Last week, President Barack Obama spent two days on a 10-city tour of Ohio and Pennsylvania to kick off his national campaign bus tour. Bus tours have become a staple of national campaigning to connect candidates with the voters. The candidates are able to identify with the voters on a grassroots level, and this strategy can inspire them to vote.
With four months left before the presidential election, some political experts have suggested that the Obama team and campaign are struggling to find the best way to present the president’s vision. But the president is still giving his message to cheering crowds on this tour as they embrace the opportunity to see the president.
“When ordinary Americans decide what’s right, they can’t be stopped,” Obama said as a cheering crowd drowned him out. In Maumee, Ohio, Obama received sustained applause and cheers as he promised his health care law was “here to stay.”
Fundamentally, the president and Mitt Romney have different contrasting visions for America, and the most recent Quinnipiac University polls have Obama holding a nine percentage point lead over Romney in Ohio and a six-point lead in Pennsylvania. Obama won both states four years ago, but the Republicans have campaigned hard and they raised more money than the Democrats in June.
The title of this tour is “Betting on America,” and the president is praising his own economic policies and acknowledging his success rescuing U.S. automakers. The tour took the president through northern Ohio and western Pennsylvania and highlighted his commitment to investing in American workers and creating jobs here at home. In many of these cities, the president appealed to voters in areas with many union workers. In both states the unemployment rate is 7.3 percent, and better than the national rate.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that June’s unemployment rate remained flat at 8.2 percent, with 80,000 new jobs created. The report indicates that the trend is still positive, but many political experts expect more jobs to be created in the next few months.
Nevertheless, in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the president talked about his work over the last three years to get our economy on track and about growing our economy from the middle out. Obama is rebuilding an economy meant to last, restoring middle-class security by investing in education, energy, innovation, rebuilding infrastructure and reforming the tax code. The president wants all Americans to play by the same rules, from Wall Street to Main Street, with everyone paying their fair share.
The president’s vision stands in stark contrast to Romney’s vision; he believes that the economy should be built from the top down. Romney’s economic plan creates tax cuts for the wealthy, guts investment in education and encourages outsourcing. According to independent economists, Romney’s economic plan would fail and make our economy worse.
The Obama campaign has accused Romney of outsourcing jobs to China when he ran the private equity firm Bain Capital. “Mitt Romney’s companies were pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs to low-wage countries. He supports companies that ship jobs overseas,” says an Obama ad airing in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states.
Obama and his administration have filed an unfair trade complaint against China with the World Trade Organization. This is the seventh such action taken, and the Obama administration believes the situation can improve with continuous pressure on China.
Obama is betting on America, and it makes sense to support a candidate who wants everyone to play by the rules, for everyone to get a fair chance. It is time to invest in America and move forward.