MORNING MESSAGE: Obama, Yes. And Win the House Too.
OurFuture.org's Roger Hickey: "President Obama is enjoying a post-convention bump in job approval (Gallup says 7 percentage points - from 45 to 52 percent) after the negative and divisive Republican convention, followed by the energetic populism of the Democrats in Charlotte. With large leads among women and people of color, and the stark contrast on economic issues building movement toward Obama even among white males in key states, the prospects for Obama winning a second term are starting to look pretty good. But what about the House? Prospects for Dems keeping the Senate are looking better, but if the House of Representatives stays in Republican hands, even if President Obama is re-elected his second term will be crippled. "
Got Bounce?
Obama convention bounce continues to grow [McClatchy]: "President Barack Obama's post-convention "bounce" continued to grow Saturday, as new polls showed him widening a lead over Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Obama's lead over Romney among registered voters grew to 49 percent-45 percent in Gallup's tracking poll. The 49 percent for Obama was his highest point in the survey since late April. It represented an increase of 1 point since Friday and a 5-point swing from Romney's 47 percent-46 percent lead in the Gallup survey just before the Republican convention began. The poll combines small samples taken each night to present a seven-day average. Since three of the nights of the survey period preceded the Democratic convention, Obama's lead in the survey is likely to grow further."
Obama slips ahead of Romney in key polls. More than a bounce? [Christian Science Monitor]: "Obama is inching ahead in the polls – apparently building on a post-convention “bounce” that eluded Romney a week earlier. Weekend polls where Obama is gaining include Gallup, Reuters/Ipsos, and Rasmussen. The differences between the two candidates are small here – single digits – but the trend at this point is in Obama’s direction. 'The question now is not whether Mr. Obama will get a bounce in the polls, but how substantial it will be,' writes statistician and poll watcher Nate Silver on his New York Times FiveThirtyEight blog. 'Some of the data, in fact, suggests that the conventions may have changed the composition of the race, making Mr. Obama a reasonably clear favorite as we enter the stretch run of the campaign.'"
Markos says the Romney campaign has already admitted defeat: "They can read the polling too. …At their convention, Obama campaign officials were leaking news to certain reporters that their internals were showing Obama up nine points in their daily trackers. It didn't broad attention because 1) it seemed a bit crazy, and 2) it doesn't fit the narrative that this is a close race. Now, we're hearing that conservatives are also seeing Obama Ohio leads in the 'high single digits'."
Romney's Health Care Reform … Reform
Romney backs away from healthcare pledge [Financial Times]: "Mitt Romney has said he would keep the most popular parts of Barack Obama's signature healthcare reforms if elected president, performing an abrupt about-turn on his earlier campaign promise to repeal the whole law. His comments will reignite suspicions that the Republican presidential candidate is a politician of expediency and likely anger the party’s conservative base, which sees 'Obamacare' as a symbol of the big government approach it wants to scrap."
Juan Cole says to Romney/Ryan, "You don't get to say that!": "After campaigning for months on repealing Obamacare, you suddenly say you want to keep 'parts' of it, including preventing insurance companies from declining to cover people for pre-existing conditions. The way Obamacare allows that provision, however, is to make all the healthy young people get insurance or face a fine, thus increasing the pool size so as to allow those with known health conditions to also join the pool without bankrupting the companies. I mean, this is flip-flopping on an epic scale. First you invented Obamacare in Massachusetts, then you repudiated it as a national program, now you are embracing the key 'parts' of it while pledging to repeal it! You don’t get to say that!"
Strategic Strikes
With No Contract Deal by Deadline in Chicago, Teachers Will Strike [NY Times]: "Union leaders for this city’s public schoolteachers said that they would strike on Monday morning after negotiations ended late Sunday with no contract agreement between the union and the nation’s third largest school system, which have been locked for months in a dispute over wages, job security and teacher evaluations. Coming as the school year had barely begun for many, the impasse and looming strike were expected to affect hundreds of thousands of families here, some of whom had spent the weekend scrambling to rearrange work schedules, find alternative programs and hire baby sitters if school was out for some time. Chicago Public Schools officials, visibly frustrated after talks broke off late Sunday night, expressed concern for the estimated 350,000 students the strike could affect."
Alternet's Ari Paul says Chicago teachers are standing up to the 1 percent and fighting for students: "Mainstream media have focused on the economic issues, the union’s rejection of 2-percent raises and merit pay, as the meager raises would be offset by cuts to healthcare benefit concessions. But what makes this possible work stoppage different--the first big-city teachers strike since a 16-day walk-out in Detroit in 2006--is that the union is making this a fight in defense of parents and students. 'It’s central to who they are,' said Steven Ashby, a professor at the Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois-Chicago who has been consulting for the union. 'Fighting for smaller class sizes, a social worker in every school, a nurse in every school, pretty much what all the suburban schools have.'"
CNN's Chris Rhomberg says America needs more strikes, like the Chicago teachers' strike: "The decline of unionization has contributed to the rise of economic inequality in the U.S. over the past several decades. More than that, it also signals a historic de-democratization of the institutions that traditionally served to hold corporations accountable and govern our working life, from the scope of collective bargaining on the job to the protection for workers' rights under the law. 'This is a difficult decision for all of us to make,' said union President Karen Lewis about the Chicago teachers' call for a strike. Work stoppages involve real sacrifices, not least of all from the striking workers. For the sake of our economic and political future, however, America would be better off if we had more strikes."
It's A Gas, Gas, Gas
Obama’s ‘Gone to Great Lengths’ to Keep Gas Prices High, Ryan Says [ABC News]: "Paul Ryan said Saturday the president has gone to “great lengths” to make gas more expensive in this country. The vice presidential candidate visited Google headquarters in Montainview to hold a Google+ Hangout where he took questions from supporters at campaign offices all over the country, including a question from a senior citizen in Florida named Ruth. She asked him how he was going to 'improve the situation' of sky high gas prices. 'This is not just something that squeezes family budgets, it squeezes businesses,” Ryan answered. 'It also gives us a bad foreign policy in that we are so dependent on other countries for our oil imports, it’s the biggest part of our trade deficit and so what’s frustrating about the Obama administration’s policies are they’ve gone to great lengths to make oil and gas more expensive.'"
Juan Cole tells Romney/Ryan "You don't get to say that" either: "You and your running mate are blaming Barack Obama for high gasoline prices. But you demand a stricter blockade on Iranian petroleum! Given that the present blockade has taken perhaps a million barrels a day off the market at a time of increasing demand in Asia, you don’t get to slam President Obama for causing high gasoline prices. Prices, as your MBA courses might have informed you, Mr. Romney, are based on supply and demand. If you reduce Iran supply, and demand stays the same or rises, then prices will go up. Since you want to tighten the blockade, you don’t get to say that!"
Four reasons gas prices are about to fall fast [CS Monitor]: "All of these factors point to the strong probability that gasoline prices will fall regardless of any government action between now and the election. Of course there are always factors that could trump these. More hurricanes that keep capacity offline, an outbreak of conflict with Iran, and the terrible accident at Venezuela’s 645,000 barrel-per-day Amuay refining complex are all factors that would work to increase prices. But taking everything into account, the safe bet seems to be that gasoline prices will fall just as they normally do in the fall. This does not even take into account the likelihood that the Obama Administration will release more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve."
