Sunday Breakfast Menu, Aug. 5

August 07

Political news from today's Times and around the Web, plus a look at the latest happenings in Washington.

August 06

President Obama finished an evening of fund-raising with an event at the Connecticut home of the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

August 06

The president coins a phrase that he hopes will keep voters thinking of Mitt Romney's tax plan.

August 06

Mitt Romney will embark on a four-day bus tour on Saturday that will take him to Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio, his campaign announced Monday.

August 06

In the latest installment of The Agenda series, David Leonhardt writes that the income stagnation of the last decade stems, in simplest terms, from the economy's overall sluggishness and the concentration of its modest gains among a small share of the population.

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Bill Clinton to Have Marquee Role at Democratic Convention

The prominent role of Mr. Clinton, which is scheduled to be announced on Monday, signals an effort by the Obama campaign to pull out all the stops to rally Democrats when they gather for their party’s national convention in Charlotte, N.C. An even more important audience will be the voters across the country who will see the address carried by television networks.

“There isn’t anybody on the planet who has a greater perspective on not just the last four years, but the last two decades, than Bill Clinton,” David Axelrod, a top strategist to the Obama campaign, said in an interview on Sunday. “He can really articulate the choice that is before people.”

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will appear on the final night of the convention, making the case for Mr. Obama before the largest audience of the week during an outdoor speech at the Bank of America Stadium. The vice president and Mr. Obama will appear together on stage before they accept the party’s nomination for a second term in the White House.

It is unusual in recent election cycles, although not without precedent, for the vice president not to get the stage to himself during a night at the convention. But in his speech, aides said, Mr. Biden is expected to remind Americans about the last four years and the administration’s accomplishments in a difficult economic climate.

The invitation for Mr. Clinton to be center stage at the convention signifies another milestone in the complicated and evolving relationship between the two presidents.

At the party’s convention in Denver four years ago, all eyes were on Mr. Clinton as he offered a full-throated endorsement of Mr. Obama in a speech that served as something of a truce after a contentious primary fight with his wife.

For Mr. Clinton, who has become one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party, the speech will be among the most high-profile roles yet that he has assumed for Mr. Obama. The address is intended to offer a strong contrast with the Republican ticket and will be closely watched, particularly given a string of blunt statements — and retractions — that Mr. Clinton has made this year when talking about the Obama administration.

For example, Mr. Clinton called for temporarily extending all of the tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year, including the Bush-era rates, which put him at odds with the president. He later apologized for those comments, but not before the Republican National Committee seized on the controversy.

Cheney on ’08 Palin Choice

Dick Cheney said on Sunday that Sarah Palin was not ready in 2008 to be his successor as vice president and that Senator John McCain’s decision was “a mistake” that Mitt Romney should seek to avoid making in his own choice of running mate.

Speaking to ABC News in his first interview since undergoing a heart transplant in March, Mr. Cheney said Mr. McCain’s choice clearly reflected considerations other than Ms. Palin’s ability to serve as vice president.

Asked whether a presidential candidate should consider how well a vice-presidential nominee might appeal in a particular state or to a demographic group, Mr. Cheney said, “Those are important issues, but they should never be allowed to override that first proposition.”

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Aug. 4: Likely No New Blue States in November

Saturday was a light day for polling, with only the national tracking polls and a South Dakota poll out; our forecast was essentially unchanged.

The South Dakota numbers were not bad for Mr. Obama — putting him down by 6 points, closer than the margin by which he lost the state in 2008 — but look like something of a fluke. In North Dakota, which has been more heavily polled because of the competitive Senate race there, Mr. Obama has consistently trailed by double digits.

Indeed, with the presidential election likely to be much closer than it was in 2008, Mr. Obama is unlikely to paint any new state blue this year. The forecast model gives him a 15 percent chance of carrying Montana, which has been sparsely polled; a 14 percent chance of winning Missouri; and an 8 percent chance of winning Arizona. Fourth on the list is South Dakota, where the model gives Mr. Obama about a 4 percent chance after the new survey, followed by Georgia at 2 percent.

Mr. Obama is an underdog in two states that he won in 2008, Indiana and North Carolina.

An earlier post in this space about poll oversampling was published in error and will be updated and published later this week.

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Record Spending by Obama’s Camp Shrinks Coffers

Since the beginning of last year, Mr. Obama and the Democrats have burned through millions of dollars to find and register voters. They have spent almost $50 million subsidizing Democratic state parties to hire workers, pay for cellphones and update voter lists. They have spent tens of millions of dollars on polling, online advertising and software development to turn Mr. Obama’s fallow volunteers corps into a grass-roots army.

