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Obama Campaign Unveils “Dashboard”

May 23, 2012 at 7:15 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Obama’s re-election campaign will introduce a new online organizing tool today, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The program, known as Dashboard, has been in development since last year and builds off technology used by the campaign in 2008. It is meant to replicate a campaign field office, allowing volunteers to do phone banking, organize events and talk to campaign leaders from their laptops or smartphones… The Dashboard aims to give supporters information about local efforts and let people see how their efforts compare with those of other volunteers.”

Opposition to Gay Marriage Hits New Low

May 23, 2012 at 7:01 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds 53% of Americans say gay marriage should be legal, “hitting a high mark in support while showing a dramatic turnaround from just six years ago, when just 36% thought it should be legal.”

Meanwhile, 39% percent, a new low, say gay marriage should be illegal.

Where They Really Don’t Like Obama

May 23, 2012 at 6:48 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

To explain President Obama’s dismal performance in the Kentucky and Arkansas primaries last night, Alec MacGillis points us to a map that shows the regions where Obama received a smaller percentage of the vote in 2008 than John Kerry did in 2004.

“It is a virtually contiguous band of territory stretching from southwestern Pennsylvania through Appalachia and across the Upland South, finally petering out in north-central Texas. It is, almost to a T, what Colin Woodard, in his fascinating new ethnographic history of North America, American Nations, defined as the territory of the ‘Borderlanders’ — the rough-hewn Scots-Irish who arrived in this country from the “borderlands” of northern Ireland and Scotland, and claimed for themselves the inland hill country, far from the snooty Northeastern elites and Southern gentry. And look more closely at the map — where was Obama’s 2008 dropoff particularly heavy? In eastern Kentucky and most of Arkansas.”

“Keep in mind: this was at the peak of Obama’s popularity. It was before he began his ‘war on coal,’ before Obamacare, before all the things that pundits will point to to explain why this part of the country is so dead set against the president.”

Romney Leads in Florida

May 23, 2012 at 6:00 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new Quinnipiac poll in Florida finds that Mitt Romney leads President Obama by six points, 47% to 41%.

Adding Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to the GOP ticket would give Republicans an eight point lead, 49% to 41%.

Said pollster Peter Brown: “Mitt Romney has slipped into the lead in Florida and that standing is confirmed by his much better numbers than the president when voters are asked whether they view the candidates favorably or unfavorably. They view Romney favorably 44% to 35%, while Obama gets a negative 45% to 50% favorability.”

Obama Embarrassed in Kentucky, Arkansas

May 23, 2012 at 5:35 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Obama barely eked out Democratic primary wins in Kentucky and Arkansas, Politico reports.

The president didn’t even have an opponent in Kentucky, but took just 57.9% of the vote, with the remaining more than 42 percent of ballots cast for “uncommitted.”

In Arkansas, his unknown opponent, John Wolfe (D), won 41% of the vote.

Washington Post: “Although the results haven’t stopped Obama’s march to renomination — he officially clinched the Democratic nod on April 3 — they remain an indicator of not-insignificant pockets of unrest within his party.”

Stockman Says Romney Didn’t Create Jobs

May 22, 2012 at 10:39 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Former Reagan budget director David Stockman went off message on Fox News while commenting about Mitt Romney’s business experience.

Said Stockman: “I don’t think that Mitt Romney can legitimately say that he learned anything about how to create jobs in the LBO business. The LBO business is about how to strip cash out of old, long-in-the-tooth companies and how to make short-term profits…All the jobs that he talks about came from Staples. That was a very early venture stage deal. That, you know they got out of long before it got to its current size.”

[Read more…]

Romney Has Edge in North Carolina

May 22, 2012 at 10:25 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new SurveyUSA poll in North Carolina finds Mitt Romney barely edging President Obama, 45% to 44%.

Economy Improving Faster in Swing States

May 22, 2012 at 10:19 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Bloomberg reports the geography of the U.S. economic rebound is providing an edge to President Obama’s re-election.

“The unemployment rates in a majority of the 2012 battleground states are lower than the national average as those economies improve… Those eight states — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia — have a combined 101 electoral votes. Romney must win at least 79 of those electoral votes to prevail if all other states run true to their 2004 and 2008 partisan preferences.”

