US President Barack Obama launched a new effort to woo Hispanics and took a swipe at Republican Mitt Romney’s “silver spoon” background on Wednesday as the two presidential rivals laid out sharply different economic visions to win over US voters.
Obama, a Democrat, and Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, outlined the weaknesses they saw in each other’s economic plans in dueling speeches in Ohio and North Carolina.
“I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” Obama said at a community college outside Cleveland, in a not-so-subtle dig at Romney’s fortune, which is estimated at up to US$250 million.
Obama did not mention Romney by name, and his comment came in the context of promoting government support for education and social programs.
“In this country, prosperity does not trickle down, prosperity grows from the bottom up — and it grows from a strong middle class,” he said.
Obama has painted himself as the champion of the middle class in the campaign for the Nov. 6 election — contrasting himself with Romney and Republicans for opposing tax hikes for the rich and favoring budget cuts that would hurt the elderly and the poor.
Romney hammered Obama for presiding over an economy with high unemployment.
With the Charlotte, North Carolina, football stadium as a backdrop, Romney read lines from Obama’s 2008 speech at the Democratic National Convention, in which he listed grievances against then-president George W. Bush, a Republican.
“More Americans are out of work, working harder for less, losing homes and owning cars they can no longer afford to drive, a result of ‘broken policies in Washington’ and failed policies at the White House,” Romney said, quoting Obama’s 2008 speech.
“Those things he said about the prior administration are absolutely accurate about his administration,” Romney said. “And that’s why, even if you like Barack Obama, we can’t afford Barack Obama.”
Obama will deliver his nomination acceptance speech in Charlotte in four months, near where Romney spoke on Wednesday.
Romney reminded his audience of Republican supporters that Obama gave his Denver address on a stage with Greek columns.
“One thing I’m convinced you’re not going to see — you’re not going to see President Obama standing alongside Greek columns,” said Romney. “He’s doesn’t want to remind anyone of Greece because he’s put us on a road to become more like Greece.”
Greece is in the middle of a debt crisis that has shaken the eurozone and threatened the world economy.
Obama described the economic theories of Romney’s party as a failure.
He painted the Bush-era reliance on trickle-down economics — in which reducing taxes on the wealthy is supposed to lead to more hiring, which ultimately benefits middle and lower-income people — as a formula that led to the near collapse of the US financial system.
“We spent the last three-and-a-half years cleaning up after that mess. So their theory did not work out so well,” Obama said.
“Instead of moderating their views even slightly, you now have Republicans in Washington and the ones running for president proposing budgets that shower the wealthiest Americans with even more tax cuts,” he said.
Aside from exploiting their economic differences, Obama is hoping to capitalize on polls showing strong support from women and Hispanics, two constituency groups that could decide the election.
His campaign launched a program on Wednesday called “Latinos for Obama” to boost voter registration among Hispanics and recruit volunteers for Obama’s cause.
It also launched a series of Spanish-language radio and television ads in Colorado, Nevada, and Florida, all of which are important battleground states with sizable Latino populations.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in