NASHUA, N.H. — President Barack Obama arrived here Saturday with a message for the people in charge of the smallest swing state’s electoral votes: He needs them, too.
Four votes out of 270 might not seem like a lot, but Obama doesn’t have much margin for error.
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Polls show the president and Mitt Romney essentially tied in national polls with both uncertain about which way each of the seven or eight remaining battlegrounds will go. The ongoing threat of the Sandy storm front disrupting campaign appearances also adds a dramatic dimension to the last 10 days of the race.
“These four electoral votes right here could make the difference,” Obama warned the small crowd gathered at a Teamsters Hall, his first stop in the state. “We don’t know how this thing is going to play out.”
Obama kept up that argument at the Elm Street Middle School Saturday afternoon here, launching into a stump speech that’s become familiar from recent days.
He dropped his cutting mentions of “Romnesia” for a focus on recalling the spirit of 2008. And he didn’t leave the stage to “We Take Care of Our Own,” the Bruce Springsteen song that’s finished nearly every appearance he’s made during his reelection campaign. Instead, it was “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” the anthem of the 2008 campaign that played as he rushed into the crowd to shake hands.
Obama indicated Saturday that he’ll be making his closing case on the idea of trust — and a record he’s built up to earn it, an “entirely different view of what this country’s about,” and an attempt even in these last days to still rekindle some of the hope he talked about four years ago.
“New Hampshire, I still believe in you, I need you to keep believing in me,” Obama said as he wrapped up his remarks.
Obama won the state by a nearly 10 point margin in 2008, but polls show a tight race this year. Romney served four years as governor next door in Massachusetts, owns a vacation home here and relied on the state as the key to his primary campaign.
Obama localized an attack on the Republican nominee’s record as governor of Massachusetts. Romney, he said, promised to lower middle class taxes when he was running in 2002, and instead raised fees — which the president said were the equivalent of a middle class tax hike.
“This is a guy who has a track record of saying one thing and doing something else,” Obama said.
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Romney spokesman Ryan Williams quickly shot back at the attack.
“Today’s desperate attacks are laughable coming from a President whose only plan for a second term is to recycle the failed policies of the last four years while raising taxes by $2 trillion. As governor, Mitt Romney worked with Democrats to close a $3 billion deficit, balance four budgets while cutting taxes 19 times, create tens of thousands of new jobs, and lower the Massachusetts unemployment rate to 4.7%,” Williams said in a statement. “President Obama is the only candidate in this race who has raised taxes on America’s middle class.”
On the flight here aboard Air Force One, Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki had questioned whether the Romney campaign should be “throwing stones from their glass house.”
Obama then made the subtle link to George W. Bush, whose name went unmentioned in the attack on Romney.
“He’s not talking about ‘big change,’” Obama said, knocking the phrase Romney’s been using on the stump in recent days. “All he’s offering is a big rerun of the same policies that created so much hardship for so many Americans.”
Obama continued the attack he and his campaign have been making since Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said Tuesday that a pregnancy resulting from rape was the intention of god.
“We know we’re better off when politicians in Washington aren’t allowed to make decisions about health care that women are perfectly capable of making themselves,” Obama said.
That theme came up throughout the visit: When Obama at the Teamsters hall omitted to mention women’s rights in a litany of reasons to be worried about a Romney administration, a person in the crowd shouted it out and he quickly added it in.
And at the rally, that was the crux of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s warm-up speech.
“It’s clear that women of New Hampshire can’t trust Mitt Romney,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. “We’ll keep our rights, we’ll keep our health care and we’ll keep our president.”
Afterward, as Obama was still working the crowd, Shaheen laid out the stakes.
“If Mitt Romney is going to win any battleground state, it ought to be New Hampshire—because he has a home here, because he was governor in Massachusetts, Shaheen told POLITICO. “And the fact that the president is still beating him here I think is a very good and important sign: it shows that people understand the choices.”
Shaheen, who served as governor before being elected to the Senate, said the canvassing and field operation is “the best I’ve ever seen in New Hampshire.”
“I was here in 2000, when New Hampshire’s four votes would have made the election for Al Gore,” she said. “So that’s why we’re not taking anything for granted.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82966_Page2.html#ixzz2AXezHavQ
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