A new Bloomberg News poll finds President Obama leading Mitt Romney among likely voters by six points, 49% to 43%.
Key findings: 48% to 39% give Obama an advantage for his economic plan over Romney’s even though 60% say the nation is on the wrong track.
Virginia Republican Party officials ordered their Mecklenburg
County affiliate to remove photos portraying President Obama “as a witch
doctor, a caveman and a thug from its Facebook page,” the Washington Post reports.
But chairman Wally Hudson refused: “If that group is that sensitive, I’m sorry, they’re just not human. It’s not American. If they’ve got a problem with it, we’re not going to change what we do.”
A video has surfaced showing Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidate Tommy Thompson (R) telling a Tea Party group back in June…”who better than me, who’s already finished one of the entitlement programs, to come up with programs to do away with Medicaid and Medicare?”
You're reading the free version of Political Wire
Upgrade to a paid membership to unlock full access. The process is quick and easy. You can even use Apple Pay.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “There was some national media on hand at Todd Akin’s news conference Tuesday, apparently there in the belief that he might announce a last-second withdrawal from the U.S. Senate race on today’s withdrawal deadline.”
“But anyone who’s watched Akin in the six weeks since his ‘legitimate rape‘ comments made him a household name knew that wasn’t going to happen.”
SaavySugar pulls out the wealthiest politicians from the Forbes 400 list.
“He attacks the 47 percent of the American people who he says pay no federal taxes. And he attacks, he, Romney? Attacking someone on taxes? I mean, Woah! That’s like me attacking someone for being passionate in politics.”
— Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by ABC News, commenting on Mitt Romney’s remarks which were caught on hidden camera video.
Charlie Cook: “Leading Democratic and Republican pollsters and strategists privately say that the Obama lead is around 4 or 5 points and is neither widening nor narrowing. The convention bounces have dissipated, but Romney’s negatives remain quite high and are not diminishing. In the Gallup three-week super-samples–almost 10,000 interviews–the percentage of Democrats saying that they will definitely vote has moved up to the point that it is now virtually tied with Republicans.”
The Obama campaign launched a second TV ad slamming Mitt Romney over his “47%” hidden camera video remarks, NBC News reports.
The ad will run in eight states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Virginia. The first TV ad seizing using the hidden camera video — released yesterday — was aimed to just Ohio.
Dick Morris told Sean Hannity that, “barring any debate debacle,” Mitt Romney will win the presidential election by “4 or 5 points” and will win Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said he didn’t plan to write a book about his “first-hand experience of the financial crisis, the aftermath, and the politics of Washington” but joked that, “A lot of people are telling my story,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
“The comment came the same day former FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair’s memoir, Bull by the Horns, was released. Ms. Bair and Mr. Geithner spent years at war with each other over what to do during the financial crisis, and her book reveals many of their battles in detail.”
Mitt Romney political director Rich Beeson told BuzzFeed the campaign’s internal polls are telling a different story than the public polls.
Said Beeson: “The public polls are what the public polls are. I kind of hope the Obama campaign is basing their campaign decisions on the public polls… I have great faith in our data.”
He added, “We are, by any stretch, inside the margin of error in Ohio.”
Police investigating the weekend break-in at Rep. Michael Grimm’s (R-NY) campaign office tell the New York Times that “experts had examined the campaign’s computer systems and concluded that nothing had been erased or tampered with” and that “there was no evidence that an intruder had been in the office.”
“At this point, there is no indication that it was anything other than an act of vandalism.”
However, Grimm told the Staten Island Advance that the incident was nothing less than an “attack on free elections.”
Update: The AP reports police now say a teenager has admitted to the vandalism.
Greg Sargent: “Mitt Romney might still win this election, but he’s now stuck in a trap that will be difficult to escape. Americans are rejecting his argument that they should view their choice mostly as a referendum on Obama’s economic performance, because they blame the sluggish recovery on the magnitude of the mess Obama inherited from George W. Bush, and believe things will get better in Obama’s second term. That is putting pressure on Romney to be more specific about why his alternative, such as it is, would spark a faster recovery than is occurring under Obama.”
“But Romney can’t be too much more specific about that alternative, because it risks reminding voters of the degree to which his policies resemble those of the aforementioned George W. Bush, under whom the meltdown happened in the first place.”
Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-MA) staffers chanted Indian “war whoops” and made “tomahawk chops” during a campaign rally for the senator this week, WCVB-TV reports.
A video shows Brown staffers holding campaign signs “chanting and making tomahawk chops, presumably in reference to Elizabeth Warren’s claims of Cherokee heritage.”
Here are the latest polls from the battleground states, updated as needed through the day:
Florida: Obama 51%, Romney 47% (Washington Post)
Nevada: Obama 52%, Romney 43% (PPP/LCV)
Nevada: Obama 46%, Romney 46% (Bolger)
Ohio: Obama 52%, Romney 44% (Washington Post)
Ohio: Obama 45%, Romney 44% (Gravis)
Pennsylvania: Obama 48%, Romney 40% (Mercyhurst University
Mitt Romney got a warm introduction from Bill Clinton before of his speech at the Clinton Global Initiative, Politico reports.
Romney thanked Clinton: “If there’s one thing we’ve learned in this election by the way it’s that a few words from Bill Clinton can do a lot of good.”
He joked that he would now wait a few days for his “bounce.”
National Journal: “It has become a recurring refrain among some Republican pundits and observers each time a new poll shows President Obama or downballot Democrats doing well: Check the party composition.”
“Critics allege that pollsters are interviewing too many Democrats — and too few Republicans or independents — and artificially inflating the Democratic candidates’ performance. Pollsters counter that the results they are finding reflect slight changes in public sentiment — and, moreover, adjusting their polls to match arbitrary party-identification targets would be unscientific.”
Just published: Elephant in the Room: Washington in the Bush Years by Paul Glastris and Steve Benen.
The book explores why, despite efforts to airbrush him out of today’s political conversation, George W. Bush remains central to it.
Taegan 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.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.