Tales from the Trail

Obama says biggest task left for him is to fix U.S. politics

President Barack Obama has lots of reasons he wants to hold on to the White House in 2012.

There’s energy policy, for example, which he would like to revamp. There’s immigration reform, which he hopes to “implement.”

But at a fundraiser on Monday night, the president said the real challenge he had left to handle was “fixing” the political atmosphere in Washington.

“The challenge we have now is fixing our politics,” Obama said at fundraiser held at a private home in Washington.

“That is probably the biggest piece of business that remains unfinished. That’s probably the area where we’ve been most stymied over the last three years.”

In 2008 one of Obama’s campaign promises was to bring a greater spirit of bipartisanship to the capital. Both Republicans and Democrats would likely agree that that has not happened.

Whether a second Obama term would change that is hard to say. But the president is raising money to help advance his cause.

Introducing Reuters Elections: our new home for all things 2012

Welcome to Reuters Election 2012, our new hub for the latest political news, analysis, and opinion. With the same commitment to accuracy you’re used to, coupled with the conviction that the exchange of arguments and opinion is a vital component of political coverage, our goal is to build an online resource to help you make sense of the issues and decide which candidates win your votes.

Conceived of and executed by Jim Impoco on the editorial side and Alex Leo on the product side, the page has a number of features new to Reuters.com.

In addition to spotlighting the great homegrown work of our own journalists, we’ll be scouring the web and linking to the best news and commentary about the U.S. elections from around the globe. We’ll also be aggregating the most interesting tweets, and our Polititude widget will measure social sentiment about each presidential hopeful — powered by WiseWindow, a company that analyzes and interprets chatter on social media platforms across the web, rather than merely searching for keywords — to capture each candidate’s social favorability at any given moment.

We’ve revived Tales from the Trail, our erstwhile election-time blog, and started a new video blog, Political Theater, where we’re amassing the most compelling videos from the campaign.

There are individual pages for each candidate, including some of the less-mainstream contenders, so you can dive deeper into their biographies, backgrounds, campaign finances, and stances.

And coming soon we’ll be launching issue pages dedicated to the central issues of this election, as well as a map featuring states with important upcoming races and ballot initiatives. For comic relief, we will soon introduce Political Punchlines, another new feature that tracks which candidates are inspiring the best jokes on our favorite late-night comedy shows.

For the latest updates, sign up for our daily newsletter, follow us on Twitter @ReutersPolitics, and like us on Facebook. Start things off by checking out our coverage of the Reuters Washington Summit, today through Wednesday, where we’re interviewing Sen. Dick Durbin, DCCC Chair Steve Israel, Sen. John McCain, and Sen. Tom Coburn, among many others.

Cain backers reprise ‘high-tech lynching’ theme

A group of Herman Cain supporters has pulled out the heavy artillery in defense of the Republican presidential hopeful against sexual harassment allegations.

“Americans for Herman Cain” — an outside group not affiliated with his campaign — released this ad comparing the media treatment of Cain to what Clarence Thomas went through during his 1991 U.S. Senate confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. Thomas — who also faced sexual harassment allegations and a media frenzy — denounced his treatment as “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.”

The sponsors of the pro-Cain ad reprise the phrase and use video of Thomas speaking two decades ago. It urges Cain supporters not to let the “left” do it again.

Cain complained of his treatment in the glare of the Washington media spotlight in an interview with conservative activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Thomas.

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (Cain wipes his brow during remarks to the Congressional Health Care Caucus on Nov. 2)

Rick Perry’s animated speech

A video of Texas Governor Rick Perry’s speech Friday in New Hampshire became a popular online and cable television attraction, with viewers drawn in by the Republican presidential candidate’s animated performance.

The head of the group that hosted the event says Perry’s speech was well received by the audience and that there was nothing wrong with the governor, thehill.com blog Ballot Box reported on Tuesday.

“When I started seeing all of the blog stuff going up on Sunday and the video going viral it caught me by surprise,” Kevin Smith, the executive director of Cornerstone Action. “He was definitely more animated than we’ve seen him during the campaign but the reports that he was buzzed or whatever never crossed any of our minds.”

Star-Telegram.com’s Politex blog says “a spirited and giggling Gov. Rick Perry showed up to deliver a speech in Manchester.”

Huffington Post says the Republican presidential candidate’s performance was “unusually expressive.”

Perry spokesman Mark Miner said in an email to the Huffington Post: “The Governor is passionate about the issues he talks about.”

Here’s the 8 1/2 minute video edited down from a speech that ran over 20 minutes.

Obama to middle class: Who loves you?

The middle class is back.

Amid the din of Republican cries of class warfare, the Occupy Wall Street movement and a fresh economic report that America’s rich are getting much, much richer, one phrase punctuated weekend remarks from President Barack Obama and his campaign strategists: the middle class.

As the Democratic president struggles to reconnect with his base — liberals, black Americans and younger voters — he is taking up the middle class mantra to target the crucial voting bloc.

This weekend there was no escaping who the Obama team’s message was aimed at.

Obama used “middle class” five times in his radio broadcast on Saturday that cited a new report on U.S. income inequality from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

In acknowledging the country’s growing income gap: “In fact, the average income for the top 1 percent of Americans has risen almost seven times faster than the income of the average middle-class family.”

Perry is on for next debate… but after that?

