Obama Looks to Women, Latino Voters to Catch Romney in Colorado
President Barack Obama, running behind in the latest poll in Colorado, is trying to energize two key constituencies in the swing state, women and Hispanics, as Mitt Romney blames Obama for the U.S.’s slow economic recovery.
Addressing a predominantly female audience yesterday in Denver on the first of a two-day Colorado visit, Obama said Romney and Republicans support policies “more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century” on women’s issues, including insurance coverage for contraception.
“The choice between going backward and moving forward has never been so clear,” Obama told an audience of mostly women at the city’s Auraria Event Center. He was introduced by Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law graduate whom talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh earlier this year labeled a “slut” for supporting Obama’s mandate for insurers to cover birth control.
Later, in Grand Junction, the president said Romney would take away women’s control of their health-care decisions. Obama also defended his economic policies, saying he had inherited an economy reeling from the worst recession in more than seven decades and that he was putting the nation on the right course. “There are no quick fixes,” he said.
He said Romney would have let the U.S. auto industry go bankrupt and that Romney’s plans to cut taxes for wealthy Americans would require expanding the deficit or raising taxes on middle-income Americans.