The price tag: about $400 million from the beginning of last year to June 30 this year, according to a New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission records, including $86 million on advertising.

But now Mr. Obama’s big-dollar bet is being tested. With less than a month to go before the national party conventions begin, the president’s once commanding cash advantage has evaporated, leaving Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee with about $25 million more cash on hand than the Democrats as of the beginning of July.

Despite Mr. Obama’s multimillion-dollar advertising barrage against Mr. Romney, he is now being outspent on the airwaves with Mr. Romney benefiting from a deluge of spending by conservative “super PACs” and outside groups. While Mr. Romney has depleted much of his funds from the nominating contest, he is four weeks away from being able to tap into tens of millions of dollars in general election money. And many polls show the race to be very close.

Mr. Obama’s cash needs — he spent $70.8 million in June alone, more than half on advertising and far more than he raised — have brought new urgency to his campaign’s fund-raising efforts. His advisers have had to schedule more fund-raising trips than originally planned to big-money states like New York, according to donors involved in the effort. The super PAC supporting his campaign, Priorities USA Action, is enlisting former President Bill Clinton as a rainmaker, hoping to counter its conservative counterparts.

While Mr. Obama will also have access to general election money in September, he is unlikely to have the same spending advantage over Mr. Romney as he had during the primary season, when Mr. Romney spent much of his money battling Republican rivals.

And with August a traditionally slow month for fund-raising, Mr. Obama has bombarded his supporters in recent weeks with increasingly urgent pleas for money, mindful that he will need to drastically raise his cash intake in the coming months merely to equal his record-breaking haul from 2008.

“My upcoming birthday next week could be the last one I celebrate as president of the United States, but that’s not up to me — it’s up to you,” Mr. Obama wrote last week as the campaign’s latest fund-raising deadline and his Aug. 4 birthday approached. “This July deadline is our most urgent yet, coming after two consecutive months of being significantly outraised by Romney and the Republicans.”

Mr. Obama’s heavy expenditures — and his campaign’s pressure on bundlers to find and groom new donors — have stirred worries among other Democrats, who have long taken Mr. Obama’s financial supremacy for granted.

“There is a lot of worry that Romney’s folks are raising so much more,” said one of Mr. Obama’s top fund-raisers, who did not want to be identified as discussing internal campaign business. “I just don’t think there’s a lot of high-dollar money left on the table.”

In fact, Republicans insist that Mr. Obama will rue his spending.

“Heading into the final laps of the campaign, the Democrats will regret squandering so much of their haul early in the cycle on massive monthly overhead,” said Sean M. Spicer, a spokesman for the R.N.C.

But in interviews, party and campaign officials defended the approach of spending money to build out the campaign, saying they believed that the wisdom of Mr. Obama’s strategy would be demonstrated at the voting booth in November.

“The earlier the better,” said Adam Fetcher, an Obama campaign spokesman. “Starting a conversation with a persuadable voter months before Election Day allows us to be more effective in responding to that voter’s priorities than if they first hear from us a few weeks out. Building and maintaining our grass-roots foundation takes time and resources, but we believe those early investments will make a difference.”

But grass-roots movements do not come cheap.

Kitty Bennett and Derek Willis contributed reporting.

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Using Twitter, California Politicians Join Chick-fil-A Debate

As Congress wrangles over tax cuts and agricultural assistance heading into the August recess, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, took sides in a different fight Thursday.

“What I tweeted was I’m a Kentucky Fried Chicken fan,” the House minority leader told reporters with a grin.

Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto AgencyRepresentative Nancy Pelosi of California.

Ms. Pelosi, who was referring to a preference she expressed on Twitter last week, is one of the many politicians who have joined the recent debate about same-sex marriage, sparked when the president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A said the fast food chain supports “the biblical definition of the family unit.”

Among the politicians who have weighed in is Ed Lee, the mayor of San Francisco, who wrote on Twitter last Thursday that he was “very disappointed” in Chick-fil-A’s stance.

“Closest #ChickFilA to San Francisco is 40 miles away & I strongly recommend that they not try to come any closer,” Mr. Lee wrote.

Ms. Pelosi, whose congressional district includes most of San Francisco, said, “I believe in freedom of expression, but I believe the mayor of San Francisco has freedom of expression as well.” The issue is ultimately up to local officials, she said.

Using social media, thousands of people are planning a “same-sex kiss day” at Chick-fil-A locations Friday.

