not at all. right. but in fairness romney helped with that. he had his own gaffes. here you have, you know, romney, everything is moving in the right direction. great debate. the president. the democrats. like hammering, you said they re stopping you as you re going. what is wrong with the president? hey. it is one of these things. i think the press will cover it differently. does the average voter does it change their mind about the economy? the polls had already shown that people were feeling better about the economy in general so i think if anything this adds to that. i think the larger political issue is for romney. i ve long felt that one debate performance alone was not going to be enough to be a game changer for him. it was more about they ve got to have a good week after. this is going to blunt that a little bit. let me read the romney statement before i get to you, jim. this is not what a real recovery looks like. this is just now from the romney campaign. recr
tax cut plan. and that, you know, he is going to find a way to offset them. do you not take him at his word? it is a complete fairy tale. it is a 20% tax cut across the board for everyone. huge business tax cuts. everyone that looks at it agrees the numbers, 5 trillion over ten years, he says i ll pay for it with deductions he won t name. so, you know, the middle class and the president made this point in the debate, if you think somehow you re not going to bear the burden for this then take that risk and vote for governor romney. but again, this isn t just some issue that he threw out one day on the campaign trail. it s the center piece of his entire campaign. his economic philosophy. by the way, he made clear the other day that he is not going to ask the wealthy to contribute one single dime to help reduce our deficit or grow our economy. well, that was, i was going to play, this is what joe biden yesterday said about tax hikes and then what paul ryan said in response. i ll play
unemployment number below 8% the month before the election? well chuck i don t think we should focus on politics today. this is obviously showing that we continued to recover from a horrible recession. we ve created over 5.2 million private sector jobs the last 30 months as you pointed out the unemployment rate is now back to where it was in january of 2009. and i d like to make the point though and i think we did talk about this debate wednesday, the recession wasn t an accident. there were policies and reasons that contributed to it. reckless wall street behavior, tax cuts for the wealthy unpaid for. these are the exact same policies mitt romney wants to return to. i think the president made that point wednesday at the middle class in our economy can t afford it. i want to play for you some reaction from your supporters at the rally in denver about the president and the debate. here s what they told me. i think he could have done better. i think that president obama
a pretty important lead in some battleground states. you don t think that is going to clang? we don t think so. first of all you know the president s, you know, got a high support level. you know, 49, 50, 51 depending on the state. we like what we re seeing in terms of early vote and absentee ballot requests. we don t think that is going to change. we re going to be able to measure this. i m sure the romney campaign says they re raising a lot of money. i m sure that is true. our supporters are energized. in denver yesterday, in madison yesterday big crowds, enthusiastic crowds. but we ll see where we are next week. you know, my sense is the fundamental structure of the campaign is not changed. some of the reasons that we ve been able to build a lead are around this sense of the middle class that the president has the right ideas for them. that hasn t changed. mitt romney doubled down on turning medicare into a voucher program, doubled down on rolling back wall street reform. he did
to make, a deficit to close. so what the vice president was saying is that the bush tax we want to continue middle class tax cuts. the republicans want to hold them hostage so we continue tax cuts for the wealthy. that is a fundamental difference. by the way with today s economic news we should continue to make progress. one thing we can do right away is pass a middle class tax cut so that, you know, 98% of the american people will have the confidence that their taxes won t go up next year. very important for consumer confidence. very important for our economy. and, you know, governor romney ought to tell his running mate paul ryan to call up the house republican leadership of what he is a member and get this done. so that we can give security and a guarantee to the middle class of this country and our economy that taxes aren t going to go up next year. do you believe the fundamentals of this campaign have changed from wednesday morning to today? i don t think so, chuck. obviousl