DAVENPORT, IA -- President Barack Obama would win a second term if the election were held today, a top adviser to the president argued Wednesday.
A sanguine David Plouffe told reporters Wednesday Obama maintains several paths to winning 270 electoral votes despite some polls showing tightening races in some swing states.
“We win the election if it were held today,” the senior White House adviser told reporters traveling after Obama’s event in Davenport, IA. "Our view is that in all the battleground states we’ve contested, every single one of them, we have a credible pathway to 50 percent."
He counted even the more challenging states for Obama, such as North Carolina, Virginia and Florida in that mix and suggested that the Romney campaign’s continued heavy resource allocation in some of those states meant they weren’t as confident about them as they might say.
“If they felt good about Florida and Virginia I think you’d begin to see them curtail a little bit. And we feel that Florida and Virginia are very winnable for the president,” Plouffe said.
Plouffe also said that the dustup surrounding the president’s interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board, which was first kept off the record but then put back on after the Register went public about it, would not affect voters in Iowa who might be reading that newspaper.
“I know it’ll be a flurry of interest for a few hours but I don’t think it’s something that will impact people who are still deciding how to vote,” he said.
Asked to respond to Donald Trump’s offer of charity money if President Obama releases his college transcripts, Plouffe, grinning, told reporters, “Direct questions to Boston. Because Donald Trump is Mitt Romney’s biggest supporter so he owns everything he says.”
