It’s Tuesday, so it’s time for President Obama to visit another swing state; today it’s Iowa.
CBS News’s Mark Knoller reminds us that this is Obama’s 10th visit to Iowa since taking office, 6th since officially becoming a candidate for reelection last year.
Obama won Iowa in 2008, 54 percent to 44 percent. The last three polls show a close race; WeAsk America finds Obama up by 1 percentage point; Rasmussen finds Romney up by 1 percentage point, and NBC News/Marist finds a tie. And then there’s Public Policy Polling, oh-so-often reassuring to Democrats, finding Obama up 10.
Then there’s this detail:
The latest report from the Secretary of State’s Office shows 11,516 more Iowans registered as Republicans at the end of June than in May. That increases the GOP advantage over Democrats to 21,378 voters.
The headline greeting the president in Iowa this morning, from the Des Moines Register:
Observers say Obama attacks on outsourcing are inaccurate, but effective
This seems to fit a trend: “Recovery Summer,” “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” “Solyndra was not our program per se” . . . as long as you don’t care whether what is said is accurate, Obama’s presidency sounds pretty good.
Elsewhere in the Register this morning:
[Democratic senator Tom] Harkin and his wife, Ruth, a former Story County attorney who’s on the board of directors for ConocoPhillips, have combined assets of $9.4 million to almost $21 million, which includes a vacation property in the Bahamas that’s worth from $500,000 to $1 million. Their assets generated the Harkins from $194,300 to $519,000 in earnings last year.
That would be the ConocoPhillips that his heavily into ethanol.
I hope that Sentor Harkin denounces Romney’s Cayman accounts from his Bahamas vacation home.
But we shouldn’t imagine Harkin is some financial genius or wheeler-dealer . . .
Harkin credits his wealth largely to his wife, telling The Des Moines Register this month that “I don’t know squat about investing money.”
. . . says the man on the Senate Appropriations Committee, directing billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars.