Biden, Paul Ryan Brace for Vice Presidential Debate as Polls Tighten - East Idaho News
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Biden, Paul Ryan Brace for Vice Presidential Debate as Polls Tighten

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GETTY P 082212 BidenRyanJPG?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1349805669623Joe Raedle/Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — The pressure to “reset” the presidential race is on President Obama’s team this time around. With a variety of new polls showing Mitt Romney riding the wave of his post-debate surge to a near deadlock among likely voters, the Obama campaign is looking for ways to break the challenger’s rising tide.

And Vice President Joe Biden is lining up as the man to do it.

“The Obama campaign has lost all the momentum they had and now are in danger of falling behind,” ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd said Tuesday morning. “Biden is important to stop the bleeding and regain their footing. And as important, Ryan has to not step in it, so the Romney trajectory can continue.”

Dowd was reminded of former President George W. Bush’s poor opening debate performance in 2004, which briefly gifted Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry a similar bump in the polls.

“When Cheney asked me in debate prep what he needed to do after the Miami debacle, I said, ‘Stop the gangrene from spreading,'” Dowd said. “Biden has to do same.”

For his part, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan says he expects Biden to come at him “like a cannonball.”

Both vice presidential candidates are off the stump Tuesday. Ryan is in Virginia being drilled before his date with Biden at Centre College in Danville, Ky., Thursday night. The vice president is sharpening his steel in Delaware, his home state.

Meanwhile, with polls showing Romney making inroads with women voters, wife Ann Romney has published an essay titled, “The Man I Know” on Blog Her, a general interest website aimed at women readers.

“Last Wednesday night, in a debate watched by nearly 70 million people, America and the world got to see the Mitt Romney I’ve known for most of my life,” she begins, an opening bid to solidify the positive impressions her husband made last week during his first one-on-one with Obama.

“Mitt has always been my hero,” she writes. “There have been times in my life when I didn’t think I could make it, when I wasn’t sure I could take one more step. And in those times, when I couldn’t do it on my own, Mitt was always there for me to lean on.”

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