Vice President Joe Biden told supporters he needs to “step it up” in this week’s debate with Paul Ryan in order to stop Mitt Romney, who defeated President Obama handily last week.
“In two days, when I shake Paul Ryan’s hand onstage before the vice presidential debate, his side will be halfway through a $23 million week-long ad blitz attacking Barack in 10 battleground states,” Biden said in a fundraising email. “The only way someone like Mitt Romney . . . beats someone like Barack Obama is if you and I don’t step it up when it really matters.”
Seventy percent of debate watchers said Romney won last week, compared to just 20 percent who said Obama won, according to Gallup. That 52-point margin is the largest in Gallup tracking history.
Ryan, who will face Biden this Thursday, made a prediction about the debate. “Because they had such a bad debate, Joe Biden is just going to come flying at us,” Ryan told Michigan talk show host Frank Beckman (h/t National Review). “It seems pretty clear that their new strategy is just to call us liars, to descend into a mud pit.”
Here’s the full Biden email:
In two days, when I shake Paul Ryan’s hand onstage before the vice presidential debate, his side will be halfway through a $23 million week-long ad blitz attacking Barack in 10 battleground states.
Our organizers on the ground are going to be busy counteracting that.
But the fact is our organizing depends on budgets and those budgets depend on you, right now. This campaign needs to make critical decisions this week, and with just 28 days to go, there’s no “I’ll get to it later.” If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to chip in, now is the time.
The only way someone like Mitt Romney — who gets fact-checked by his own campaign on his health care plan, thinks Sesame Street deserves tougher treatment than Wall Street, and wrote off half of the country when he thought no one was listening — beats someone like Barack Obama is if you and I don’t step it up when it really matters.
Because Barack and I cannot do this alone.
We need you and it’s always been that way.
It’s more important now than at any point in this campaign that our grassroots organization is strong and ready to fight alongside us. Your donation helps more now, when we’re making some of the most important budget decisions in this race, than it can later. Now’s the time to step up and take ownership of this campaign.
If you can, please donate $5 or more today:
https://donate.barackobama.com/Four-Weeks-Out
Thanks for everything, seriously.
Joe
P.S. — Four weeks from today, this election will be over. We’ll know whether we did enough — or if we needed to do more. Chip in today.
