NEWS,06.11.2012

What to watch for on US election night

As Americans troop to the polls to decide between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, here's a guide to what to watch for on election night:

Polls close:

The continental United States covers four times zones from east to west. The first polling stations close at 19:00 Eastern Time (00:00 GMT) in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. Polls close in California and several other western states at 23:00 Eastern Time (04:00 GMT). Everyone will be watching for early results in the battleground state of Virginia as a potential bellwether of the night ahead.At 19:30 pm Eastern Time (00:30 GMT) polls close in North Carolina and all-important Ohio. A win for Romney in North Carolina, one of the more conservative swing states, would keep his hopes alive. But no Republican has won the White House without taking Ohio, and a loss there would put Romney in a massive hole.Others will start to fall into place after 20:00 Eastern Time (01:00 GMT), when the most populous swing state, Florida, closes along with most eastern states. An Obama win in Florida would be monumental for his re-election hopes, as polls have shown the Sunshine State leaning to Romney in recent weeks.West Coast states generally close three hours later.

Results:

This year, the nation's broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC, plus cable giants CNN and FOX, are conducting exit polls of some 25 000 voters, mainly in key states. Those figures, together with telephone polls and vote counts from precincts, will be used in formulating state predictions, which are made only after polls close.Partial results will be posted by some states, and networks will show such results ahead of predicting the state's winner.

Key states:

A candidate must win 270 of 538 electoral votes to clinch the White House. Eleven states, collectively representing a jackpot of 146 electoral votes, are up for grabs, according to RealClearPolitics. As a measure of how tight the race is this year, Obama won every one of these states in 2008. Of the 11, Obama's campaign says traditional Democrat states Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are in his column. But Republicans have made late campaign moves there.

The Obama scenario:

Based on recent poll averages, Obama is a lock in 18 states totalling 201 electoral votes. He has notable leads in Michigan (16 electoral votes) Pennsylvania (20) and Wisconsin (10). If Obama holds those states, he needs just Ohio (18) and Iowa (6) to win re-election. Or just Florida (29).Look for Virginia (13) and North Carolina (15) as key early tests; if Obama wins one of them, it'll be a long night for Romney.

The Romney scenario:

The challenger's path to victory is narrower. He is assured 24 states representing 191 electoral votes, leaving him 79 short. If Obama holds Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Romney must win two of the three biggest toss-ups - Florida, Ohio and Virginia - as well as most of the other battlegrounds.Look for New Hampshire (4) as a key early test; it's small, but potentially indicative of how the night may turn for Romney.

Congress:

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs, as are 33 seats in the Senate. Republicans are expected to hold the House. The Democrats' 53-47 majority in the Senate is more tenuous. A race to watch is the Massachusetts battle between Republican incumbent Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren. Other key Senate contests are in Indiana, Missouri and Virginia.

Early voting:

More than 30% of Americans are expected to vote before Tuesday - either absentee or in person.

Recount?

Each state has its own recount rules. In the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore, some Florida counties launched recounts while others did not. With the prospect of very close results in some states, phalanxes of lawyers on each side are prepared to bring legal action, raising the potential for final result delays.

The Ohio question:

A nightmare scenario may be brewing in crucial Ohio, where authorities sent absentee ballot applications to every voter. People who applied for such ballots but then decide to vote in person will be required to cast provisional ballots that are sealed until it can be proven that they haven't already voted.Some 200 000 provisional ballots may be cast, and state law does not allow them to be opened until 17 November.Complicating the count are mail-in ballots, which can arrive as late as November 16 so long as they are post-marked by 5 November.And if the results are within 0.5 percentage points, an automatic recount of all ballots is triggered.

US: Voters now have centre stage

 

President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have closed out their hard-fought and deeply negative battle for the White House, yielding centre stage to voters who face a stark choice on Election Day between fundamentally different visions for the country's future.After months of campaigning and billions of dollars spent in the battle for leadership of the world's most powerful country, Obama and Romney were in a virtual nationwide tie ahead of Tuesday's election, an overt symptom of the vast partisan divide separating Americans in the early years of the 21st century.Obama appeared to have a slight edge, however, in some of the key swing states such as Ohio that do not vote reliably Democratic or Republican. That gives him an easier path to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
"I feel optimistic but only cautiously optimistic," Obama said on "The Steve Harvey Morning Show." ''Because until people actually show up at the polls and cast their ballot, the rest of this stuff is all just speculation."

Different American versions

Romney also reached out on Ohio drive-time radio, where he said told voters to remember as they go to the polls that the country is hurting financially under Obama's policies. "If it comes down to economics and jobs, this is an election I should win," Romney told Cleveland station WTAM.Under the US system, the winner of the presidential election is not determined by the nationwide popular vote but in state-by-state contests. The candidate who wins a state - with Maine and Nebraska the exceptions - is awarded all of that state's electoral votes, which are apportioned based on representation in Congress.Both sides cast the Election Day choice as one with far-reaching repercussions for a nation still recovering from the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression and at odds over how big a role government should play in solving the country's problems."It's a choice between two different visions for America," Obama declared Monday in Madison, Wisconsin, asking voters to let him complete work on the economic turnaround that began in his first term. "It's a choice between returning to the top-down policies that crashed our economy, or a future that's built on providing opportunity to everybody and growing a strong middle class."Romney argued that Obama had his chance and blew it."The president thinks more government is the answer," he said in Sanford, Florida. "No, Mr. President, more jobs, that's the answer for America."

Jobs on the line

It wasn't just the presidency at stake Tuesday: All 435 seats in the House of Representatives, a third of the 100 Senate seats, and 11 governorships were on the line, along with state ballot proposals on topics ranging from gay marriage to legalising marijuana. Democrats were expected to maintain their majority in the Senate, with Republicans doing likewise in the House, raising the prospect of continued partisan wrangling no matter who might be president.Obama's final campaign rally, Monday night in Des Moines, Iowa, was filled with nostalgia as he returned to the state which launched him on the road to the White House in 2008 with a victory in its lead-off caucuses over Hillary Rodham Clinton, now his secretaryof state. A single tear streamed down Obama's face during his remarks, though it was hard to tell whether it was from emotion or the bitter cold.