“A projection Moody’s made May 21 based on the model predicts an Obama victory with 303 electoral voters, with the Democrat carrying Ohio and Virginia and the Republican winning Florida.”

Obama Maintains Small Lead Nationally

May 22, 2012 at 10:01 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds President Obama leading Mitt Romney by four points nationally, 47% to 43%.

“But the poll found much to stir concern within the burgeoning Obama re-election campaign. Despite signs of economic recovery, nearly half of Americans said the country is at the start of a long-term decline. Americans by a sizable plurality said Mr. Obama’s approach has worsened the nation’s budget deficit and health-care problems, and increased its partisan divide.”

Key finding: 63% say they are not confident their children’s lives will be better than theirs.

Wisconsin Poll Shows Tight Recall Race

May 22, 2012 at 3:45 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (D) poll in Wisconsin shows Gov. Scott Walker (R) leading Tom Barrett (D) in the recall race, 50% to 47% — within the poll’s four-point margin of error.

Several other recent polls have show Walker opening up a larger lead.

Republicans Charge Cover-Up Over Booker Comments

May 22, 2012 at 2:07 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Republicans drag Cory Booker’s walk-back of his weekend comments out for another day by alleging in a new video that President Obama’s re-election campaign is engaged in a cover up.

[Read more…]

Shumlin Looks Safe in Vermont

May 22, 2012 at 2:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new Castleton State College poll in Vermont finds Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) headed for a landslide re-election.

Shumlin leads challenger Randy Brock (R), 60% to 27%.

Obama Leads in Pennsylvania

May 22, 2012 at 1:33 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Pennsylvania poll finds President Obama leading Mitt Romney by eight points, 50% to 42%, essentially unchanged from early March.

Extra Bonus Quote of the Day

May 22, 2012 at 1:30 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“I have saved the taxpayers billions. That $3.2 billion would be enough to fund me and my congressional office for the next 1,000 years or so.”

— Rep. Steve King (R-IA), quoted by the Des Moines Register, defending his votes in favor of congressional pay raises.

Gay Marriage Announcement Had Little Political Impact

May 22, 2012 at 1:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that President Obama’s support of same-sex marriage seems to have had limited political consequences.

Key finding: 17% said it makes them “much more likely” or “somewhat more likely” they will vote for Obama. That’s compared with a combined 20% who say the announcement will make them more likely to vote for Mitt Romney, who opposes gay marriage. Finally, 62% say the president’s support for gay marriage doesn’t make a difference in their vote.

A New Kind of Republican

May 22, 2012 at 12:30 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Jon Karl: “Mia Love is a Republican Congressional candidate unlike any you have ever seen before — African American, Mormon, conservative and the Republican party has declared her race one of the top 10 House races in the country this year. She is now the mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah (pop. 18,000), but if she wins, Love will be the first African-American woman Republican elected to Congress.”

Why Obama Isn’t Going to Dump Biden

May 22, 2012 at 12:03 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Jeff Greenfield: “First, when have presidents who are up for re-election dumped their vice-presidents, and why have they done it? The difference between the reality and the Hillary-for-Joe fantasy can be measured in light years.”

“Second, if Obama were to attempt this, how would he explain it? Trying to answer this question with a straight face is the best way to understand why (assuming accident or illness does not intervene) it’s not going to happen.”

Subtle Attack Ad Debuts in Swing States

May 22, 2012 at 11:16 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new ad from Larry McCarthy, the producer behind the infamous Willie Horton commercial in 1988, and funded Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, “is expected to become one of the most heavily broadcast political commercials of this phase of the general election,” the New York Times reports.

It will debut tomorrow in 10 swing states as the centerpiece of a $25 million campaign.

“Yet what Mr. McCarthy and Crossroads have produced is not the kind of searing denunciation of President Obama that their track records would suggest. More soft-pedal than Swift Boat, the 60-second advertisement, complete with special effects, is a deeply researched, delicately worded story of a struggling family; its relatively low-key tone is all the more striking, coming at a point in the campaign when each side is accusing the other of excessive negativity.”

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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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