Obama campaign manager upbeat in Senate Dem visit

{mosads}The briefing occurred at the Senate Democrat’s weekly luncheon and comes as most major polls show Obama slightly ahead of Mitt Romney, whose campaign is doing damage control over the GOP nominee’s comment that 47 percent of Americans are “dependent upon government” and “believe that they are victims.”

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that Messina said the vote will be close but important factors are breaking in Obama’s favor.

“He said it is going to be a close election … we feel good about the structures we have in place particularly in the battleground states … all of the polling is encouraging, some of the states we are starting to build up some leads,” Durbin said.

Durbin said he was “impressed” by data showing that “the pace of volunteers, calls, voter registration is dramatically larger than it was four years ago.”
 
“So a lot of people who think this is not going to be the same effort are wrong,” he said.
 
Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who represents an important swing state, said “his overall message was the country is poised to reelect the president to a second term because Obama’s agenda is forward-looking and middle class-focused.”
 
He said that Messina made an “implied request” that members continue to push the message that Obama has better, concrete proposals.

“It was an upbeat briefing but far from celebratory,” he said.

“The election is in the balance. It will depend on turnout in key states, and so there was no chortling, there was no spiking the football or calling the campaign over,” Udall added.

“In fact it was a call to further action, further time and further focus to deliver the message to voters in key states and all over the country,” he said.


Udall and Durbin said that Mitt Romney’s appearance secret video characterizing Obama’s supporters as the 47 percent of the public that does not pay income taxes and depends on government support was not a focus of the meeting.