With the economic meltdown creating problems for Republicans, Democratic Senator Barack Obama is focusing his final-stretch message of the presidential campaign on a rescue plan for the battered middle-class household.
Obama was to hold a jobs summit yesterday in Florida with the Democratic governors of four battleground states as well as business leaders and economic experts.
The meeting comes a day after Obama launched a major push with the help of former rival Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and other surrogates to win Florida, a key state that could propel him to victory over Republican Senator John McCain.
Amid concern that battleground states were slipping from their grasp, McCain aides scheduled a daylong tour yesterday across Pennsylvania — one of the only Democratic-leaning states where the Republican ticket is still aggressively campaigning in hopes of scratching out a comeback victory.
Obama planned to hammer home the message that he has the best economic plan during yesterday’s roundtable. The event, amounting to a mass public endorsement of his economic proposals, was drawing the governors of Michigan, Ohio, New Mexico and Colorado to the town of Lake Worth in Florida.
All the states except Michigan, which McCain recently abandoned, voted for President George W. Bush in 2004. But polls show Obama leading in all four states, which now have Democratic governors.
In Colorado and Ohio, McCain is believed to be down, but within or close to the margin of error in polls. Florida, once solidly in McCain’s corner, now is a tossup. And in New Mexico, Obama appears to have a comfortable lead.
Obama had planned several other appearances in Florida yesterday, capped by an evening rally with his wife, Michelle, in Miami.
Obama also campaigned across the state on Monday, holding a solo rally in Tampa and a joint event with Clinton in Orlando that was attended by more than 50,000 people. He heads to more Republican-leaning states, Virginia and Indiana, today and tomorrow.
After a morning rally tomorrow in Indianapolis, Obama will fly to Hawaii to visit his suddenly gravely ill, 85-year-old grandmother, a central figure in her grandson’s life. She helped raise him.
“She’s the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me,” Obama said in his August speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.
He is to resume campaigning on Saturday in an undetermined location in the West, mostly likely another state that went for Bush in 2004, such as Nevada, aides said.
On Monday, McCain focused on Missouri, speaking to a crowd of 2,000 in a suburb north of St. Louis, where he and supporters branded Obama a liberal and criticized feminists and the media as they rallied their conservative base.
“We don’t want a president who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars,” McCain, 72, told supporters.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
RSS