Changing times

There has been little of the euphoria that propelled Obama to the White House four years ago, America's first black president promising hope and renovation to a nation weighed down by war and a near financial meltdown.The economy has proven a huge drag on Obama's candidacy as he fought to turn it around after the deepest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, a downturn that was well under way when he replaced George W Bush in the White House on 20 January 2009.Unable to bridge America's fierce partisan divide, especially on taxes and debt, Obama was thwarted in his efforts to pass aggressive plans for jobs creation and deficit reduction.He ended the war in Iraq and the US intelligence and military tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden, but a new host of Middle East crises - especially the war in Syria and the deadly attack on the US Consulate in Libya - shadowed the last months of the campaign.Obama, making his last run for office at the still-young age of 51, urged voters in Iowa to help him finish what they started four years ago. The president credits his auto-industry bailout, stimulus plan and other policies for ending the recession. He points to recent positive economic reports and a slow but steady drop in the unemployment rate.
"I've come back to Iowa one more time to ask for your vote," Obama told 20 000 supporters at the outdoor rally."This is where our movement for change began."

Romney presidency

Romney, 65, assailed Obama's economic policies amid the recession, and promised to bring change that he asserted Obama had only talked about."Talk is cheap, but a record is real," Romney said before a crowd of about 10,000 in New Hampshire on Monday.If elected, Romney would be the first Mormon US president. At times, the former Massachusetts governor has struggled to connect with the protestant evangelicals who are a core constituency of the Republican Party, especially because of his shifting positions on some social issues such as abortion.Romney, the ultra-wealthy founder of a private equity firm, worked doggedly to keep the race instead focused on the economy, and polls suggest that he succeeded in persuading many Americans he has the right credentials to steer America to better times. His selection of the young Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate put Romney squarely on the side of the conservative Tea Party movement that has been a driving force of the Republican Party in recent years.

Debt, taxes

Obama and Romney have spent months highlighting their sharp divisions over the role of government in Americans' lives, in bringing down the stubbornly high unemployment rate, reducing the $1 trillion-plus federal budget deficit and reducing a national debt that has crept above $16 trillion.Obama insists there is no way reduce the staggering debt and safeguard crucial social programmes without asking the wealthy to pay their "fair share" in taxes. Romney, who claims his successful business background gives him the expertise to manage the economy, favours lowering taxes and easing regulations on businesses, saying this would spur job growth.The final Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll, released on Monday, showed Obama with support from 50% of likely voters to 47% for Romney. The poll had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.More than 30 million absentee or early ballots have already been cast, including in excess of 3 million in Florida.

Battleground states

In surveys of the battleground states, Obama held small advantages in Nevada, Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin - enough to deliver a second term if they held up, but not so significant that they could withstand an Election Day surge by Romney supporters. Romney appears to be performing slightly better than Obama or has pulled even in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida.The biggest focus has been on Ohio, an industrial state that has gone with the winner of the last 12 presidential elections, which both candidates visited on Monday. No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio.Both campaigns say the winner will be determined by which campaign is better at getting its supporters to the polls. The president needs the overwhelming support of blacks and Hispanics to counter Romney's big lead among white males."I encourage you to stand in line as long as you have to," Vice President Joe Biden told television cameras at a polling place in his home state of Delaware, where he and his wife were among the first voters.Election Day turnout was heavy in several storm-ravaged areas in New York and New Jersey, with many voters expressing relief and even elation at being able to vote at all, considering the devastation from Superstorm Sandy.

Obama, Tearful, Finishes Campaign In Iowa, Where It Started

 

As sentimentality goes, President Barack Obama hosting the last campaign event of his political career in Des Moines, Iowa, is hard to top. The Hawkeye State launched the then-junior senator from Illinois to national prominence. And there is a movie script-like quality to having such a historic political trajectory emerge out of the frosty cornfields. Speaking just steps from his 2008 caucus headquarters on Monday evening, it seemed at times as if the magic hadn't faded. "I came back to ask you to help us finish what we started because this is where our movement for change began," Obama declared. "To all of you who’ve lived and breathed the hard work of change: I want to thank you. You took this campaign and made it your own ... starting a movement that spread across the country."When the cynics said we couldn't, you said yes we can. You said yes we can and we did. Against all odds, we did," he said.Wiping the occasional tear from his eye, and looking over a crowd of 20,000, Obama concluded with the same story that he told on the last day of his '08 campaign: about the origins of his signature "fired-up-ready-to-go" chant. The arc of his first term in office was seemingly complete. But if anything, the late night rally in Des Moines underscored how different Obama's first and second White House runs have been. For all its poignant undertones, Monday night marked the end of a campaign that had little of the emotional appeal of four years ago. There was no sweeping "hope" narrative, no history-making proposition, no shadows of the Bush years to escape. Instead there was a business-like approach to a daunting task: how to re-elect a president with a slate of accomplishments, but with reduced popularity, a poor economy and no novelty. "The biggest difference between 2008 and 2012 is that the sense of the mission changed," said one Obama campaign adviser who, like nearly everyone, would discuss the campaign's inner workings only on condition of anonymity. "In 2008, there was the sense of optimism and hope around the mission of changing the world. In 2012, the mission is as much the clear-eyed recognition of how important stopping the other side is. It is a grimmer, more realistic sense of mission."How Obama's aides traversed this path is a story that will be told in greater detail in the election post-mortems. But months of conversations and notes kept in documents and notepads tells part of the story. And it shows a team that, while lacking the heartstrings of 2008, stayed true to other guiding principles: data-driven decision-making and solid execution. "There has always been a laser-like focus on the part of the campaign on how to get where they need to be," explained Hari Sevugan, who served as a spokesman for the 2008 campaign. "It was about delegates in 2008 and pathways to 270 Electoral College votes in 2012. "The formula, then and now, was always inspiration and energy at 30,000 feet and a no-nonsense attitude toward numbers and mechanics on the ground."It started in the spring of 2011, when top advisers to the president conducted a series of focus groups to get a clear sense of what was in store. What they found was sobering. Voters were gloomy about their current situation. Worse, they assumed their kids would inherit poorer lots than their own. They didn't all blame the president. In fact, they still liked him. But they had to be convinced of two things: That their lives could get better and that Obama was the person who could affect that. To accomplish those two tasks, the president's aides made a series of decisions. The first was to chart specific maps to 270 electoral votes. The second was to figure how best to operate within the boundaries of that map. The third was to unearth ways to make their campaign cash go further than their opponent's. In December 2011, campaign manager Jim Messina unveiled five pathways to victory during a briefing with a group of reporters. Virtually every state he identified as critical has maintained that distinction, with the exception of Arizona (which, even then, was labeled a longshot). There were some miscalculations. Messina assumed that New Hampshire and Wisconsin would both remain solidly in Obama's camp. He also gave equal weight to paths involving North Carolina (now, a reach) as those involving Ohio (less so). But the paths have largely endured. Meanwhile, aides plotted a comprehensive messaging shift and a media campaign to complement it. In December 2011, the president delivered a speech in Kansas designed to break the conversation away from deficit reduction and the debt ceiling debacle and on to job creation and economic security. The campaign booked $25 million worth of ads for May 2012 alone to build off that message. Again, not everything was pitch-perfect. The first two ads focused on clean energy, which would diminish as an issue outside of a few critical states (Iowa and Colorado). But the groundwork was laid. "It's been a very disciplined campaign, incredibly focused," said former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, one of the campaign's top surrogates. "And they have followed their plan as far as I can tell, without any significant deviation." The campaign began to pinch pennies. Aides booked ad purchases in bulk, instead of week by week. They gave a public okay to super PACs, despite the president's previous opposition. And they decided, like in 2008, to hoard resources, rather than share with other Democratic campaign committees. There was one place they splurged. Aides bet big on a ground game, hoping that direct "persuasion" person-to-person contacts could move the dial a few, critical, notches. "We never set out to run the same campaign and the organizational stuff which the president has always strongly believed in -was born out of a necessity of knowing that these states were going to be one- to three-point races if we were lucky," said one top Obama campaign official. And like 2008, staff members had conviction in their strategy. In the early summer, when a lagging jobs market had top Democrats fretting that Romney could win an election focused on the economy, aides scoffed at the proposition. "They are operating under the Woody Allen theory that 90 percent of life is just showing up," one top campaign official said at the time. "But there is such intense scrutiny in candidates for president. If people don't feel comfortable with who you are, it is very tough. In a race that is all about economics, this guy's profile is not a great profile." The official was right. And yet, when the campaign did put a microscope to the Romney profile launching attacks on his private sector record there were howls again. Once more, the campaign didn't budge. "Predictable for our party," another aide said of the criticism over the Bain attacks, "but stupid and wrong." It was easy, of course, to ignore the second-guessing when the plan was proving fruitful. But after the first debate, the campaign's internal resolve was tested. Publicly, aides projected calm. Privately, some were stoked with anxiety over the president's performance. Internal discussions took place over whether to alter the map or message. They tinkered with the latter "they changed their emphasis," said one top consultant to the campaign, "not giving up on the Romney-extremism but focusing more on the shifting positions." But they struck with the former. "Same map, tighter race," is how the aforementioned Obama campaign adviser put the post-debate mindset. The next month was a dizzying scramble that saw the president restore some of what he gave up that night in Denver. But even after Obama gave one final slap of the lectern and wave to the Iowa crowd on Monday, the final verdict is out on whether the decisions he and his staff made were correct. The campaign is projecting confidence. Part of it is common pre-election preening. A lot of it is faith in numbers. But a good deal of it is because, while it may not have the same feel as 2008, they've been here before. "There is no doubt about it," top adviser David Axelrod told The Huffington Post, when asked whether he felt the campaign had a leg up because of experience. "The experience of having done it helps. The people who are running our operations are the people who have been with us for five years."

