Obama turns back to the economy
Posted: Sunday, August 17, 2008 4:59 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
Economy
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
RENO, NV -- After spending a leisurely week in Hawaii and stopping by a southern California mega-church to talk about faith in politics, Obama was back on the campaign trail today -- and back on the message he hopes will help him defeat his GOP rival: the economy.
Obama held a town hall and gave brief remarks on his economic plans. And used every opportunity to draw contrasts with McCain on tax policy, health care and energy, hitting the Arizona senator for running negative ads and repeatedly saying that he had not been truthful about issues ranging from dealing with high fuel costs to his support for alternative energy.
"John McCain and I fundamentally disagree on how we are gonna move this country forward. He ran a negative ad -- which is most of the ads he runs -- he ran a negative ad that claimed all my economic plan was was higher taxes and that it would lead to economic disaster," Obama said, before going on to tell the audience that his tax policy would benefit the middle class more than McCain's. "I've got news for John McCain: My plan's not gonna bring about economic disaster. We already have economic disaster from John McCain's president George W. Bush, and we can't afford another four years or eight years of George W. Bush policies and that's why we're gonna beat John McCain in this election to put America on a new path."
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers responded with this statement. "If Barack Obama believes his plan will not bring 'economic disaster,' he should take issue with Nevada's largest newspaper -- not John McCain. The Las Vegas Review-Journal said Obama's tax and energy plans would be a 'recipe for economic disaster.'" Yet as First Read pointed out on Friday, that "economic disaster" quote came from the paper's conservative editorial pages.
At the town hall, Obama was introduced by Patty Chastain, a real estate agent whose business has suffered as Nevada faces sky-high foreclosure rates. Nevada, the only caucus state that Obama lost during the primary season, is a red state he hopes to turn blue in the fall.
Obama said McCain had been against raising the minimum wage and expanding the GI Bill, had a health-care plan that would hurt ordinary people, and had been opposed to efforts to help promote the kind of renewable energy that could help states like Nevada.
"We haven't been passing the credits that are needed for companies to invest in solar power and oh, by the way, guess what -- John McCain has opposed these credits in the past and then he's got the nerve to stand up there on television and talk about how he believes in alternative energy," Obama said. "It's just not true."
He told the crowd they shared a common story and asked them not to be fooled by nasty emails and ads featuring "Paris and Britney."
During the Q&A, Obama disagreed with a man who asked a rambling, at times unintelligible question in which he tried to diminish McCain's military service. Obama said he respected McCain's service but disagreed with his policies.
The crowd of about 250 people was made up of union members and local activists, and tickets were distributed through the local campaign, according to a staffer.
At one point, Obama asked union members to use their member-to-member contacts help him get elected by dispelling rumors going around about him being someone who will take away people's guns and about him being a Muslim, though he made a point of saying there were a lot of great Muslim Americans.
