Obama taking the Easy Road in Campaigning

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin is taking a political battering, thanks to his support of Barack Obama, so he’s uniquely qualified to offer counsel on what many think is the president’s central political problem - his failure to connect with white working-class voters.

His advice: Go to where they live and work. Listen. And don’t talk down to them.

“If I were him, I’d start going to the places where people don’t like you that much,” says Manchin, who is locked in a close race to replace Robert Byrd in the Senate and struggling mightily to shrug off his opponents’ description of him as Obama’s “rubber stamp.”

“You can’t win if you only go where you are comfortable,” added Manchin, who was speaking to POLITICO a day before Obama appeared in a place that was very much in his comfort zone - before a crowd of 35,000 admirers at Ohio State University.

In the two weeks before the Nov. 2 midterms, Obama has focused on helping his party energize its demoralized base, travelling to seven states that delivered him double-digit margins of victory two years ago and to comfortable venues like big city stadiums and university campuses. But in the process he is also re-living one of the few unsuccessful phases of his campaign – the spring of 2008, when Sen. Hillary Clinton struck a chord with white blue collar voters in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. - Politico Story

Obama Attacks GOP - Dems blame Obama

Democrats enter the homestretch of the 2010 elections complaining vocally about the flood of Republican money, much of it anonymous, pounding their candidates.

But as the White House points the finger at outside Republican groups, many Democrats point the finger back at the White House, which dismantled the Democratic Party's own outside infrastructure in 2008 and never tried to rebuild it.

The blame certainly isn't President Barack Obama's alone. The rich Democrats who would traditionally give to such groups are — like Democrats at large — demoralized, particularly by the defeat of climate change legislation. They're disheartened by the conservative revival. And they're resigned to a Republican victory in November. - Politico Story

Race for Rep. Obey Seat in Wisconsin in Top 12 Must Watch

12) WI-07: State Senator Julie Lassa (D) faces district attorney and former Real World cast-member Sean Duffy (R) in a barn-burner for the open House seat vacated by Democratic Rep. Dave Obey in northwestern Badger State. Duffy was the target of the DCCC’s first independent expenditure ad of 2010, in a sign of how high this district ranks on Democratic priority lists.

Politico Story

Democrats Having a Bad Election

More bad polls. More bad fundraising numbers. More dreary talk on the Sunday shows.

It added up to a brutal weekend for Democrats, as the consensus among election analysts, already bearish on the party’s prospects, took a turn for the worse over the past 48 hours.

In the eyes of the experts, the House Democratic majority most likely won’t survive Nov. 2, with political handicappers expanding their predictions to envision the possibility of a Democratic wipeout.

Analyst Stu Rothenberg pegs the number of competitive seats at 100. Charlie Cook says it's 97. Virtually all of those seats are held by Democrats.

Rothenberg is predicting a likely Republican gain of 40 to 50 seats, with 60 seats possible. Republicans need a net pickup of 39 seats to take the House.

One House Democrat, reflecting widespread conversations with his colleagues, guessed Sunday that his party will lose 50 seats. Many, he said, are calling with urgent pleas for more contributions. - Politico Story

Obama - Americans are not thinking straight when it comes to election

Americans are so "scared" they're not thinking straight about the upcoming elections, President Obama said over the weekend, as he sought to explain why voters are turning to Republican candidates.

The president, speaking at several rallies and fundraisers as part of his final get-out-the-vote stretch, said Republican candidates

are "playing on fear" and suggested voters are falling for it. He said Americans have every reason to be worried, but lamented that "facts" aren't doing his party any good this year.

"People out there are still hurting very badly, and they are still scared. And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared," Obama said at a Democratic fundraiser Saturday in Boston. "And the country is scared, and they have good reason to be." - FOX News Story

Obama Team Admits they have no Evidence of Foreign Money

With its baseless charge that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is using foreign money to influence the November elections, the Obama administration and its liberal allies have opened up a can of worms they may come to regret.

The accusations that foreign corporations are funding Republican attack ads have been widely panned. Even President Obama and his top aides have admitted they have no proof to back their allegations against the Chamber and conservative campaign groups such as American Crossroads (Obama said the Chamber's money "could" be coming from foreign-owned corporations but "we don't know.") Now the Democrats' calls for investigations into these groups could backfire -- leading to closer scrutiny of the sources of funding for Democratic attack ads. Labor unions are spending millions to tar Republican candidates -- and they take in far more foreign cash than the Chamber. If the GOP takes control of Congress, investigations into how organized labor funds its political efforts could be forthcoming. - Washington Post

CVS Pharmacy Lets Woman have Asthma Attack and watches

A New Jersey woman suffering an asthma attack was denied an inhaler at a pharmacy

because she was $1.99 short, MyFoxNY.com reported.

Katherine O’Connor and her boyfriend were walking home from McDonald’s in Garwood, N.J., Thursday morning when she had the asthma attack, but she did not have her inhaler with her. She went to a nearby CVS, hoping to get a refill on her inhaler prescription.

But, O’Connor was denied the refill because she did not have enough money to pay for the prescription. The medicine cost just over $21, and the couple was short $1.99.

"I had exactly a $20 bill. It came to $21 and change," said O’Connor’s boyfriend, Jack Brown. "I offered him my cell phone, my wallet. I said, ‘I live right around the corner.’ I come in here all the time."

Brown begged the pharmacist to give his girlfriend the inhaler, as she was on the floor wheezing, but the pharmacist would not give in, he said.

Brown called a friend who is a paramedic, who showed up immediately and treated O’Connor.
When questioned about the incident, a store manager had “no comment.”

“The well-being of our customers is our highest priority and we are looking into this matter,” said a statement from CVS corporate offices. - FOX News Story

I Want Your Money - Movie Trailer

DNC Continues Attack on GOP - Another Watergate?

Karl Rove claims that contributions to his organizations Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads have surged since Democrats attacked him for failing to disclose the group's donors. When I asked Tim Kaine about that this morning on "GMA" he said Rove may be right.

“That should trouble folks. And look the polling I’ve seen suggests the American public cares deeply about this,” the DNC chairman told me. “The prospect of shadowy groups being able to put money in secretly to buy elections, to bypass the rules that the candidates have to follow in terms of disclosing their donors, should worry everybody.”

Kaine also stood by his claim that failure to disclose these donations smacks of Watergate – despite offering no evidence that any laws have been broken.

“Watergate was a scandal that involved a number of things including campaign financing that was being done with dollars bills in sacks handed over to the committee to reelect the president,” he said.

“And the Republicans have made, I believe, a concerted effort to divert as much campaign funding as they can into non-reporting entities aided by the Supreme Court decision, the Citizens United, so the American public will not know who is funding the campaign,” he added. - ABC News Story

Problem with this whole attack, is that the Democrats including Obama did the exact same thing in every election in the last decade. The only difference from then, is now the GOP has not only caught up to them, they have surpassed them.

Sen. Candidate Hits nail on head about Financial Collapse

Government action, beginning with federal legislation passed 33 years ago to help low-income people buy homes, was the cause of the economic collapse, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson said Wednesday.

Johnson told Journal Sentinel reporters and editors, as well as its Reader Advisory Committee, that the seeds of the collapse began in 1977 with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act.

"What caused this economic downturn, collapse, was pretty much government action," Johnson said. "It wasn't helped by the big banks. I always refer to it as caused by Washington, propelled by big banks and paid for by the American public."

Decades after its passage, the federal law that helped low-income and disadvantaged people get loans to buy their own homes continues to be hotly debated. The federal law applied only to depository institutions, not private, unregulated mortgage lenders.

In Johnson's view, the law "started forcing banks to make loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back . . . "

Asked if the banks were forced to lend to people who couldn't afford it, Johnson said: "They threatened to bring the Department of Justice in to, I guess, to prosecute banks that would be accused of redlining. Not making loans to people in certain areas."

Johnson said the law made it easy for banks to lend money.

"We'll have Fannie (Mae) and Freddie (Mac) guarantee those things so you can sell those things on the open market," Johnson said. "What does that do to a bank? First of all, if I don't make those loans, I might have Department of Justice action taken against me. But if I make the loan, I can get all of the origination fees on it, I can make a lot of money and, by the way, I don't have to incur any of the risk. The last thing you want to do when somebody is trying to make a loan is remove the risk of making the loan. You don't throw out all constraints. . . . So what that did, that was the cause of the housing bubble." - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel