Iraq

Democratic Catholic activists who've worked in Ohio are thrilled to have one of their own on a national ticket again.

U.S. Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) has received rave reviews from two people who work to get Democrats' message out to Catholic voters.

Mara Vanderslice worked for Gov. Ted Strickland's 2006 campaign and currently heads the Matthew 25 political action committee. Vanderslice said Biden can make the case to voters less from specific issues in a speech and more from the fact that he can vouch for Obama as a member of the same community as voters in areas like Youngstown, Toledo and Steubenville.

"For me he brings a working-class cultural background, growing up in Scranton and working-class areas in Delaware. I feel like he takes his Catholic faith very seriously. I think that he will culturally connect to the kinds of voters Obama needs to win," she said.

COLUMBUS - State Sen. Steve Stivers (R-Columbus) admits that Franklin Co. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Columbus) is better known among voters than he is from her failed bid to win the seat two years ago, but Stivers' campaign is out to change that beginning tomorrow with a television ad.

The 30-second spot airing tomorrow morning on broadcast television introduces Stivers as a man of solid character, a message vouched by those who served with him in Iraq and Kuwait during his National Guard tour there four years ago (see the ad below).

The campaign moved up its tentative start for television ads to this week from Sept. 9, as PolitickerOH.com reported earlier. Stivers ad comes a week after Kilroy's ads began airing and also after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee began attacking Stivers on television last week.

Bush Approval Holds At Low 21%U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D) and John McCain (R): Getty Images

A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama leading Republican John McCain in Massachusetts by a spread of 51 percent to 36 percent. The sample size is 500 and the margin of error is +/-4.5 percent.

The poll, conducted by telephone on Aug. 5, shows little tightening in the race, with Obama down two points from their June 30 poll, while McCain has risen by three points.

Counting those only leaning toward a candidate, Obama's lead increases to 16 points, 54 percent to 38 percent.

Interestingly, the poll shows unaffiliated voters breaking for the Republican, 45 percent to 36 percent. Both have similar backing among party stalwarts, with McCain garnering 79 percent of Republicans' support and Obama getting 78 percent of Democrats.

Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher defended U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) visit to Germany today while U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) visits Columbus today for a town hall meeting about cancer with Lance Armstrong this evening.

Fisher said Obama's emphasis on foreign policy is not entirely removed from America's domestic concerns.

“He is demonstrating, I believe, his leadership ability and capacity on a broad global scale, and this is the right time to be doing it," Fisher said. "I think it’s right to say that this is not an ‘either-or.' I think that the fact he is spending so much time abroad...should not be an indication to anyone that his first priority isn’t America’s domestic policy. But we know the domestic policy and foreign policy are intertwined more than ever before.”

Fisher said he expected Obama would visit Ohio more times than McCain by Election Day, calling the state the “epicenter” of the presidential campaign.

Fisher was asked whether Obama's answers to questions about the surge's success will hurt him among voters. Fisher stuck to the Obama campaign's message on Iraq: if it were up to Obama, the U.S. would have never invaded in the first place.

“The vast majority of Ohioans I have talked to believe our entry into the Iraq conflict was misguided from the very start,” Fisher said. “While I think it’s fair to say that we may parse words about where we are now in terms of the surge, I don’t think we should ever forget the fact that it has been Senator Obama from day one who’s been consistent in advocating that this was not the single most-effective way to combat al Qaeda and terrorism."

The AFL-CIO's Ohio local is up with a television ad attacking John McCain's Senate record, tying him to President Bush. The ad began airing yesterday.

State Rep. Josh Mandel (R-Lyndhurst), an Iraq war veteran, responded on behalf of the Ohio Republican Party yesterday in a statement.

"This ad continues the long line of smears and distortions coming from the Obama campaign and its partisan allies.  It's clear that Barack Obama's call for a new kind of politics is nothing more than empty rhetoric from a typical politician.  The Obama campaign represents politics as usual, but John McCain has always worked in a bipartisan fashion to put his country first," Mandel said.

PORTSMOUTH - John McCain was in Ohio only two weeks ago but came yesterday with a revised approach to his trademark town hall meetings, giving a prepared speech and sticking mostly to this week's economic theme. However, the town hall was not without tough questions, which McCain took head-on.

McCain focused on his campaign's economic message of the week, first reading prepared remarks from an inconspicuous podium that stood barely waist-high on the stage. Senior McCain advisor Mark Salter paced at one end of the gymnasium as he watched McCain's delivery, which has been under renewed focus after of his struggles to read from a teleprompter and criticism that his campaign lacks a disciplined, day-to-day message.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney in 'The Situation Room': CNNOn CNN's 'The Situation Room,' guest anchor Suzanne Malveaux pressed ex-presidential contender and former Gov. Mitt Romney on Republican presidential nominee John McCain's ideas for the American economy, position on national security and proximity to one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history.

Speaking from Boston, Romney said that McCain's key financial priority is to reduce the dependence on foreign oil and high costs through more drilling and nuclear power, which would help "middle-income families at a time when this economy is really putting a pinch on them."

Confronted with Barack Obama's comments today that  the Arizona senator's economic package is "the Bush plan" and will "not only continue the Bush tax cuts but to  wealthy corporations [but] increase them," he stood by McCain's proposals as "big tax savings for middle-income families" through reducing the Alternative Minimum Tax and making the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Tenth district Rep. Bill Delahunt and his colleague Rosa DeLauro have an op-ed in this morning's Washington Post countering the paper's editorial board for chiding Democrats' opposition to "a proposed long-term military agreement between the United States and Iraq that would replace the U.N. mandate under which U.S. forces are fighting."

The thrust:

"Congress has a constitutional obligation to conduct oversight of international negotiations and to approve agreements that relate to offensive military action. Everything about this agreement is being handled by rumor and leak. We cannot support something for which we have no concrete details."

Read it here.

Vets for Freedom, an Iraq and Afghanistan verterans organization, is airing television ads in Ohio calling on both presidential candidates to "finish the job" of the Iraq war. The group is spending more than $1.5 million between four states, including Ohio. The ad buy is part of a four-month campaign by Vets for Freedom.

The group has an Ohio chapter but appears to have done little in the state so far, besides endorsing Iraq war veteran and state Sen. Steve Stivers (R-Columbus) in the 15th Congressional District race. The Ohio chapter is headed by Lee Crognale from Powell, Ohio and appears in the ad.

So much for our promise to liberate Iraq, not to occupy it, and not to cart off its riches.