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This article is about how Obama's target audience in his advertising is mainly blue-collar women (middle aged white women without education). It brought up two major questions for me: 1. how important is advertising? It seems to be most affective when criticizing the opposing candidate. 2. how important are women (specifically blue-collar women) in this election? How do women's rights tie into the swing votes/why are many GOP-leaning blue-collar women now leaning towards Obama?

I found this very interesting, I normally don't really think of what the midwest's demographic is, but to see that it is blue-collar white women is super interesting. I also think the connection between advertising and the women is really powerful. The ads they are showing are definitely working since much of Obama's supports are their targeted audience.

It's funny that they focus on such a specific group. This quote stood out to me: "Democrats say blue-collar women have been the principal, and most receptive, target for their extended ad barrage portraying Romney as a plutocrat who is blind, if not indifferent, to the struggles of average families." The ads all seem to be focused on saying how bad Romney will be for these women, rather than Obama helping them. How can they know that Obama is really right for them if all they know is that they don't like Romney?

Although Obama stresses the positive outcomes from "reviving" General Motive,s I'm wondering why he didn't (maybe it just wasn't discussed in this article) continue talking about the jobs he will create. The unemployment rate is still high despite the Auto-industry bailout and I would think Ohio needs to hear what he WILL do along with what he has accomplished.

I think Obama is making a smart move to reflect on the improvements he has made in Ohio, but I agree with Danielle that it's strange that he doesn't mention future progress. He also revisits a risky idea that he mentioned in his DNC speech: that the road to recovery is long and far from easy, and we're just starting.

The article says "Democrats are likely to look at the economy with rose-colored glasses because they want their candidate to win in November" which doesn't really address anything. If they believe that the economy is bad and that Obama isn't going to fix it, why are they going to vote for him? The article doesn't give any reasoning at all for why people would want to vote for Obama, just makes them seem crazy for wanting to do so. As for your questions, James, I think they did pick the best candidate at the time. I just think that Obama is a really remarkable politician and public speaker, whether you agree with him or not, and Romney can't compete with that. That, and many people really do believe that Obama is improving the economy.

I'm not seeing the true point of this article. I think the "rose-colored glasses" refer to people that will support Obama regardless of the campaign. I think that there are people who like what he has done and trust him so will vote for him regardless of the economic state right now...but is that hard to believe? Not really. He probably has some advantage from winning people's trust in the past 4 years.

Yeah I agree. I don't think the article went into enough detail with enough facts to convince me of anything. Of course people who support Obama and want him to win are going to see him in a better way then people supporting Romney. And I think depending which part of Obama you choose to focus on, there is a good and bad just like with the policies or actions of any other politician.

Sabrina, I disagree with you in just about nearly everything that you said. The economy is not getting better. He's put more long term damage on us than I thought imaginable 4 years ago. I don't think that he has helped our economy, and here is why: Yes, he did help save us from total collapse, but even then, it wasn't him, it was TARP, signed into law under Bush, which even permitted his actions as acceptable. Gas prices have raised by 1.30/gal and the amount of americans on food stamps has doubled. Sure, short-term unemployment is down from a couple of weeks ago, but the fact of the matter is that at this time in 2008 it was 13M, and it is now 22M. Yes, I understand that Obama has to deal with the Bush era's layover, but in 2016 he will have only improved this number slightly to 19M, not nearly enough to say that he is helping our economy. Under Obama, income inequality was greater than in 2008. Long term unemployment rates have doubled, which in my opinion, is a better indicater of long term well being. The big 5 made 48% of our GDP this year, compared to 32% in 2008, thanks to Dod Franklin. He's increasing middle class tax burden by about 3,000$ with the passing of Obamacare. ACA will increase our debt by 500M a year because it calls for 1T in funds, but only allows tax raises totalling half of that, causing our budget deficit to increase rapidly. At current rates, excluding the increases in deficit from ACA and others, in 2016 our spending will be 130% of our GDP, which is simply instable and can in no way be considered 'helpful' to our economy. Let's not forget the high intrest on our debt, so this number will only drastically increase in the long run. Some of you will be paying taxes by 2016, and as a taxpayer you will owe the government around 220K apeice, because at that point in time an even lower fraction of our population will be paying taxes than currently. I do not like Obama as a politician at

