Sunday, October 24, 2010
Associated Press
MINNEAPOLIS
Why go backward? President Barack Obama challenged voters Saturday. He said Republicans only can hope Americans forget which party brought them a “lost decade.”
Obama closed a four-day campaign swing ahead of the Nov. 2 elections with a spirited rally imploring supporters to defeat the conventional wisdom that Democrats face steep losses. He cast the choice Election Day as one between the economic policies “that got us into this mess” and the policies leading the nation out.
“All they’ve got is the same old stuff that they were peddling over the last decade,” he said of Republicans. “I just don’t want to relive the past.” He said: “The other side is betting on amnesia. It is up to you to show them that you have not forgotten.”
Obama rallied in Minneapolis to help former senator Mark Dayton in his race for governor against Republican state legislator Tom Emmer and the Independence Party’s Tom Horner, a public- relations executive and political pundit. Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s second term runs out in January.
“Mark Dayton has spent his life working for Minnesota, and now I need all of you to fight for Mark Dayton,” Obama told a crowd estimated at 11,000 by the University of Minnesota, where he spoke.
It’s been a grueling four days of campaigning and fundraising by the president, who since Wednesday had touched down in Oregon, Washington state, California and Nevada. He has been helping congressional allies, such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, in tight races.
Cheered at large rallies at every stop, Obama begins his basic speech with some flattering talk about the local candidate. Then he launches into his message that voting Republican would be a mistake for the country.
“This election is a choice between the policies that got us into this mess and the policies that are leading us out of it,” he told the Minnesota rally.
Voters are angry about the economy, unemployment and other issues and, according to polls, seem intent on taking out their frustrations on Democrats — the party in power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue — on Nov. 2.
But Obama is trying to remind the broad coalition that helped elect him in 2008 — women, Hispanics, minorities and young voters — that change always has been slow to come but is coming, so they should not give up.