As liberals expressed their displeasure with Chick-fil-A and threatened to boycott, conservatives rallied to the chain’s defense. Hundreds of thousands poured into locations all over the country Wednesday to show their support at the suggestion of Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor.

No word on whether Ms. Pelosi prefers her KFC chicken Original Recipe or Extra Crispy.

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In Missouri Senate Race, Ads Beset Incumbent Democrat

As the three Republican candidates have battled it out, Ms. McCaskill has had to buckle down as well. Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, David and Charles Koch’s Americans For Prosperity, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the 60 Plus Association have dumped as much as $15 million into the state since July 2011 to keep her on her heels.

In their advertisements, Ms. McCaskill’s face is sometimes bloated, sometimes goofy, sometimes exhausted. She is usually joined at the hip with President Obama. And she is always almost single-handedly to blame for Missouri’s economic travails, the nation’s skyrocketing debt, the Democrats’ health care law and a scandalous level of duplicity.

“As one guy said to me in rural Missouri, ‘Don’t worry, they’re trying to tenderize you before they pick a candidate,’ ” Ms. McCaskill said Thursday.

The sustained campaign could become a textbook for future efforts in a new era of anything-goes campaign financing, both Ms. McCaskill and her opponents say.

Most of the spending is coming from tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organizations like Crossroads GPS, which may accept large corporate and individual donations without disclosing donors’ identities. And the outcome could show that third-party advertising from these organizations and from “super PACs” — like Now or Never, which works on behalf of Sarah Steelman, one of the Republican candidates — could tip the balance to a larger degree in a statewide or Congressional race than in the presidential contest.

In other states with contested Republican primaries, like Arizona, Indiana and Wisconsin, outside money flowed in to take sides in the primaries themselves, leaving the Republican contenders wounded and the Democrat in better shape. In Missouri, it flowed in largely to take down the Democrat, providing vital air cover while the Republicans fought each other below the radar.

The three Republican candidates may be lesser known and less dynamic than Ms. McCaskill, a mainstay of Missouri politics, but she is possibly the most endangered incumbent in the Senate. A Mason-Dixon poll published on July 28 in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch found her trailing all three of her potential opponents, John Brunner, a businessman; Ms. Steelman, a former state treasurer; and Representative Todd Akin.

“When you have a late primary like in Missouri’s, the ability to keep a sustained message-fire on the incumbent is going to be important to whoever the nominee is going to be,” said Kenneth Goldstein, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks campaign television spending.

Republicans are reluctant to give the outside groups too much credit. They say Ms. McCaskill’s uphill climb to a second term is due to her fealty to Mr. Obama’s legislative agenda in a state where he is unpopular.

“Certainly the outside spending has reminded voters why they might not like her much,” said Todd Abrajano, an aide to Mr. Brunner. “But if there was no outside money, she’d still be in the predicament she is in today.”

But when pushed, Republicans do not deny that the groups have helped.

“They are keeping the pressure on McCaskill,” Mr. Akin said. “And that’s making any of us think, ‘We can do it, we can do it.’ ”

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, allowed, “I can’t deny it’s had some impact.”

The Missouri Senate race has drawn outside money from more than a half-dozen groups: two Democratic outfits, the Majority PAC and Patriot Majority USA; and five Republican allies. The Campaign Media Analysis Group tallied $5.2 million in ads since June 1, compared with $4.8 million in Ohio, $2.9 million in Florida, $1.5 million in Montana and $1.1 million in North Dakota, where other contested Senate campaigns have drawn outside attention.

The Majority PAC has spent $722,000 since June to help Ms. McCaskill. Crossroads GPS has spent $857,000 against her, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce $190,000.

Democratic strategists say those numbers understate the impact. Crossroads GPS’s first ads ran in early July 2011, and since then, nine separate ads have come in a rolling barrage. When Crossroads GPS eased up in June, the chamber peaked in July. By the Democrats’ count, anti-McCaskill spending has already reached $15.2 million, with an additional $18 million in advertising slots reserved for the fall.

“People will look back at Missouri and look back at the money that’s been spent by outside forces and say this is an election that shows whether or not these anonymous masters of the universe can buy these elections,” Ms. McCaskill said. “If it works in Missouri, then I think we’re in for a rough ride in this country.”

Her opponents dismiss that. Since Ms. McCaskill’s narrow Senate victory in 2006, her state has drifted right. Mr. Obama lost Missouri in 2008 by fewer than 4,000 votes out of nearly three million cast. But in a 2010 Senate race, Roy Blunt, then a Republican representative, crushed Robin Carnahan, a Democratic scion of Missouri political royalty, by nearly 14 percentage points.

