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from Tales from the Trail:
Republicans shoot for “Super Saturday”
Hoping to echo the Democratic Party's successful use of volunteer armies to engage - and turn out - voters, Republicans are mounting their first "Super Saturday" volunteer day of the 2012 campaign this weekend. On July 7, the party says it will dispatch an army of volunteers to knock on doors and make telephone calls to voters in swing states across the country.
Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said the Romney/RNC operation would be in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Iowa.
President Barack Obama won all 12 of those states when he won the White House in 2008, aided by an army of volunteers. Romney will need to swing a large number of them back to the Republican column to defeat Obama on Nov. 6.
The RNC said its volunteers will use software to enter information into the mobile telephones on voters' doorsteps. Information from telephone calls will also be recorded and campaign staff will monitor the results of their calls. The information will be used to inform decisions such as where to deploy volunteers or focus voter turnout efforts during the last months of the campaign.
from Tales from the Trail:
2012 Election? In hot summer, it’s leaving Americans cold
A long spell of brutally hot weather is not the only thing making Americans cranky this summer.
With four months still to go before the presidential election on Nov. 6, Americans seem to be experiencing the 2012 campaign more like studying for a big math test than watching an exciting neck-and-neck horse race, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. More Republicans in particular are bored with the campaign.
from Tales from the Trail:
Obama campaign goes on the attack ahead of bus tour
President Barack Obama's reelection campaign used Tuesday to pave the rhetorical road for the president's two-day trip through the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania beginning on Thursday.
In a new television advertisement and during a conference call with reporters, the campaign and its allies tore into Republican challenger Mitt Romney for pushing policies and practices they say cost middle-class jobs and netted the former private equity executive millions.
from Tales from the Trail:
DNC to GOP on healthcare: Bring it on
The Democrats have an answer for the Republicans if the Supreme Court throws out President Barack Obama's healthcare law on Thursday: Good luck with that.
It may be bravado in the face of what would seem to be huge disappointment, but some Democrats insist they relish the prospect of watching congressional Republicans grapple with how to deal with the massive and troubled industry. Annual U.S. spending on healthcare already totals $2.6 trillion a year. Skyrocketing costs are expected to make spending balloon to $4.8 trillion, or one-fifth of U.S. gross domestic product over the coming decade, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
from Tales from the Trail:
Mitt Romney still a blank slate, Democrat says
Americans don't know much about Mitt Romney, except that he's rich and once offered to make a $10,000 bet in a Republican debate, former White House spokesman Bill Burton said at the Reuters Washington Summit on Wednesday.
Burton, who left the White House to co-found a Super PAC to raise money and create ads aimed at making sure Romney doesn't defeat President Barack Obama in November, said people need to learn more about the presumptive Republican nominee.
from Tales from the Trail:
Lead a Super PAC, lose your friends
It's not like the old days with his former colleagues at the White House and friends from the Barack Obama campaign anymore for Bill Burton.
The co-founder of the Priorities USA Action Super PAC, which is prevented by campaign finance rules from collaborating with the Obama campaign, told the Reuters Washington Summit he may spend his days raising money to get Obama re-elected, but he has very little contact with his old friends who are actually working in the administration or the re-election campaign.
from Tales from the Trail:
This time, some Democrats are embracing “Obamacare”
Fierce opposition to President Barack Obama's healthcare bill helped propel Republicans to big victories in the 2010 mid-term elections, when they won a majority of seats in the House of Representatives and cut into the Democratic majority in the Senate.
But this year, at least some Democrats are embracing the healthcare plan - touting their support for its popular provisions and attacking Republicans for opposing measures that polls show big majorities of Americans supporting.
from Tales from the Trail:
Obama letter brings Democratic donors out of the woodwork
A fundraising appeal from President Barack Obama on Monday netted Democratic Congressional candidates their biggest online fundraising day ever, New York Congressman Steve Israel said at the Reuters Washington Summit.
Obama made an email appeal asking supporters to donate $3 or more to help the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The appeal raised $580,000, said Israel, chairman of the DCCC, which helps recruit and raise money for candidates for the House of Representatives.
from Tales from the Trail:
Will the “War on Women” have legs in November?
Democrats should not hold back from the "war on women" in campaigning for the Nov. 6 election, Senator Jeanne Shaheen said, even if the economy will be on voters' minds as they head to the polls.
"I'm old enough to remember the '50s and before ... contraceptives were widely available to people, what my mother and other women were dealing with," the New Hampshire Democrat said on Tuesday at the Reuters Washington Summit. "I'm old enough to remember what it was like before Roe v. Wade, and I think access to reproductive health services for women is critical. And I don't think women in this country are planning to go back."
from Tales from the Trail:
Campaign 2012 goes a bit peanuts and crackerjack
Massachusetts may have a reputation as the bluest of Democratically blue states, but it is also resoundingly red -- as in Red Sox nation. And President Barack Obama seemed to hit a nerve at a fundraiser in Boston on Monday night when he made a joke involving his favorite baseball team, the Chicago White Sox, at the expense of the suffering denizens of Fenway.
"Boston, I just want to say thank you for (Kevin) Youkilis," Obama said at a fundraiser at Boston Symphony Hall, referring to the popular infielder, a fixture on two Boston World Series winning teams, who was traded from Boston to Chicago during the weekend.