NEWS,03.11.2012

President Barack Obama

As the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, aged 51, passed a revamp of the national healthcare system and authorised the raid that killed Osama bin Laden but struggled to revive the economy and create jobs.Ahead of the US presidential election on Tuesday, here are key facts about Obama, the nation's first black president.Barack Obama has a personal background like no other president in US history. His mother, Ann Dunham, was a white woman from Kansas and his father, Barack Obama Snr, was a black Kenyan who saw little of his son after a divorce when the boy was a toddler. Obama spent much of his childhood in Indonesia and then Hawaii, where he lived with his maternal grandparents.Obama struggled with his mixed racial background while growing up, writing in a memoir that he wondered "if something was wrong with me". He also was troubled by the absence of his father, who he considered a "myth", and said that may have contributed to him using marijuana and cocaine in his youth.Obama graduated from New York's Columbia University in 1983 and then worked in the business sector in New York and for a Chicago community group. In 1988 he went to Harvard Law School, where he became the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.Obama's relationship with Congress is not great. Even when Democrats controlled the House of Representatives and the Senate, Republicans often stymied his initiatives. The situation became more difficult when tax-averse Republicans took over in the House in 2010.In the early 1990s Obama worked in a voter registration campaign in Chicago, taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago and joined a law firm that specialised in civil rights and neighbourhood development. He married Michelle Robinson, who he met at a law firm when he was an intern and she was assigned to be his adviser.In his rare spare moments, the lanky Obama pursues his lifelong love of basketball with semi-regular games at an FBI gym. He also makes time for school functions and sports events of daughters Sasha and Malia and tries to get out for an occasional "date night" with his wife.Obama's political career began with election to the Illinois State Senate in 1996 and soared in 2004 when he gave a rousing keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. In November of that year he was elected to the US Senate.Obama won the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination by defeating Hilary Clinton, the former first lady and New York senator, and then took the presidency by beating Republican Senator John McCain. His energetic campaign was built on a theme of "hope and change" fuelled by powerful oratory.A mood of national optimism prevailed at Obama's 20 January 2009, inauguration, which drew an estimated 1.8 million people to the National Mall in Washington despite bitter cold. He began his presidency with a 68% approval rating.Obama simultaneously oversaw wars in Iraq, which he ended in 2011, and Afghanistan, as well as the US military involvement in Libya that helped oust Muammar Gaddafi. In May 2011 he authorised the raid in which US Navy Seals killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan - a triumph he points to as indicative of a strong national security policy.Obama inherited an economic crisis so persistent that it remains a threat to his re-election. Almost 800 000 jobs were lost the month he took over. In the early days of his administration, he pushed through an $831bn economic stimulus package and renewed loans to automakers, even making the government a temporary part-owner of General Motors.The centrepiece of his domestic agenda was the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare reform law better known as Obamacare. Its purpose is to give all Americans affordable insurance and more protections but critics say it is expensive federal interference. A key aspect of the reform requiring most Americans to get insurance or pay a penalty survived a 2012 US Supreme Court challenge.Obama has a reputation as a charming communicator but he also is criticised for being aloof and not building better relationships with congressional leaders. Some have questioned his preparation skills, especially after a sub-par performance in a presidential debate with Republican opponent Mitt Romney.

