US President Barack Obama has launched a last-ditch effort to help Democratic Senate chief Harry Reid gain re-election after polls indicated Reid could be defeated by his Republican opponent Sharron Angle, a favorite of the conservative “Tea Party” movement. Such an outcome would be a major blow to Democrats already bracing for heavy losses in the Nov. 2 election.
“All those who fought for change in 2008, you have got to fight for change in 2010,” Obama told a raucous rally in Las Vegas on Friday, seeking to fire up his youthful, diverse coalition of Nevada voters on Reid’s behalf.
“We are just in the first quarter, I can’t have you tired now,” Obama told supporters ahead of polls in which analysts tip Republicans to win back the House of Representatives and cut the Democratic majority in the Senate.
Earlier, on the third day of a campaign swing, Obama branded Republicans as radical and reactionary, seeking to bolster another key Democratic Senator, Barbara Boxer, in the normally safe Democratic ground of California.
He charged that the first Republican president, his political hero Abraham Lincoln would be too moderate to win the opposition party’s presidential nomination in the modern age.
“Seriously, can you imagine him trying to run with these folks?” Obama said, in a bid to portray the Republican Party as outside the mainstream.
Obama accused Republicans of sitting on their hands while he saved the economy from a second Great Depression and of wanting to go back to the same lax regulatory regimes that caused the crisis in the first place.
“This agenda that poses as conservatism is not conservative. It resulted in a radical shift from record surpluses to record deficits, allowed Wall Street to run wild, nearly destroyed our economy,” Obama said.
“This is a choice between the past and the future, between fear and hope, between moving backwards and moving forwards and I don’t know about you, but I want to move forward,” Obama said in Los Angeles.
“They are clinging to the same worn-out, tired, snake-oil ideas that they were peddling before,” he said.
At a second event in Los Angeles, featuring actor and -comedian Jamie Foxx as a warm up act, Obama fired off his stump speech to a crowd of 32,500 people, as 5,000 more watched on a big screen set up in an overflow area.
Republicans need to win 39 seats to take back the House after four years of Democratic control — a task well within their reach with some analysts judging up to 90 races in the 435-seat chamber as competitive.
In the Senate, Republicans need a 10-seat swing, a result that may be beyond them after several races tightened in favor of Democrats in recent days and a scenario of six or seven seats changing hands seems more likely.
In what could be viewed as good news for Democrats, a Gallup opinion poll released on Friday showed 51 percent of all registered voters said their congressional representative deserved to be re-elected.
The survey also found that just 33 percent of those polled said that most members of Congress collectively deserve re-election.
However, the number was below similar figures made public in 1994 and 2006, when there were significant changes in the composition of Congress.
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