With five days to go until Election Day, it's all about Ohio for the Obama campaign.
The president will be in the Buckeye State four of the next five days. "That doesn't give off a sense of confidence," Chuck Todd said to Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter on today's Daily Rundown.
Cutter assured Todd that the Obama campaign's Midwest "firewall"—Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa—will hold up. "We are ahead in all of these states," she said. She also mentioned that the campaign has a "solid lead" in Wisconsin and is "ahead" in Colorado—two states Obama is also visiting today.
The latest polling data appears to bear Cutter out. Still, the Romney campaign begs to differ. “Right now, their firewall is burning,” Romney political director Rich Beeson said on a conference call yesterday.
Romney has been getting flack from auto giants General Motors and Chrysler for his latest ad falsely suggesting that Chrysler is moving U.S. jobs to China, and that the Obama's administration's auto rescue has led to more offshoring. These television and radio ads, running in Ohio, were intended to diminish Obama’s key political selling point in the Buckeye State—about one in eight Ohio jobs are tied to the auto industry—but are instead causing backlash.
But the president is still spending so much time in the battleground state because "Republicans have never won the White House without going through Ohio," Cutter said. "We are up there...for a very good reason."
Mitt Romney is in Virginia today, and will make two stops in New Hampshire, and one in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Colorado over the next few days.
Then there's Florida. "No one is talking about Florida, Chuck. ... Florida could be in the Obama victory column, and we're counting on it," Cutter said.
Romney was in Florida yesterday; the president will visit the swing state Sunday.