Romney, Obama power into final weekend

President Barack Obama and Republican foe Mitt Romney on Saturday power into a final weekend of campaigning before handing their fates to voters after a bitter, gruelling White House race.The rivals will chase one another through the battleground states that will decide Tuesday's election, with Obama seeking to solidify his midwestern line of defence, while Romney seeks an eleventh hour breakthrough.Obama will campaign in Ohio, the possible tipping point state, before heading to Wisconsin and Iowa, his trio of "firewall" battlegrounds ahead of a late night rally in Virginia, where he still hopes for an insurance win.Romney, fresh from the biggest rally of his campaign, which drew around 18 000 people on a cold night in West Chester, Ohio, on Friday will travel to New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado.In a show of close combat on the last weekend of the campaign, both candidates will be in the eastern Iowa town of Dubuque, within hours of one another.Romney warmed up for the frenzied last weekend with a huge rally in Ohio, bringing together his former primary rivals Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, along with Obama's 2008 rival John McCain.In all, 45 lawmakers and relatives of the candidate and running mate Paul Ryan wearing Romney jackets attended the rally near the Republican stronghold of Cincinnati."We're almost home. One final push will get us there," Romney said before a crowd police estimated to be at least 18 000 strong. "We are so very, very close. The door to a brighter future is there, it's open, it's waiting for us."Obama had earlier evaded a last-minute time bomb as the economy pumped out more jobs than expected in October, delivering a boost to his re-election hopes as the final weekend of campaigning begins.Romney, however, seized on an uptick in the jobless rate by a tenth of a point to 7.9% to bemoan an economy at a "virtual standstill".After several weeks of polls suggesting a neck-and-neck race, there were new signs that Obama's position, as he seeks a second term, may be solidifying.National polls of the popular vote now mostly show a tied race or with either man up one point but with time running out Obama's position in key battleground states seems to be holding.The candidate that wins the White House will need to mass 270 electoral votes on the state-by-state map.Obama is asking voters for a second term, despite the sluggish economic recovery, while Romney is seeking a quick comeback for Republicans after George W Bush left office in 2009 with the party in disarray.All Obama's polling leads were within the margin of error, however, and both campaigns, though expressing confidence, will face a nervous night as results roll in on Tuesday and test their assumptions about the race.Obama, perhaps mindful of millions of Americans suffering from the lingering impact of the worst recession since the 1930s, avoided a triumphal tone on the jobs data that sent relief rippling through his campaign team."We have made real progress," Obama said, in Hilliard, on the first stop of a day-long swing through small towns in Ohio, which could be a tipping point state in a tied-up election.Romney highlighted the fact that, although the economy is creating jobs at a moderate pace, unemployment remains at historically high levels."For four years, President Obama's policies have crushed America's middle class," Romney said in a statement."When I'm president, I'm going to make real changes that lead to a real recovery, so that the next four years are better than the last," said Romney, who started his day in Wisconsin and ended it in Ohio.The release of the final major economic data before the election had worried Obama aides who feared that a leap in the rate above the psychological 8% mark could have sent late-deciding voters to Romney.But although the data was far from spectacular - with 171 000 jobs created last month - there was enough in the report, including upward revisions of previous monthly figures, for Obama to argue the economy was improving.Obama, campaigning in Ohio on Friday repudiated Romney's claim to being an agent of change, accusing him instead of trying to "massage the facts", highlighting a Romney ad that claims that Chrysler plans to outsource jobs to China to produce its Jeep vehicles."I know we are close to an election, but this isn't a game. These are people's jobs. These are people's lives," Obama said, noting that auto bosses had directly contradicted Romney on the attack.The president repeatedly touts his decision to bail out indebted US automakers in a politically unpopular 2009 move that helped restore the industry to health.One in eight jobs in Ohio are linked to the sector, and Romney's opposition to the bailout has emerged as a liability for the Republican.A CNN/Opinion Research poll showed Obama up three points in Ohio, raising his average in the RealClearPolitics aggregate of opinion surveys in the state to 2.4 points.The president also leads Romney in enough of the eight or so swing states to assure himself of the 270 electoral votes needed for re-election, if polling data is confirmed by voting.

Romney hits Obama on 'revenge' vow

Republican nominee Mitt Romney chided President Barack Obama on Saturday for calling on Americans to vote for "revenge" as the battle for the White House raced to an ill-tempered climax.Three days before voters chose between giving Obama a second term or sending him packing back to Chicago, the rivals chased one another through a handful of states that will decide Tuesday's too-close-to-call election.Romney was up early in New Hampshire, which has only four of the 270 electoral votes needed to claim the White House but could punch above its weight in a tight finish, accusing Obama of "demonising" political foes."I won't represent just one party, I'll represent one nation," Romney told a crowd at an airport rally outside Portsmouth, and warned Obama would find it impossible to work with congressional Republicans if he wins re-election.Romney also debuted a new political ad on Saturday, seizing on Obama's comment in Ohio on Friday when he told supporters angry at the Republicans not to boo but to vote, saying "voting's the best revenge".The ad featured Romney telling his biggest crowd of the campaign in Ohio also Friday that Obama "asked his supporters to vote for revenge - for revenge"."Instead, I ask the American people to vote for love of country," Romney said.While Romney was campaigning, Obama was back in Washington visiting the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as New York and New Jersey struggle to deal with the aftermath of murderous superstorm Sandy."We still have a long way to go," said Obama, stressing he had no time for government "red tape" which could hold up the relief effort, after discussing the crisis with the governors of New Jersey, Connecticut and New York.The Obama campaign enjoys the comparison between Obama doing his job managing the government while Romney campaigns as polls show a majority of Americans approve of the president's handling of Sandy.With time running down until the election, Obama soon headed back to the campaign trail, with a long day of campaign stops planned in Ohio, the possible tipping point state before heading to Wisconsin and Iowa.He will wrap up his day with a late night rally in Virginia, a state where he and Romney are locked in a tight race.Romney, fresh from the biggest rally of his campaign, which drew at least 18 000 people on a cold night in West Chester, Ohio, left New Hampshire for trips to Colorado and Iowa.In a show of close combat on the last weekend of the campaign, both candidates will be in the eastern Iowa town of Dubuque, within hours of one another.Latest polls show Obama and Romney tied nationally, but Obama appears to be solidifying his position in enough of the eight or so swing states that will decide the election to support his hopes of a second term.New surveys by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News Saturday showed the president up by 47-49% in Florida and leading Romney by 51-45 % n Ohio, double the margin in the current RealClearPolitics average.A Mason Dixon poll for the Miami Herald, however, had Romney up by six points in Florida, which the Republican, who also needs Ohio, cannot afford to lose if he is to be elected America's 45th president.The Obama and Romney campaigns have sharply differing views of the race.The president's team believe that early voting and polling data, plus the president's grass roots turnout machine, mean that Obama will prevail in a close race.But Romney's camp believes opinion polls are overstating the proportion of Democrats in the electorate and that their candidate is poised to ride the support of independent voters to victory on Tuesday.On Friday, Obama earlier evaded a last-minute time bomb as the economy pumped out more jobs than expected in October.Romney, however, seized on an uptick in the jobless rate by a tenth of a point to 7.9% to bemoan an economy at a "virtual standstill".Obama, campaigning in Ohio Friday repudiated Romney's claim to being an agent of change, accusing him instead of trying to "massage the facts", highlighting a Romney ad that claims that Chrysler plans to outsource jobs to China to produce its Jeep vehicles."I know we are close to an election, but this isn't a game. These are people's jobs. These are people's lives," Obama said, noting that auto bosses had directly contradicted Romney on the attack.The president repeatedly touts his decision to bail out indebted US automakers in a politically unpopular 2009 move that helped restore the industry to health.One in eight jobs in Ohio are linked to the sector, and Romney's opposition to the bailout has emerged as a liability for the Republican.

NEWS,02.11.2012

How many presidential campaign ads is too many?

It's 6:10pm on a Thursday in October, just days before the US elections. Before the clock hits 6.29pm, 11 political ads will have aired on the local NBC channel in Columbus, Ohio.One tells voters that Democratic President Barack Obama has not proposed a legitimate economic plan for the country.Another suggests that policies of Republican candidate Mitt Romney would undermine the future for America's children.Yet another says Romney would effectively deny many women crucial cancer screenings by proposing cuts to Planned Parenthood.The very next ad calls Obama an extremist on abortion who supports leaving babies "out to die."Ohio is being inundated with such dueling ads in the final days before the November 6 presidential election, as Obama and Romney both look to the state's 18 electoral votes as a crucial step toward the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.The presidential race is now a fight in eight or so politically divided "swing" states, but nowhere more so than Ohio.Amid the chaos of the campaign's closing days, the state has become an arena for credibility-stretching banter, and a testing center for the growing science of political advertising.New research predicts that total spending in this election could reach $US6 billion , making it the most expensive in US history.The campaigns and free-spending independent groups have poured close to $US1 billion into political ads - many of those ads directed at Ohio - and have given analysts a high-profile chance to examine some simmering questions about such ads.Among them: How many ads is too many, before viewers tune them out? And what do campaign ads lead voters to do, exactly?Election-year political ads are a meticulously studied subject, and increasingly are used to target specific groups and encourage specific outcomes.Some research, for example, suggests that pro-Democrat ads are particularly effective at swaying voters' opinions, while pro-Republican ads typically are more effective at getting party supporters to show up at the polls.For all the analysis that has been done on campaign ads, academic and commercial research has yielded few answers on the precise impact that ads have in determining who wins an election.That is especially true, analysts said, in the type of advertising free-for-all that Ohio residents are seeing on their televisions now - wave after wave of ads with overlapping and similarly dark, daunting messages.Campaign ads became tiresome long ago for many Ohio residents, but some viewers figure that the ads must be working, or the campaigns wouldn't keep running them."I think poorly of those ads and don't think they work, but there are so many of them I think it must be not so," said JoAnne Harvey, a Columbus small business owner who, as an undecided female voter, is much coveted by both campaigns.In a reflection of how so many ads can essentially nullify one another, Harvey and another dozen Ohioans interviewed generally could not recall the details of a single campaign ad that stood above the others.Those who could acknowledged that they weren't sure which side the ad was meant to benefit.Political advertising has become a multibillion-dollar market that some television station sales managers predict soon could be a year-round category of advertising.It has become increasingly sophisticated in "micro-targeting," the art of going after specific groups of viewers.For example, Democrats have been found to be more frequent television watchers than Republicans, and Democrats candidates in 2008 ran more than twice as many ads as Republicans during science-fiction shows, reality dating programs and telenovelas, according to research by Washington State University professor Travis Ridout and others.Those programs as well as talk shows and court shows tended to skew Democratic in viewership while crime and sports programs skewed Republican, Ridout's study found.But does the science of political advertising work?One study completed last month found Obama's ads moving voters away from Romney, while Romney's ads were much more likely to encourage Republicans to vote, rather than shift preferences among voters.The findings were based on a survey of more than 2,300 registered voters who said they were independents or not deeply committed to one party.They were shown one or several of the campaigns' ads by the research software company Qualtrics and the research firm Evolving Strategies."Romney doesn't seem to have a lot of ability to have people moving in and out of the independent pool, but he has a lot of room to change the equation in determining who turns out to vote," said Adam Schaeffer of Evolving Strategies.If the targets of this year's ads are any guide, the presidential election will be decided by middle-aged and older white women, according to a survey of more than 1,000 buying agencies done by STRATA, a software firm whose systems help air some $US50 billion worth of ads a year.The question is whether the barrage of ads - the vast majority of them attacking a candidate, rather than promoting one will become so overwhelming that they provoke a backlash.Such ads "did work on me at first, and then I became a lot more cynical and realized that a lot of it is political warfare," said Harvey, who added that she voted for Obama in 2008 but was leaning toward Romney now."It seems almost epidemic; they can't stop now that they've started."A rule of thumb in advertising is that an ad needs to be viewed at least three times and up to 10 to be effective, said STRATA Chief Executive John Shelton."There's no question that once you start to go over (10), you start to, well, at least bore people," he said. "Then they might tune out. Then they might actually get ticked off."Barbara Berry, a healthcare professional and Obama supporter from Columbus, said she pre-records TV programs and skips ads."I don't pay attention anymore," she said.Since late August, more than 915,000 presidential campaign ads have aired on broadcast and national cable TV, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. In Columbus during October, ads by the campaigns and outside groups aired more than 7,000 times."Some of them just disappear in the noise," said Dan Bradley, general manager at the Columbus NBC affiliate WCMH-TV.Each presidential campaign has been producing about a dozen new ads a week, basing them on daily news events a practice that ensures that most of the ads have a short shelf life.Romney in particular tends to place and replace ads at the spur of the moment, often in response to the news of the day.Obama's campaign runs two ad tracks: one that changes every one or two days, the other every couple of weeks.Ads this year "just seem to be rushed," said John Geer, a political ad researcher at Vanderbilt University.It's "almost like they've fallen prey to the fact that the campaigns have so much money, and the ability to make all these ads."

New York fuel 'panic' grows even as ports open

A third day of "panic buying" of gasoline among Sandy-struck New York area motorists on Friday has prompted action from authorities.The US government waived the Jones Act barring foreign-flagged vessels from carrying fuel between US ports in a bid to boost supplies from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he would temporarily lift tax and registration requirements on tankers docking in the New York Harbor, which had just reopened to oil vessels.While the waivers sent benchmark New York gasoline futures 2% lower, they will do little to address the biggest obstacle to getting fuel to consumers: the power outages that have shut nearly two-thirds of the service stations in the New Jersey and New York City area and are still hindering service at major oil terminals and refineries along the harbour.Faced with the prospect of another day of hunting for fuel or losing out on business, New York City cab driver Mohammad Sultan parked his yellow taxi at a Hess station on Coney Island Avenue, Brooklyn at midnight on Thursday so he could be first in line when a rumoured fuel shipment arrived at 6 am.At 9 am with 180 vehicles behind him, the pumps were still empty. Officials said the number of cabs on the road by Friday morning was down 24% from last week."Because of the gas problem, there are thousands of yellow cabs sitting around wasting time and money," Sultan said.There were some signs that the complex New York Harbor network of storage tanks and pipelines was finally returning to service after Sandy dealt it a direct hit, crippling the ability to fuel the nation's most dense consumer population.The region's biggest pipeline, Colonial, restarted much of its northern line, and an oil tanker carrying 2 million gallons of gasoline docked overnight in Newburgh, New York, 60 miles north of New York city. Other ships were finally offloading cargoes in the harbor after being stuck at anchor for the past week.But those measures were cold comfort for residents stuck in hours-long queues, often with no guarantee that supplies would be available when they got to the front of the line or that enough power would be restored to get more stations open.The situation is wearing on New Yorkers. Juliana Smith, a full-time student, spent 2-1/2 hours in line to fill two five-gallon containers on Friday, an hour more than on Thursday."It's psychotic," she said. "People are angry. We have no power. No heat. We need gas for the generator and our Ford Explorer, which is a monster."Prices at the pump have remained steady despite the shortages, motorist group AAA said, averaging just below $4 a gallon in New York City, 2 cents lower than last week.However, on Long Island, where only a third of all stations were working, average gasoline prices jumped 5 cents from a day earlier.But online, Craigslist users started offering gasoline at as much as $15 a gallon to motorists and homeowners not wishing to brave the lines.There were signs the situation could improve in the coming days as wholesale markets begin to work again.Colonial Pipeline, a 5,500-mile (8,900-km) network that runs from the Gulf Coast refining center up the eastern seaboard, said late on Thursday it had resumed fuel deliveries at its Linden facility in New Jersey, the terminus of the line.It expects to pump around 700,000 barrels a day into the area, which is a normal volume, spokesman Steve Baker said.Fuel barge shipments into New York Harbor will be allowed on Friday, the Coast Guard said, if they have a place to offload.Environmental Protection Agency waivers for clean diesel and gasoline specifications, granted earlier this week, should make it easier for suppliers to meet demand in the days ahead.News of the Jones Act waiver sent NYMEX gasoline prices sharply lower. The December RBOB contract fell 6 cents, or 2.3%, to close at $2.5736 a gallon, just below where it was trading last week prior to Sandy's arrival.Rates to charter fuel tankers to the Northeast nearly doubled as traders scrambled to sell to the region, where supplies were constricted by the closure of two New Jersey refineries that make up one-third of the region's capacity.The Phillips 66 Bayway refinery in New Jersey, known as "the gasoline machine" by oil traders, may be shut for weeks due to flood damage, although the company has said internally it is "optimistic of restarting soon," a source familiar with operations said. The company has said that a decision on when to reopen will be made "once all assessments are complete."Phillips' Linden fuel terminal was supplying only emergency response vehicles as of Friday afternoon.

Obama, Romney return to attack

President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney went back on the attack on Thursday, breaking a storm-induced campaign truce to hit the road and pound home their closing messages in the final stretch of a tight battle for the White House.With five days left until Tuesday's election, Obama received an endorsement from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, resurrected his 2008 "change" slogan and said he was the only candidate who had actually fought for it.Romney criticised Obama as a lover of big government who would expand the federal bureaucracy.National polls show the race deadlocked, and Obama and Romney will spend the final days in eight swing states that will decide who wins the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the White House.Obama made Wisconsin the first stop on a four-state swing on Thursday that also took him to rallies in Nevada and Colorado before going to Ohio for the night. Romney had a full day of campaigning across Virginia."You may be frustrated at the pace of change, but you know what I believe, you know where I stand," Obama told a crowd of 2 600 people on an airport tarmac in Wisconsin, a state that is a vital piece of his electoral strategy. "I know what change looks like because I've fought for it."At a rally in Doswell, Virginia, Romney criticised Obama's comment that he would like to consolidate government agencies that deal with business issues in a new department under a secretary of business."I don't think adding a new chair to his Cabinet will help add millions of jobs on Main Street," Romney said.Jobs will again be the focus of fierce debate on Friday when the government releases the unemployment figures for October. Any big change from the 7.8% number in September could potentially sway voters.Obama and Romney had put campaigning on hold for several days as the historic storm Sandy pounded the eastern seaboard, leaving a trail of destruction and forcing Obama to turn his attention to storm relief.That pause produced some unexpected political benefits for Obama, who won warm praise from Republican Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Romney supporter, and he spent days directing federal relief efforts in a show of presidential leadership that largely sidelined Romney.New York's Bloomberg a Republican-turned-independent who did not back a candidate in 2008 endorsed Obama and cited the Democrat's record on climate change, an issue that has gained more attention since the storm.Bloomberg said Obama had taken significant steps to reduce carbon consumption, while Romney had backtracked on earlier positions he took as governor of Massachusetts to battle climate change. Obama said he was "honoured" by the backing of Bloomberg, who flirted with White House runs in the past.On their first day back on the trail, both Obama and Romney returned to political attacks but struck a slightly more positive tone than usual in trying to woo undecided voters and push their own supporters to vote.In Doswell, Romney proclaimed his faith in the future and said, "The American people have what it takes to come out of these tough times."In Wisconsin, Obama drew distinctions with Romney but dropped his usual reference to "Romnesia" the term he uses to describe what he calls Romney's tendency to shift positions.Obama has a somewhat easier path to 270 electoral votes than Romney, fueled primarily by a small but steady lead in the vital battleground of Ohio a crucial piece of any winning scenario for either candidate - and slight leads in Wisconsin, Iowa and Nevada.Barring any surprises elsewhere, Obama can win a second term by capturing the Midwestern bastions of Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa, and his schedule was aimed at shoring up his safety net there.Obama plans to visit Ohio on each of the last four days of the campaign, and plans two more trips to Wisconsin and Iowa. He will conclude his campaign on Monday night with rock singer Bruce Springsteen in Iowa, where a 2008 caucus win launched his run to the presidency.So far, Obama has planned just one visit each in the final days to Florida and Virginia, where most polls give Romney a slight lead. Romney will hit Wisconsin and Ohio on Friday, and New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado on Saturday.Romney plans to finish up his campaign on Monday night in New Hampshire, the state where he launched his bid last year.Romney's campaign has aired ads in recent days in the Democratic-leaning states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, hoping to put them in play after polls showed the races tightening but Obama still ahead.The campaign said Romney would visit Pennsylvania on Sunday, marking his first campaign visit since the nominating convention to one of his new target states. A win in Pennsylvania would be a crippling blow to Obama, but most public polls still show Obama leading there.Romney aides said the moves into those three new states were a sign of their growing momentum, although Obama aides described them as a desperate ploy to find new paths to 270 electoral votes.A  online poll on Thursday showed the race remained effectively deadlocked, with Obama at 47% to Romney's 46%. Most national polls showed roughly similar results.Most swing-state polls have found Obama clinging to slender leads in five of the eight most heavily contested states - Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire. In most polls, Romney has a slight lead in Florida, while Virginia and Colorado were effectively tied.Online poll on Thursday showed Obama with a 5-point lead in Virginia, and 2-point leads among likely voters in both Ohio and Florida. Romney led by 1 point in Colorado in the polls.