Texas Governor Rick Perry is definitely on for the next  Republican debate  in Michigan  on Nov. 9th.  But after that — we’ll see.

Questions were raised about whether the GOP presidential hopeful would skip upcoming debates after he  suggested in an interview that participating in the previous debates  had been a mistake.

Perry spokesman Mark Miner told Reuters the governor is committed to the Michigan debate.  Miner also said  that with a little over two months before the start of the crucial early primaries the campaign plans to make the best use of its time –  perhaps taking its case directly to voters in Iowa, which kicks off  the nominating race on January 3. (There are a half dozen debates planned between now and then.)

In an interview  on Fox News on Tuesday, Perry  brought up the debates when he was asked whether  he’d made “mistakes” in his campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

“These debates are set up for nothing more than to tear down the candidates,” Perry said. “It’s pretty hard to be able to sit and lay out your ideas and your concepts with a one-minute response…  if there was a mistake made it was probably ever doing one of the (debates)…  when all they are interested in is stirring it up between the candidates instead of really talking about the issues that are important to the American people.”

The Perry campaign launched in August and he quickly rose to the top of the polls.  He hasn’t performed well in a series of  televised debates with fellow Republican candidates  and his poll numbers have  been steadily falling.

Cain takes the lead in GOP race – poll

Businessman Herman Cain has pulled ahead of Mitt Romney and now leads the field of 2012 Republican candidates, according to a new New York Times/ CBS News poll.

Cain has 25 percent support among Republican primary voters,  compared with 21 percent support for the former Massachusetts governor.

The two candidates were tied at 17 percent in the previous NYT/CBS poll released on Oct. 3.

The new poll shows  Cain’s support among Tea Party conservatives climbed to 32 percent in mid-October — up  from 18 percent just a few weeks earlier.

Cain’s rise to the top of the polls  is powered by a non-traditional campaign (here’s the “smoking” Cain ad everyone’s talking about). But  he’s going to have to do more than that to do well in the early nominating contests in January, Reuters’ Patricia Zengerle reports.

Rick Perry, who  formally announced his 20 percent flat tax plan on Tuesday, has dropped to fifth place among the eight declared Republican White House hopefuls, according to the poll.

The Texas governor has taken a steep slide to 6 percent support — down  from 23 percent (and front-runner status) in mid-September.

“Birther” talk bubbles up again

The “birther” question rises again in a wide-ranging interview with Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry in  “Parade.”

The Texas governor dismissed the questioning of whether President Barack Obama is a native-born U.S. citizen as a “distractive issue” — after responding to several questions about the issue.

Asked whether he believes Obama was born in the USA, Perry said he had no reason to think otherwise. But the governor suggested he was not certain about the birth certificate released by Obama.

“Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate,” Perry said.

But you’ve seen his, the interviewer said. “I don’t know. Have I?” Perry asks.

Perry said the birth certificate came up at his meeting last month with Donald Trump and  that the real estate mogul and TV reality show host  doesn’t think it’s real.

“I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter,” Perry said. “He’s (Obama) the president of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.”

Romney, Perry heat up stage at Las Vegas debate

In an earlier Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney delivered a composed, “nice try” when he and Rick Perry locked horns over their respective records.

But at the debate in Las Vegas Tuesday night, a fight for domination between the two 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls came through strong verbal punches.

In one  prolonged verbal battle over illegal immigration, it seemed as if Perry was back in fighting form after poor performances in the early debates.

The Texas governor threw the first jab, accusing Romney of hiring illegal immigrants to mow his lawn and when it was Romney’s turn to respond, Perry continuously interrupted the former Massachusetts governor — drawing boos from the audience.

Here’s a transcript of how the scene unfolded as the moderator, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, played referee:

PERRY: And Mitt, you lose all of your standing, from my perspective, because you hired illegals in your home and you knew about it for a year. And the idea that you stand here before us and talk about that you’re strong on immigration is on its face the height of hypocrisy. COOPER: Governor Romney? ROMNEY: Rick, I don’t think I’ve ever hired an illegal in my life. And so I’m afraid — I’m looking forward to finding your facts on that, because that just doesn’t – PERRY: Well, I’ll tell you what the facts are. ROMNEY: Rick, again — Rick, I’m speaking. PERRY: You had the — your newspaper — the newspaper – ROMNEY: I’m speaking. I’m speaking. I’m speaking…..You get 30 seconds. This is the way the rules work here, is that I get 60 seconds and then you get 30 second to respond. Right, Anderson? PERRY: And they want to hear you say that you knew you had illegals working at your – ROMNEY: Would you please wait? Are you just going to keep talking? PERRY: Yes, sir. ROMNEY: Would you let me finish with what I have to say?

As the brawl continued, Romney quipped, “This has been a tough couple of debates for Rick, and I understand that. And so you’re going to get testy.”

Cain in the spotlight

The spotlight burns a lot brighter when you’re the one leading the field (or tied for the lead).

Just ask Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.

The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO has been under increasing scrutiny since his rise to the top of the polls.

Analysts and pundits have been analyzing his “9-9-9″ tax plan and he’s gotten the “Saturday Night Live” treatment.

His recent proposal to use an electrified fence to fortify the border against illegal immigrants was a hot topic on cable news.

And then there’s video of this musical performance Cain gave when he was head of the pizza chain.

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Eric Thayer (Cain at office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix)