Washington, Oct 18 (IANS) A day after a feisty encounter on stage, President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney were back on the campaign trail keeping up their fight off stage. Obama criticised Romney’s plan to boost the economy, while Romney said Obama does not have an agenda for a second term.
An energised Obama, who by most accounts delivered a much improved stronger performance at their second face to face encounter at Hampstead, New York, returned to the debate theme during a campaign stop in Iowa Wednesday.
As he had suggested during Tuesday’s debate, he again insinuated that Romney’s five-point plan to boost the economy is really a one-point plan that offers special benefits to the wealthy. Obama also seized on Romney’s comment during the debate that he’d gone through “binders full of women” in recruiting his gubernatorial staff.
“I tell you what,” Obama told a crowd of 2,000 in Mount Vernon, Iowa. “We don’t have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, driven young women ready to work and teach in these fields right now.”
As he did Tuesday night, he linked his appeal to women to other campaign themes, including women’s health, reproductive choice and equal pay and funding for Planned Parenthood.
Romney told supporters in Virginia that Obama does not have an agenda for a second term. He said the president has no jobs plan and that middle income American families face a $4,000 a year tax increase if Obama is re-elected.
“Why is it that there are 3.6 million more women in poverty today than when the president took office,” Romney asked at a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia. “This president has failed America’s women.”
“The answers are coming from us and not from Barack Obama,” Romney said. “He’s pretty much running on fumes.”
For now, Obama is back in his elements egging for another fight at their third and final presidential debate scheduled for Oct 22 in Boca Raton, Florida.
Obama continues to widen the gap between himself and Romney, leading by a 19-percentage point margin (55 percent-36 percent) among young adult “likely” voters, according to a new poll.
Just three weeks before the presidential election, the poll of America’s 18- to 29- year-olds by Harvard’s Institute of Politics (IOP), located at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, also shows voting enthusiasm slipping
Only 48 percent of America’s young adults say they will “definitely” vote in the Nov 6 election, the poll released by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Ivy League institution Wednesday said. But Romney voters are more likely to turn out than Obama voters.
Obama leads Romney by 19-percentage points with young adult “likely” voters, continues to be preferred candidate among 18- to 29-year-olds generally and is ahead on college campuses, according to the poll.
The survey also shows a solid majority of 18- to 29-year-olds (62 percent) more comfortable with the view that Obama inherited problems unable to be fixed in one presidential term rather than the viewpoint that he has failed (33 percent).
According to the survey, the majority believe problems Obama inherited are complex and require more time to solve.
When asked which presidential candidate they trust more to handle a number of top issues, the polling shows Obama favoured over Romney on health care (+23 percentage points), foreign policy (+23), to be the Commander-in-Chief of the military (+22), immigration reform (+20) and the economy (+19).
Obama was also trusted more to handle “issues of concern to someone your age” (+31) and “issues of concern to women” (+33).
The survey of 2,123 18- to 29-year-old US citizens with a margin of error of +/- 2.1 percentage points (95 percent confidence level) was conducted between Sep 19 and Oct 3.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