NEWS,24.10.2012

Obama and Israel: The Record, the Facts

 

President Obama has been criticized for being wrong for Israel. Even in the third debate of the Presidential campaign, a lovefest toward Israel, which was mentioned 31 times by the candidates, Governor Romney managed to get in a couple jibes against Obama's Israel policy. "I think the tension that existed between Israel and the United States was very unfortunate." He went on to complain that Obama had not visited Israel, inferred that Obama had a poor relationship with the Jewish State, and accused Obama of wanting "to create daylight between ourselves and Israel." Others opposed to the president have even been known to claim that Obama is the worst president for Israel in American history. But history emphatically tells us otherwise. Many presidents saw Israel as a burden and acted accordingly. Truman recognized Israel's existence six minutes after its birth, but also embargoed arms before and during Israel's War of Liberation. Eisenhower, who doubted whether Israel should have even been created, forced Israel to return its gains in the Sinai and Gaza in 1956 by making a variety of threats, including ending tax-deductible gifts to Israel. Ford set up a reassessment of America's Middle East policy in 1975 because he was angry at the Israelis for refusing a proposed disengagement agreement with Egypt. Carter brokered the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, but otherwise endlessly clashed with Israel. George H.W. Bush's secretary of state told Israeli Prime Minister Shamir publicly to phone the White House when he was ready to talk peace, and later denied Israel critical loan guarantees when refugees from the Soviet Union were arriving. There are no similar episodes in Obama's record. Instead, he established the closest working military and intelligence relationship with Israel in the country's history: joint exercises and training, increased security assistance every year, unprecedented advanced technology transfers, doubling of funding for Israel's missile defense system, and assistance in funding for the Iron Dome system that today intercepts rockets headed for Israel. Indeed, in the debate he was emphatic that Israel "is a true friend and our greatest ally in the region," and went on to say later, "I will stand with Israel if they are attacked. And this is the reason why, working with Israel, we have created the strongest military and intelligence cooperation between our two countries in history."More facts. The Obama administration has opposed efforts to boycott or divest from Israel. It backed Israel on the infamous Goldstone Report, the anti-Israel Durban Conference, the Gaza flotilla incident, Palestinian effort to gain recognition as a state, and others. And the U.S. voted with Israel at the UN 100 percent of the time under this administration, a first in modern history.So what's the problem? Certainly, the poor personal relationship between the Israeli and American leaders does not help. But this is not the first time that an American president found an Israeli leader frustrating, yet managed to enhance U.S.-Israeli relations. Ronald Reagan had a number of diplomatic conflicts with Israel the peace process, the U.S. sale of AWACS jets to Saudi Arabia, Israel's attacks against Iraq's nuclear reactor and the Lebanon War yet strengthened security ties with Israel. Like Reagan, Obama has exponentially enhanced U.S.-Israel security cooperation. But unlike Reagan, Obama did not suspend arms transfers to Israel because of a disagreement with its leaders.Recently, the Israeli-American discord has centered on Iran. The president and prime minister disagreed over setting a red line delineating when military action would be taken. But few noticed when the U.S. and Israel quietly resolved the issue, with Netanyahu agreeing to delay action until next year at the earliest and praising the president at the UN for his efforts.In fact, Obama has supported the toughest sanctions on Iran in history, in pursuit of the goal of preventing Teheran for gaining nuclear weapons. In the foreign policy debate, he stated categorically that "...as long as I'm president of the United States Iran will not get a nuclear weapon. I made that clear when I came into office."His statements and actions are far tougher than anything provided by President George W. Bush. Standing with Prime Minister Olmert in Jerusalem in January 2008, Bush could only offer, "I believe it's incumbent upon the American Presidents to solve problems diplomatically. And that's exactly what we're in the process of doing. I believe that pressure economic pressure, financial sanctions will cause the people inside of Iran to have to make a considered judgment about whether or not it makes sense for them to continue to enrich.''For Obama, opposing Iran's nuclear weapons is part of his longstanding opposition to nuclear proliferation. In 2004, even as he opposed the war in Iraq, Obama told The Chicago Tribune editorial board: "The big question is going to be, if Iran is resistant to these pressures, including economic sanctions, which I hope will be imposed if they do not cooperate, at what point are we going to, if any, are we going to take military action?" Admitting that attacking Iran might hurt America's image in the Arab world, he concluded, "On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse." Obama's Iran policies have been working, with intensifying sanctions helping to cause accelerating economic chaos, and protests, in Iran, which is today weaker than four years ago. Tehran may have made advances toward a nuclear force, but the costs of that movement are clearer than ever, and the worldwide opposition more determined and tougher. Iran is paying a heavy price for its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and that price will grow higher. There is no argument between Israel and the U.S. on that score.The critics are simply wrong. Obama has been an exceptional supporter of Israel where it counts on the hard-core security and diplomatic issues that provide assistance and protection in a very dangerous region.

