President Barack Obama walks past debris on the sidewalks as he tours the Bridgewood neighborhood in LaPlace, La., in the Saint John the Baptist Parish, with local officials to survey the ongoing response and recovery efforts to Hurricane Isaac, Monday, Sept. 3, 2012. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Dems open convention playing defense of Obama
President Barack Obama walks past debris on the sidewalks as he tours the Bridgewood neighborhood in LaPlace, La., in the Saint John the Baptist Parish, with local officials to survey the ongoing response and recovery efforts to Hurricane Isaac, Monday, Sept. 3, 2012. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
By CALVIN WOODWARD
Associated Press /
September 4, 2012
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In a USA Today interview, Obama accused Republicans of building their campaign around a ‘‘fictional Barack Obama’’ by wholly misrepresenting his positions and words. He singled out Romney’s claim, widely debunked, that the Obama administration stripped a work requirement out of federal welfare laws.
The Republican convention last week heard testimonials from a colleague of Romney at Bain Capital and from the founder of Staples, the office supply chain that grew from the private-equity firm’s investments. Democrats, focused on enterprises that closed or moved overseas after Romney’s firm got involved, are giving speaking time to workers from Bain-controlled companies who will tell the other side of the story.
Obama came out with a campaign commercial asserting that, under Romney, ‘‘a middle-class family will pay an average of up to $2,000 more a year in taxes, while at the same time giving multimillionaires like himself a $250,000 tax cut.’’ Aides said it would be seen in Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia, the battleground states where the White House race is likely to be decided.
The president and aides have acknowledged for weeks that they and the groups supporting them are likely to be outspent by Romney, and recent figures say that has been the case in television advertising in the battleground states for much of the past two months.
Democrats chose North Carolina for their convention to demonstrate their determination to contest it in the fall campaign. Obama carried North Carolina by 14,000 votes in 2008, but faces a tough challenge this time given statewide unemployment of 9.6 percent, higher than the vexing national rate of 8.3 percent.
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Woodward reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Ben Feller in LaPlace, La., Philip Elliott in Detroit, Kasie Hunt in Wolfeboro, N.H., and Michael Biesecker, Mitch Weiss and Beth Fouhy in North Carolina contributed to this report.
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