Ahead of DNC, Obama hits Romney over health care

Associated Press

CHARLOTTE, N.C.

Campaigning his way toward Tuesday’s start of the Democratic National Convention, President Barack Obama slapped a “Romney doesn’t care” label on his rival’s health-care views Sunday and said Republicans want to repeal new protections for millions without offering a plan of their own.

Vice President Joe Biden swiftly broadened the attack, accusing Republicans of seeking to undermine the decades-old federal program millions of seniors rely on for health care. “We are for Medicare. They are for voucher care,” he said.

The president and vice president campaigned separately across three battleground states as delegates descended on the Democrats’ convention city for two days of partying before their first official meeting Tuesday in the Time Warner Cable Arena.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney spent Sunday at his Wolfeboro, N.H., vacation home, leaving only to attend church services with his wife, Ann.

Aides said he would spend much of the Democrats’ convention week preparing for three fall debates with Obama, beginning Oct. 3.

Running mate Paul Ryan was booked into North Carolina, counterprogramming the Democratic convention rhetoric.

Some 800 demonstrators marched through the streets around the convention hall in Charlotte, protesting what they call corporate greed as well as U.S. drone strikes overseas, said to kill children as well as terrorists. Dozens of police officers walked along with the protesters’ parade, carrying gas masks, wooden batons and plastic hand ties. One arrest was reported, for public intoxication.

The economy is the dominant issue of the campaign, and Biden’s itinerary, in particular, underscored the threat that a sluggish recovery and high, 8.3 percent unemployment pose to Democrats seeking another term in power. He was in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states that have received little attention previously as the candidates, their parties and outside allies concentrate on the areas of the country deemed most competitive. His presence suggested the race in both states was tightening.

There was additional evidence of the same concern, as the president’s senior surrogates refused to give a direct answer when asked on Sunday morning television programs if Americans are better off than they were four years ago.

“We’ve clearly improved ... from the depths of the recession,” said David Plouffe, one of Obama’s top White House aides.

He sought to swiftly turn the question into criticism of the Republicans.

“The Romney path would be the wrong path for the middle class, the wrong path for this country,” he insisted.

Asked the same better-or-not question that has become a staple of presidential campaigns, another top adviser, David Axelrod answered, “I think the average American recognizes that it took years to create the crisis that erupted in 2008 and peaked in January of 2009. And it’s going to take some time to work through it.”

Obama spoke on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, and made his by-now familiar plea for students to register and vote.