Obama, Romney plunge into final 2 weeks

President Barack Obama set off on a marathon, two-day campaign journey on Wednesday  touching down in five states and making an appearance on a popular late-night television programme as he tries to break out of the neck-and-neck race with Republican challenger Mitt Romney with just 13 days left before voters cast their ballots on 6 November.Obama is hammering Romney over his sudden shift to moderate positions both at home and abroad after months of campaigning as a hard-right conservative. Romney, looking to sustain momentum that grew out his overwhelming victory in the first presidential debate three weeks ago, is bashing Obama as a leader who has failed to bring the economy back to full speed after the Great Recession and warning that re-electing the president is a prescription for continuing hard times.Both men are making extraordinary efforts to sway the small pool of undecided voters while imploring their millions of supporters to vote, particularly in key battleground states such as Ohio and Iowa where early voting is already under way.Casting own voteObama planned a short stop in Chicago on Thursday to cast his own vote - the first time an incumbent president has opted for early voting.In remarks to an Iowa newspaper that were released Wednesday, Obama predicted he'll reach agreement with lawmakers to reduce the US deficit in the first six months and overhaul immigration law within the first year of a second term if he's re-elected.His comments to The Des Moines Register were originally off the record, but Obama's campaign agreed to release a transcript under pressure from the newspaper.On immigration, Obama said he'd be blunt since the interview was off the record. He said if he wins a second term, "a big reason" will be because Republicans have "so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community".Battleground statesThe election map has shrunk to no more than nine of the 50 US states, and that's where both candidates will be spending virtually all of their time in the final days before the election.Residents in those so-called battleground states do not reliably vote either Republican or Democrat. The states assume outsized importance because the president is chosen according to state-by-state contests, not the national popular vote.Obama was planning to cover 8 500km on Wednesday in the most-travelled single day of his re-election bid. He was going from Washington to Iowa, Colorado, California and Nevada, and then overnight to Florida. It was the first time Obama was spending the night flying on Air Force One for a domestic trip but far from unprecedented by incumbents scrambling to keep their job.Obama will break for an appearance on the widely watched The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and make calls to voters from the plane.Pace picking upRomney, too, was picking up the pace. He was campaigning on Wednesday in Nevada and Iowa before a three-stop campaign in Ohio on Thursday.Romney told a crowd of 10 000 supporters on Tuesday that Obama's promise of more of the same is "why he's slipping and it's why we're gaining".Obama's campaign insisted that the president was holding on to a slight lead in most of the nine battleground states - Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and New Hampshire"We have the ball, we have the lead," Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod insisted.Obama's challenge is to convince voters who may be hurting financially that he is better qualified to lead the country back to economic prosperity than Romney, who made a fortune as the head of a private equity firm.TrustworthinessObama is trying to capitalise on polls that show voters see him as more trustworthy than Romney. A Washington Post/ABC News poll last week showed 55% of likely voters said Obama is "honest and trustworthy" compared to 47% who felt that way about Romney.The president has spiced his rhetoric with humour to temper his underlying charge - that Romney is lying about what he would do as president."You know me. You know I say what I mean, and I mean what I say," Obama told an Iowa crowd on Wednesday. "With your help, I've kept the commitments that I made."Obama's remarks came after Monday night's third and final presidential debate, where Romney revealed dramatic shifts to the centre on foreign policy and largely expressed agreement with how Obama has conducted US foreign policy.The Obama campaign responded this week to the complaint that the president had, after more than a year of speeches, failed to articulate his second-term vision.
The campaign produced a 20-page booklet called the Blueprint for America's Future outlining his proposals, including spending more on education, boosting US manufacturing jobs and raising taxes on the wealthy.

Berlusconi calls it a day

Italy's Silvio Berlusconi said on Wednesday that he would not run in elections early next year and hand his People of Freedom party over to a successor, ending months of uncertainty over his candidacy."I will not be presenting my candidacy but I will remain at the side of younger people who can play and score goals," said the media magnate, who founded the party in 2009 and is famous for talking politics in football terms.The 76-year-old tycoon, who owns AC Milan football club and three national television channels as well as several private villas, said in a statement that his successor would be appointed by the end of December following a party vote."I still have good muscles and a head on my shoulders, but my role will be to give advice", he said, adding that the vote may take place on 16 December."For the love of Italy one can do crazy and wise things. Eighteen years ago I came onto the scene, a mad move that did not lack wisdom: I now take a step back," the billionaire said, putting to an end speculation over his return.The move came as his scandal-hit PDL party tries to boost its credibility following a series of investigations into misuse of party funds.The former prime minister had retreated from the political frontlines after handing over power in November 2011 to former European competition commissioner Mario Monti amid a parliamentary revolt and a wave of financial market panic.There had been speculation since then as to whether he would try a comeback.The PDL has suffered a series of local election setbacks and is riven by infighting, and many supporters had been urging Berlusconi to return to lead the party in the upcoming elections, set for April next year.Ruby the Heart StealerBerlusconi said it was now up to the party secretary Angelino "Alfano and a new generation of young people to reproduce the miracle of 1994", when the man famed for his love of wild parties was first appointed prime minister.His decision to step aside revealed fears that he could not hope to muster enough support to lead Italy's centre-right to victory.The former premier, who was seen as a blast of fresh air when he burst onto the scene in the 1990s after a period of political corruption and scandal, has been hit hard by his own fraud and sex scandals and has lost many supporters.The PDL has been unable to persuade smaller centrist parties to join forces with them for the upcoming elections despite several attempts at deal-making.Berlusconi will be hoping that a fresh face at the head of the party can help it regain ground in the polls.The former premier has been fighting legal battles for 20 years. Despite some initial convictions for fraud and lingering accusations of alliances with convicted crooks, all cases against him were won on appeal or have expired.He is currently on trial for fraud, bribery and paying for sex with a 17-year-old prostitute nick-named "Ruby the Heart Stealer".The sex trial was one of the last in a series of scandals that helped precipitate the media tycoon's downfall.