Some Missouri Republican strategists said the outside groups knew that Ms. McCaskill could not win and flooded the state to claim a scalp to take to their donors. Others said they saw her weakness and decided they could not forgive themselves if they let her off the mat.

For her part, Ms. McCaskill has made the outside money the main opponent of the campaign.

One McCaskill advertisement says: “They just keep coming back. Secret money attacking Claire McCaskill. These big oil and insurance companies don’t want you to know who they are.” As a stream of televisions showing her competitors’ ads moves across the screen, it continues: “Claire McCaskill will fight them. Always has, always will.”

Republicans say her effort has proved to be a major strategic error. Ms. McCaskill’s focus on the money has only intensified awareness of the campaign’s national importance, made her look defensive and increased the resolve of the outside groups to stay in, they say.

But Ms. McCaskill said that once her opponent was chosen, she could shift gears and try to move the race from a referendum on her to a choice between her and her opponent.

“I’ve had to tread water,” she said, “while they have been pounding me with certainly more per capita than anybody else in the country.”

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Romney Team Outpaces Obama in Fund-Raising Again

Mr. Romney and the Republican National Committee took in $101.3 million in July, his campaign announced Monday, as Republican donors rallied behind their presumptive nominee with the national convention only a few weeks away. The president’s campaign announced on Twitter on Monday morning that his July fund-raising with the Democratic National Committee topped out at about $75 million — the third month in a row they have brought in less than the Republicans.

Mr. Obama’s team appears to have all but conceded the money race, deluging the president’s grass-roots supporters this summer with fund-raising e-mails and warning supporters of the financial advantage that the Republicans will hold going into the final months of the campaign.

“Make no mistake, we will be outspent,” a senior campaign official said during a conference call with reporters last month.

More detailed information about the July fund-raising, including how much the candidates themselves raised and how they spent their money, has not yet been released by the two candidates. All campaigns are required to report their fund-raising to the Federal Election Commission by Aug. 20.

But the Republican figure keeps Mr. Romney and his party on pace to bring in $800 million for the cycle, the target set by Mr. Romney’s team in April. Roughly a quarter of the Republicans’ haul, $25.7 million, came in donations under $250, as Mr. Romney worked to increase his appeal among small donors.

“Americans are clearly looking for a change in the White House,” Reince Priebus, the chairman of the R.N.C., said in a statement. “While President Obama claims that his economic plan ‘worked,’ the American people know that his policies haven’t worked and he has failed to fix our economy.”

Because Mr. Obama easily outraised Mr. Romney all of last year and early this year, the president does not need to beat Mr. Romney in the months ahead to bring in the roughly $750 million his team has said they wish to raise in this cycle.

But heavy spending on field organizers, technology and advertising — more than $400 million through the end of June — appears to have cost Mr. Obama the impressive cash advantage he once had. And Democratic-leaning “super PACs” have raised far less money than their Republican counterparts, forcing Mr. Obama to spend heavily on attack advertisements against Mr. Romney, even while conservative groups pummel him on the airwaves.

The Republicans have used the cash surge of the last two months to begin trying to match Mr. Obama’s field advantage, opening about 250 offices around the country, recruiting volunteers and hiring more than 600 staff members for the fall campaign. On Saturday, the R.N.C. announced that organizers had made their one millionth voter contact of the election cycle. The committee has also begun running general election advertisements, as Mr. Romney began doing in May.

The campaign, the Republican National Committee and a joint fund established by the Republicans to raise presidential campaign cash ended July with $185.9 million in cash on hand. They did not disclose what part of the money would end up in Mr. Romney’s campaign coffers, which can accept only $5,000 from each donor every election cycle, and how much would go to the R.N.C., which can accept more than 10 times that amount from each donor.

Mr. Obama did not disclose how much money his campaign and the D.N.C. have on hand.

The strong fund-raising puts renewed pressure on Mr. Obama to bring in more cash and suggests certainty that Mr. Romney will remain financially competitive with an incumbent whose fund-raising prowess has long been a hallmark.

Underscoring the campaign’s changed fortunes, Mr. Obama’s campaign is no longer announcing its fund-raising totals in lush videos featuring his senior staff or field workers. Instead, on Monday, not long after Mr. Romney made his announcement, Mr. Obama’s campaign put out its total in a brief message to his Twitter followers, thanking them for their money.

“Every bit helps,” the campaign wrote.

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