Battleground America: Obama’s re-election bid begins

It could hardly be a closer race: according to the latest poll from Real Clear Politics, Obama has edged into a 2.6 per cent lead against his Republican rival, statistically not that significant, perhaps, but boosted by the US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold his landmark health care bill last week.

So team Obama is hitting the road in two of the most important battleground states, Ohio and Pennsylvania, in an effort to go after the blue collar vote. It is, in some ways, something of a gamble: Friday’s jobless figures could very well show the number of Americans out of work still has not fallen below eight percent, and earlier this week it emerged that manufacturing activity shrank in June for the first time in almost three years.

Hitting the road

But in both states, Obama has been polling even better than his national showing: in both states, unemployment is below the national average: the message he gave voters, was that his policies could help replicate that experience across the country. His decision to bail out the auto industry, he reminded the crowd, had helped it “come roaring back”, while his health care law was “here to stay”.

Of course the Obama campaign is not just putting out a positive message, not when the race is this close, and fortunes can switch in an instant. The attacks on Romney’s record at Bain capital appear to be bearing fruit, with a survey suggesting that swing voters are forming a more negative opinion. Hence a new advertising blitz, focussing on companies backed by Bain which outsourced jobs to clower-wage countries like India and China.

By contrast, the President’s team claims he wants to “insource” jobs: there’s a pledge to end tax breaks for companies that transfer work abroad, although that was also a pledge made in 2008, which has yet to be enacted. But it is not just outsourcing in the line of fire: the Obama team have also released a video targeting Romney’s offshore bank accounts.

Mitt Romney is betting his resources in the Cayman Islands, in Bermuda, in Switzerland and God only knows where else. Ted Strickland

The plan is to highlight the difference between the two men: as Ohio’s former Democratic governor Ted Strickland put it: “President Obama is betting on America and American workers, and Mitt Romney is betting his resources in the Cayman Islands, in Bermuda, in Switzerland and God only knows where else..”

Out of touch rich guy?

Lines like this help to hammer home the message that Romney is an out of touch rich guy with no idea how ordinary Americans live: an image rather unfortunately reinforced by Romney himself, when he managed to pose at the weeekend aboard a jet ski at his lakeside home. Watch out for more pressure for him to release far more about his tax returns.

And just as unfortunately for Romney, the Democrats aren’t the only ones taking swipes at his personality: his own side are proving there’s still not much love out there for the Mittster. Rupert Murdoch took to his own personal Twitter feed to call for Romney’s entire campaign team to be replaced. The Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal followed suit, with a blistering op-ed on Romney’s strategy.

According to the Journal, Romney and team are “slowly squandering a historic opportunity”: the former Massachussetts governor needs to stop playing it safe by merely saying “the economy stinks and it’s Mr Obama’s fault”.

Conservative columnist William Kristol couldn’t wait to chime in, accusing Romney of a narrow focus on the economy that would surely lead to a November defeat. “Is it too much to ask Mitt Romney to get off autopilot and actually think about the race he’s running?” he railed.

None of which was helped by Romney appearing to contradict his own spokesman when he was pressed to comment on whether Obama’s individual health insurance mandate was a tax or not. Get with the programme, Mitt!

No walk in the park

However, winning in November certainly won’t be a walk in the park for Barack Obama, and he knows it: no president has won re-election with unemployment above 8 percent since Franklin Roosevelt: his own personal ratings are by no means high enough to be comfortable.

That is why his re-election campaign is splurging millions of dollars on advertising in the key swing states: spending $12m on television ads in just one week last month, with $6.5m earmarked for ads during the Olympics. Not to be outdone, the vastly better resourced group of Romney supporters, Restore Our Future, has also placed a substantial ad buy during the Games.

Things are already getting ugly. It has long been getting personal. Perhaps the campaign strategists might do well to take note of what happened at San Diego’s annual 4th July firework display, billed as one of the biggest in the nation. Thanks to a technical glitch, the entire show was ignited at once, creating a huge fireball that lasted just fifteen seconds, then died away in a heap of sparks.

Premature ignition, they called it: for the candidates, and the poor, beleaguered voters in that handful of batteground states, definitely a fate to avoid.

Felicity Spector writes about US affairs for Channel 4 News