In an attempt to both calm and rally supporters in the face of tightening polls, the Obama campaign released a video on Wednesday featuring campaign manager Jim Messina offering his “state of the race.”
In the nearly five-minute video, Messina comments: “Don’t believe the polls? You don’t need to. Early voting has started across the country so we have actual results to report. And those results show clearly the president will win re-election if we do what we need to do.”
He then runs through a series of battleground states, including Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, Florida and North Carolina, picking out positive information on early voting statistics and the number of field offices the campaign has compared to Mitt Romney’s.
In all-important Ohio, Messina claims that, “Early vote turnout in Obama ’08 precincts is higher than in GOP precincts.”
At one point, Messina claims that 21 percent of Democrats who have already voted in Colorado are “sporadic voters” – those who did not turn out for the midterm – compared to 15 percent of Republican voters. “This is a big deal,” Messina says. “We are doing a better job than Republicans of turning out non-midterm voters.”
Concludes Messina: “We’re ahead of where we were against John McCain at this point in 2008, and more importantly, we’re ahead of Mitt Romney.”
In an email, Romney campaign political director Rich Beeson retorts: "While the race is breaking to the advantage of Governor Romney, the Obama campaign continues with their desperate and flailing spin in an attempt to explain why suddenly states that were never considered in play are up for grabs. President Obama is playing defense in states that were once considered safely in his column."
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