mitt Romney, despite big deficits for the president among working-class whites and a substantial shortfall among college-educated white men in most of those states, according to detailed analyses of recent surveys provided to National Journal.”
NY Mayor Bloomberg endorsed Obama.
But not everyone’s pleased with Bloomberg and his handling of Sandy (not to mention penning 985 words on national politics while his city is still devastated). He’s being criticized also for continuing to put on the New York City Marathon this weekend.
Bloomberg’s PAC spent $5 million on House races this week.
National Journal looks at the importance of Jacob Lew to Obama and his legacy.