By Kathy Wray Coleman, Associate Publisher, Editor, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina- President Barack Obama (pictured) and former President Bill Clinton (pictured) teamed up last week at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC and showed how performances at national party conventions can dictate outcomes on election day.
Since the convention Obama has broken a previous tie that he had coming in to it and now leads 49% to GOP opponent Mitt Romey's 45%, with 3% undecided and another 3% saying they will vote for other candidates, according to a presidential tracking poll on Sunday by the Ramussen Reports.
The president is also ahead in Ohio, leading Romney 50% to 45%, a Public Policy Poling (PPP) survey released on Monday shows.
A Gallup daily tracking poll also has Obama leading Romney nationally, 49% to 44 %.
And unlike the Republican Convention held two weeks ago that had none, the Democrats had two presidents aboard for theirs, both of whom drove home several points.
Obama and Clinton said emphatically though that the Republicans want tax cuts for the rich to hurt the poor and middle class, that education, foreign policy and health care agendas under the Democrats are better for America, and that the Democrats, under the leadership of President Obama, are bringing in jobs and improving an economy left in shambles because of eight years of the failed economic policies of the George W. Bush administration.
And neither was shy on bragging on his status as president of the United States of America.
"I recognize that times have changed since I spoke to this convention. The times have changed and so have I ," Obama said after formally accepting the Democratic nomination for president Thursday night. "I'm no longer just a candidate, I'm the president."
Clinton, who enjoyed a prosperous economy during the time he was in office, told the convention audience that Obama inherited an economy driven downward by the Republicans in power before him like no other since the recession under Democratic President Theodore Roosevelt, and that Americans in question need only to "do the arithmetic."
Ohio state Rep. Bill Patmon (pictured in red tie), a Cleveland Democrat who represents state legislative district 10, said that Clinton and Obama together are a powerhouse.
"President Obama is dynamic and former President Bill Clinton is simply the consummate statesman," said Patmon.
But Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald (pictured last), who attended the Democratic convention last week, said that while Obama's speech was great, First Lady Michelle Obama (pictured) stole the show from her husband with her arousing convention speech Tuesday night.
"I thought he [President Obama] was great and she [First Lady Michelle Obama] was even better, I must admit," said FitzGerald, who leads Cuyahoga County, Ohio's largest county, and one that is roughly 30 percent Black and includes the largely Black major metropolitan city of Cleveland.
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