WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney face off in their second high-stakes debate Tuesday night at a crucial juncture in the presidential campaign with national polls showing the race deadlocked just three weeks before Election Day.
The pressure is
on Obama who has vowed to put up more of a fight in an effort to
overcome his lackluster, momentum-stalling performance in the
candidates’ first debate on Oct. 3
Romney will likewise need to
turn in a repeat of his strong showing in the initial
face-to-face-confrontation, a performance which propelled him into a
virtual tie in nationwide polling.
Obama still hangs on to small
leads in many of the nine key swing states that likely will determine
which man occupies the White House on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.
The
so-called battleground states — those that do not reliably vote either
Republican or Democratic — take on outsized importance in the U.S.
system where the president is chosen not by the nationwide popular vote
but in state-by-state contests.
The Tuesday debate at Hofstra
University in Hempstead, New York, offers both candidates their best
chance for a breakout moment with time running out in what promises to
be one of the closest presidential contests in recent U.S. history.
The
candidates will take questions on domestic and foreign policy from an
audience of about 80 of the coveted uncommitted voters whom both
campaigns are so furiously courting. The town hall-style format makes it
especially tricky for Obama to strike the right balance in coming on
strong against Romney without turning off the audience — and tens of
millions of television viewers — by going too negative.
The
importance attached to this year’s debates is reflected in the
significant chunks of time that both candidates have spent preparing:
Obama, faulted for being ill-prepared for the first faceoff with Romney,
largely dropped out of sight for the last three days to attend “debate
camp” at a resort in Williamsburg, Virginia. And Romney has devoted big
blocks of time to rehearsals for the last several days as well.
The
campaign juggernaut has raced ahead nonetheless. Both sides have
unfurled new ads, hustled at the grassroots level to lock in every
possible voter, dispatched surrogates to rev up enthusiasm and kept the
running mates busy raising cash and campaigning in the most hotly
contested states.
Obama’s campaign turned to former President Bill
Clinton on Tuesday to make the case against what it says is Romney’s $5
trillion tax cut. Clinton appears in a Web video for the campaign,
picking apart Romney’s tax plan piece by piece, saying his approach
“hasn’t worked before and it won’t work this time.”
The
president’s campaign says Romney hid from his tax proposal during the
first debate, and pledged Obama would be more aggressive in calling out
his rivals shifts on that and other issues this time around. Clinton,
who has been praised by Democrats for explaining Obama’s economic
arguments more clearly than the president himself, appeared to be laying
the groundwork in the video released hours before the second face-off.
Obama’s
campaign, buoyed by recent encouraging news, also released a new
battleground state ad Monday in which ordinary Americans talk about
signs of economic progress.
“Stick with this guy,” one man urges.
Romney’s
running mate Paul Ryan played counterpoint, making the case in Ohio and
Wisconsin that while Obama had inherited a tough economic situation,
the president’s policies had only made things worse.
After a
dismal stretch where the unemployment rate remained above 8 percent
across Obama’s term, the number fell to 7.8 percent in the latest report
for September. That is coupled with an improving housing market,
increasing consumer confidence and growing numbers of Americans who tell
polling organizations that they believe the United States is headed in
the right direction.
While the Obama campaign acknowledges there
is a good distance still to travel in the recovery from the Great
Recession and near financial meltdown in the final months of the George
W. Bush presidency, the president now has some positive economic news
with which to counter Romney’s insistence that he is the stronger
candidate, given his long history in the world of private equity.
With
early voting already under way in dozens of states, including such
battlegrounds as Ohio and Iowa, the candidates will have little time to
recover from any missteps in the debate. Through Monday, either absentee
or in-person early voting had begun in 43 of the 50 states.
In an
in-your-face move, the Republicans parked their “Commit to Mitt Early
Vote Express Tour Bus” in Williamsburg, where Obama was rehearsing for
the debate, to encourage Virginians to cast early ballots for the
Republican ticket.
First lady Michelle Obama counted herself among
those who have already voted. Mrs. Obama dropped her Illinois absentee
ballot in the mail on Monday to highlight the convenience of getting
voting out of the way ahead of Election Day.
“Today! I voted for my husband. Yes!” she enthused before college students at a rally in Delaware, Ohio. “It felt so good.”
The president plans to cast an in-person ballot in Chicago on Oct. 25 — making history as the first incumbent to vote early.
Obama
issued a fundraising appeal via email Monday in which he told
supporters: “Listen, this race is tied” and said the outcome would
determine the country’s future for decades.
“That’s what I’ll be fighting for up on that stage tomorrow night — but I can’t do it alone,” he added.
Romney’s
campaign released its latest fundraising report, showing the
Republicans raised more than $170 million in September, slightly behind
Obama’s $181 million haul for the month.
There’s been no letup in
the pace of activity in the nine battleground states likely to decide
the election. Ryan is holding rallies Tuesday in Virginia. Vice
President Joe Biden had to postpone a two-day campaign swing through
Nevada to attend Tuesday’s funeral for former Sen. Arlen Specter in
Pennsylvania. The two served together in the Senate for nearly two
decades. Michelle Obama campaigns in North Carolina on Tuesday.
Romney is hoping to keep his momentum going with another solid debate performance Tuesday night.
“The
debate was huge and we’ve seen our numbers move all across the
country,” the candidate’s wife Ann Romney told Philadelphia radio
station WPHT.
Now Obama is looking for the same kind of boost from a comeback performance.
“The
president is his own harshest critic and he knows that Mitt Romney had a
better debate,” said campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki. She described
the president as “calm and energized and just looking forward to
getting to New York” for the debate.
In the first debate, Obama
seemed caught unawares and unprepared to respond to Romney’s sudden
shift to more moderate positions from the hardline policies he had
advocated during the fight for the Republican nomination.
In a new
Web video released Monday, the Obama campaign said Romney had not
undergone an October conversion to more middle-of-the-road positions but
was trying “to pull the wool over voters’ eyes before Election Day.”
The
candidates will engage in a final debate next Monday in Boca Raton,
Florida, where the emphasis will be on U.S. foreign policy.
