WASHINGTON, Oct 12, (Agencies): US President Barack Obama will visit at least nine states in 11 days starting on Friday as he cranks up his bid to stem expected heavy Democratic losses in mid-term elections. Obama will also make his first appearances on the campaign trail with his wife Michelle Obama since his 2008 presidential run, as the couple stump at the weekend in midwestern Ohio, a bellwether state ravaged by the recession. Polls show Republicans on course to grab back control of the House of Representatives on Nov 2, and all but certain to at least decimate the Democratic majority in the Senate. Obama’s trip is a mixture of appearances with candidates and flexing political star power to raise campaign cash and persuade his young and diverse coalition to show up to vote even though he is not on the ballot.

The president, fresh from trips to Philadelphia on Sunday and Monday, will visit Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington state, California, Nevada, Ohio, Minnesota and Rhode Island in the next 11 days, the White House said.
Obama will appear on Sunday in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio with the First Lady, who is expanding her own campaign schedule but will be speaking with her husband at a political rally for the first time in two years.
“I think this is a good way to have a bigger crowd and have some energy, she is obviously very effective,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
Most analysts are projecting heavy losses for Democrats among the entire 435-seat House of Representatives which is up for grabs in November.
Republicans also need to pick up 10 seats in the Senate to complete a takeover of Capitol Hill — a much tougher task, though appear well placed in at least six of the seats they need to win.

Warned
Obama on Monday warned supporters that a Republican triumph in mid-term elections next month would curtail his still ambitious political agenda.
At a fundraising event at the home of retired basketball star Alonzo Mourning, featuring NBA great Magic Johnson and current players Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, Obama called on supporters to rally round Democrats at the polls.
Obama rejected the idea advanced by some Washington pundits that he may actually benefit from a Republican seizure of the House of Representatives or the Senate, as it would give him a political foe to run against.
“That may be short-term political thinking in the minds of pundits — that’s not how I think because I’m thinking about how do I move the country forward,” Obama said.
Obama said that he wanted to fight for an energy policy that would promote clean technologies in the United States “so I’ve got to have partners to do that with. I can’t do it alone.”
“I’ve got to make sure that we’ve got the best education system in the world right here in the United States of America ... I can’t do that by myself.”

Obama accused Republicans on Monday of peddling “snake oil” in their campaigns to gain power in the US Congress on Nov 2 and urged Democrats to get motivated about the elections.
Obama appeared at two Democratic fund-raisers that raised $1 million at the seaside home of former NBA basketball star Alonzo Mourning. The crowd included such NBA luminaries as Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and former player Magic Johnson.
In a pair of speeches, Obama singled out the “Pledge to America,” a list of priorities House Republicans say they will pursue if they win control of the House in the elections.
He said a Republican push for an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans would include $700 billion for wealthier citizens, money he said would be better spent helping to bolster the sagging US economy.
Obama wants to limit the tax cuts to families making under $250,000 a year and a fierce partisan battle is being waged over their future. “They are peddling the same snake oil as they were peddling before,” Obama said.

Attack
Republicans and the US Chamber of Commerce are hitting back fiercely against a White House attack that charges them with using foreign donations to help finance political ads for candidates in the upcoming congressional elections.
The conflict is part of an already bitter partisan atmosphere that swirls around the Nov 2 balloting, which could wipe out the Democrats’ majority in the House of Representatives and, perhaps, the Senate. The expected Republican sweep likely would crush Obama’s agenda for the final two years of his presidency.
Democrats and Obama are suffering mightily in the opinion of voters because the economy is only struggling toward recovery after the most severe downturn since the 1930s Great Depression. Nearly 10 percent of Americans are still without jobs and millions have lost their homes to mortgage foreclosures, retirement savings were wiped out in the near financial collapse of the fall of 2008, before Obama took office.

Republican strategist Karl Rove called the Democratic attack false and said Obama was “being hypocritical” in suggesting foreign contributions were in the mix. He told a morning television talk program Tuesday that the Republicans don’t accept overseas money, which is illegal. Rove, who was former President George W. Bush’s top political adviser, said Obama was demanding that Republicans release donor information even though he declined to release such information in 2008. Rove charged that Obama had “no problem” with keeping his donors secret, and is only protesting now because “Republicans have taken up and started doing what Democrats have been doing for years.” And the Chamber of Commerce, which has already spent more than $20 million this year in campaigns mostly aimed at Democrats, is responding with an equally combative tone.

At a Monday campaign event in Pennsylvania Vice President Joe Biden joined the fray, insisting that the business lobby open its campaign spending books. “I challenge the Chamber of Commerce to tell us how much of the money they’re investing is from foreign sources,” Biden said in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he was stumping for a House candidate. “I challenge them, if I’m wrong I will stand corrected. But show me, show me.”
Monday night, the organization fired back.