Sabrina, I think for the many families struggling to put food on the table, yes their main concern is jobs. I'm still curious how Obama's track record will effect this election. I wonder if Romney will have somewhat of an advantage because he hasn't had some of the "failure" that Obama has with getting things done in congress. Do you think people are hopeful that Obama can fix the hold ups in Congress? This quote sums it up why some people think will happen again. "The president just cannot work with Congress to finally get the job done. He says he would. He said he would before and he didn't,"

To answer your question on who I think won, I would agree that Romney won the debate. Before the debate I had been reading a lot of articles which claimed that unless Romney pulled through with the debate, he had pretty much already lost the election. I think that debate helped him to 'bounce' back and have a shot to stay in the race rather than fall out even if it did not give him a real boost to be ahead. Additionally, the article showed wide gaps in the peoples' opinions on the less political traits of the candidates (relatable, likable, ect.) I am curious how much those polls actually matter if the difference is so vast between the candidates.

There is absolutly no way to say that Romney didn't win the debate. There was a strict set of facts that Obama could have used to harm the GOP in general, but he didn't. He stumbled through his last bits and filled his speech with tons of 'um', and spent the entire time looking down. Unfortunatly, a good bit of the population votes based on who they like as a person, and that can't be changed.

I am a little bit confused by the poll results, 51% of voters like Romney and 56% like Obama, but the article claims that Romney definitely won. If you are looking at, which candidate is liked better, there is not a huge difference between Romney and Obama, but Obama is obviously liked more. I would agree that Romney won the debate since he seemed more confident and secure with what he was trying to get across. I got to see a side of Romney that made him seem more powerful then Obama because I felt like Romney got more into the debate and was defending/attacking Obama.

I think the race will be a close one. I think for some people, the third presidential debate will either cement someone's choice or make them more hesitant. Romney needs to not make another mistake with his wording in regards to women while Obama needs to keep him energy up.

We read an article about this at Urban, but often the polls are unreliable. They can choose who they want to poll, how they contact the people they poll, and how they analyze the information. I'm not saying that this particular poll is wrong, just to take it with a grain of salt because I'm sure there are many polls that disagree with it.

Eli, what part of the article did you find subjective/biased? I thought it gave a relatively neutral overview of the messages from his convention speech.

I, too, found the article somewhat subjective in the tone of the writing. As far as the content goes, it was interesting how so much of the election campaigns are based on the people's ignorance or unawareness. For example, Romney referring to our current economy as the "Obama economy", even though it is not the direct result of Obama's economical beliefs/plans, is effective through its inaccuracy because many people listening to his speech are probably unaware of how the economy got to where it is today.

This article does a good job of pointing out the disappointment that many Americans are probably feelings towards the government, but I agree with Eli that the tone is very Liberal. This was especially apparent in phrases like this one: " the GOP convention showed how broadly Republican leaders and delegates loathe the president". I also liked the point that you can like someone personally and still disagree with them politically-this is an email that comes up a lot in Democratic speeches. It was also interesting to read about whether Romney is running as a business man or a governor.

This article helped me go more in depth into Romney's speech as it analyzed what he was trying to say. The article brought into focus how all of Romney's key points are directly against what Obama has done so far as well as what Obama plans to do in the future.

I'm wondering how effective knocking on people's doors in the hopes of persuading them towards a particular candidate can be. This strategy seems ineffective from how I imagine the conversation going, if a person even gets a door opened. Also, how I'm curious how many people in Ohio participate in the election?

Battling for voters' attention is extremely difficult, especially when the two candidates seem to be saying exactly opposite things. And, in a case like this, money can talk, and the Republicans are funded by a lot of wealthy groups. It seems so frustrating to me that money plays such a huge factor in how people vote, but it some cases, money can demonstrate popular opinion. The more donations a campaign receives, the more money people are willing to invest in that candidate.