Tales from the Trail

In dueling appearances on the Sunday morning news shows, the heads of the Democratic and Republican parties made the same  prediction — After the Nov. 2 elections, our guys will control the House.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says his party’s going into the final campaign stretch on a winning combination of momentum, excitement and energy.

“There is a vibration out here that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, Steele said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I think you’re going to see a wave, an unprecedented wave on Election Day, that’s going to surprise a lot of people,” Steele said.

“As I like to say, we’re 38 seats and we need to get to 39 seats to… get control (of the House). But I think we’re more than there,” the RNC chief said.

If  President Obama really wants to get his groove back with young voters, he might want to get a bit more in synch with their musical tastes and a bit less in line with songs their parents — and grandparents — listened to. He’s got about 2,000 songs on his iPod, but – as he put it – his selections are more weighted to his childhood – his very young childhood – than to much that 20-somethings are listening to today.

“There’s still a lot of Stevie Wonder, a lot of Bob Dylan, a lot of Rolling Stones, a lot of R&B, a lot of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Those are the old standards,” Obama said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine released on Tuesday. He also listens to a lot of classical music. “I’m not a big opera buff in terms of going to opera, but there are days where Maria Callas is exactly what I need,” he said.

The president was born in 1961, which makes him little more than a toddler when some of his favorite artists had their biggest hits, something he and his handlers might want to keep in mind as he tries to connect with young voters and urge them to turn out in force on Nov. 2. The famed diva Callas was born in 1923, and died in 1977, when Obama was 16.

The Obama family hails from Chicago, where heavy snowfalls are not uncommon. But that’s not the case in Washington, D.C., which was largely shut down on Saturday morning  by a blizzard when the president headed to the Capital Hilton Hotel to rev up a gathering of the Democratic National Committee.

The short ride from the White House was not without glitches. First, a couple of the 15 or so vehicles in the presidential motorcade had a hard time getting up the icy White House driveway. Then an ambulance that was accompanying the group had a slight fender-bender accident with one of the SUVs. As the cars approached White House grounds on the return trip, a tree branch fell on the same vehicle that had been scraped earlier, momentarily blocking the way.

Obama had serious things on his mind, such as healthcare and financial reform, as he spoke to a Democratic Party that has becoming increasingly concerned about the shifting tides of public opinion ahead of November’s Congressional elections. But the weather was an unavoidable topic.

Those media naysayers are troubling President Obama again.

The U.S. leader, who hasn’t had a prime-time news conference in six months, made clear his aggravation with the scribblers in remarks Thursday to a Democratic fundraiser at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

As the tony crowd, who were asked to  pay $30,400 per couple, dined on beet salad, beef and Brussels sprouts, the president laid out his case against the unruly nabobs of negativism.

They were the ones who declared his presidential campaign dead about a dozen times.

President Barack Obama may be the leader of the free world, but actor Ashton Kutcher is the king of twitter and pop princess Britney Spears is, er, its princess.

 Obama’s twitter feed recently attracted its 3 millionth follower, which was announced with this tweet — “As we kick off 2010, our Twitter community has grown to over 3 million. I continue to be grateful for your partnership as we work for change” — on Monday afternoon.

The development made Obama’s feed — actually run by the Democratic Party’s National Committee — only the fourth ever to garner such attention. But he still remains far behind the leaders, the Hill newspaper noted on its “Twitter Room” blog.  They each have 4 million followers, the blog said, citing TwitterCounter .