President Obama begins a two-day swing through
Florida and First Read reports “he’ll introduce another attack:
hitting Romney on Medicare and the Ryan budget.”

Per the campaign, the
president “will discuss his commitment to strengthening Medicare, and a
new report tomorrow that highlights the devastating impact Mitt Romney’s
Medicare plan could have on the 3.4 million Floridians that rely on
Medicare.”

“Bottom line, per the campaign’s guidance: Obama will argue
that Romney — through his support for the Ryan budget plan — advocates
ending Medicare ‘as we know it.'”

Jonathan Chait: “The Obama campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s business record and
personal finances will probably continue for a long time. But I think
that, when the campaign is remembered in history, they will not be seen
as the central element but rather as a prelude. The main event is going to be a fight over the priorities of the Paul Ryan budget.”

The Romney campaign is out with a tough new video using President Obama’s recent quote about business: “If you’ve got a business-you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen…”

Greg Sargent: “This line is going to be a major target for the Romney campaign — similar to Obama’s 2008 remark about spreading the wealth — but in order to have maximum political value, it needs to be removed from context in a highly misleading way, which the Romney camp is happy to do.”

[Read more…]

The DNC said that they “would refrain from using the Romney’s dressage horse Rafalca in future advertisements after suggestions the ad could be offensive to the Republican challenger’s wife, Ann,” The Hill reports.

“The horse, which will be competing later this month in London’s Summer Olympics, is one of a number of animals that Ann Romney owns and rides as part of her treatment for multiple sclerosis.”

Zeke Miller: “The curveball: Mrs. Romney never even took offense. And the episode was
more a mark of Democrats’ fear of provoking sympathy for the candidate’s
wife than of any move by the Republicans to capitalize on it.”

Frank Rich: “What Mitt doesn’t seem to realize is that whatever embarrassments are in his tax returns, the bigger problem is that his secrecy keeps accentuating all the mysteries in his resume: the erased hard drives he left behind when leaving office as Massachusetts governor; what exactly he did as a longtime lay official in the Mormon church; and, of course, what exactly he did and didn’t do at Bain and, for that matter, when he was there and not there. If he keeps trying to wait out the tax storm, it will keep growing — hitting a new peak when he finally releases the one additional year of tax returns he has agreed to disclose, and another when his veep pick is asked to release his or her tax returns.”

Steve Kornacki: “Maybe the calendar offers a clue about Romney’s thinking. In just over a
week, the London Olympics will kick off. If you’re going to release
more embarrassing tax returns, maybe that would be the ideal time?”

A new NPR poll in 12 battleground states — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin — finds President Obama and Mitt Romney tied at 46% each.

A new Quinnipiac poll in Virginia finds Mitt Romney now in a dead heat with President Obama at 44% each.

Obama held an 8 point lead in March and a 5 point lead in June.

Said pollster Peter Brown: “Virginia voters are sharply split along gender and political lines about the presidential race. The two candidates equally hold their own political bases and are splitting the key independent vote down the middle. One small edge that President Obama has is likability. Voters have a slightly more favorable opinion of the president than they do Mitt Romney.”

A new Magellan Strategies poll in Nevada finds Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) with a narrow lead over challenger Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV), 45% to 42%.

A new Fox News poll finds President Obama leading Mitt Romney nationally by four points, 45% to 41%.

A new CBS/NYT poll finds Romney ahead by one point, 47% to 46%.

A new NPR poll shows Obama leading by two points, 47% to 45%.

BuzzFeed: “Mitt Romney has spent much of the last week arguing that, despite some public records, he was effectively gone from Bain Capital in February 1999. But in February 2000, Romney was introduced as the ‘founder and CEO of Capital’ at the National Press Club during an appearance about the Olympics, and Romney’s biography on the Olympic’s website listed him as Bain Capital ‘founder and CEO.'”

Meanwhile, a new Obama video asks people what “retroactively retired” means.

[Read more…]

A new Public Policy Polling survey in New Mexico finds the presidential race tightening with President Obama holding a five point lead, 49% to 44%.

The previous two PPP polls found Obama ahead by 14 and 15 points.

Key finding: “New Mexico still looks like a lean Obama state, but a surprise choice by
Mitt Romney of Susana Martinez as his running mate could make the state
a toss up. With her on the ticket Obama’s lead drops all the way down
to 48-47. That’s a testament to Martinez’s appeal with Democrats.”

As pressure builds on Mitt Romney to release his tax returns, the Huffington Post reports that the GOP nominee has not even disclosed all of his tax documents for 2010 — the only year for which he has presented any final tax forms.

“Romney released his 2010 tax return in January of this year, a document that first informed voters about the existence of his Swiss bank account and financial activities in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. But people who own foreign bank accounts are required to file a separate document with the IRS that provides additional details on such overseas bank holdings, and Romney has not released that form to the public.”

President Obama’s reelection campaign filed a federal lawsuit against Ohio’s top elections official “in a dispute over the battleground state’s law that restricts in-person early voting in the three days leading up to Election Day,” the AP reports.

“Obama’s campaign and other Democrats argue that the law unfairly ends in-person early voting for most Ohioans on the Friday evening before the Tuesday election while allowing military and overseas voters to cast ballots in person until Monday. Before the changes to the law, local election boards had the discretion to set their own hours for such voting on the days before the election.”

The Week has six theories.