Polls suggest US President Barack Obama holds only a small, perhaps meaningless lead over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the race for the White House, as he awaits a new jobs report on Friday.
With unemployment remaining high, Romney and Obama are running neck and neck, with no sign that either can break away, as the race enters a final summer lull before the sprint to Election Day in November.
Both candidates are taking a break this week, which includes the Fourth of July holiday, with Romney at his lakeside compound in New Hampshire and Obama at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.
“When it’s a 2 or 3-point race, that’s not good for an incumbent president,” said Republican strategist Rich Galen, who is not affiliated with Romney’s campaign.
“Obama’s political career is totally dependent on [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel holding the eurozone together,” he said.
Obama tomorrow starts a two-day bus tour of Ohio and Pennsylvania, two crucial battleground states that could go either way in the state-by-state contests that decide the election.
Meanwhile, he needs money to compete with Romney. In a leaked recording of a conference call Obama recently placed from Air Force One to top donors from his 2008 campaign, he implored them to match their earlier generosity.
The two campaigns, including their allied political action committees, are matching each other nearly dollar-for-dollar on TV ads in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Virginia and New Hampshire. Romney’s forces are outspending Obama’s in Iowa and Michigan. The opposite is true in Colorado.
An aide on Monday confirmed that Romney plans this summer to visit Israel, a trip that could appeal to Jewish voters and to conservatives who see Israel as a vital military and political ally.
Meanwhile, Republicans worry that Democrats are making headway with claims that Romney supported shipping jobs overseas when he headed a private equity firm called Bain Capital. His campaign says Romney did not oversee the export of US jobs, although Bain at times invested in companies that helped pioneer outsourcing certain jobs to countries such as India and China.
Summer vacations and the Olympic Games might distract voters for the next several weeks, and political and legal activists might keep arguing over healthcare and immigration. However, Romney is staking his candidacy on the claim that Obama has failed on the economy.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was