WASHINGTON – Claiming new momentum 48 hours before polls open across America, Republicans on Sunday assailed President Barack Obama in a final weekend push to motivate voters, as Democrats deployed their biggest stars to help preserve an endangered Senate majority.
GOP officials from Alaska to Georgia seized on the president’s low approval ratings, which have overshadowed an election season in which roughly 60 percent of eligible voters are expected to stay home.
“This is really the last chance for America to pass judgment on the Obama administration and on its policies,” the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, said in a message echoed by Republicans across the country on the weekend.
The GOP already controls the House, and a Senate takeover could dramatically change Obama’s last two years in office.
Republicans appear certain of picking up at least three Senate seats – in West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota. Nine other Senate contests are considered competitive, six of them for seats in Democratic hands.
Democratic Party leaders are predicting victory despite disappointing polls.
“I’m very proud of this president,” head of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., said. “I think we’re going to win the Senate.”
In New Hampshire, former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton headlined a rally for Gov. Maggie Hassan and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat locked in a tough re-election battle against former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown.
Clinton, who is weighing a 2016 presidential bid, charged that Republicans are running a campaign of fear.
“Fear is the last resort for those who have run out of ideas and hope,” she said in her first appearance in New Hampshire since October 2008.
And in Georgia, where Democrats see an opportunity to gain a seat in traditionally GOP territory, Republican David Perdue repeatedly called Democrat Michelle Nunn a “rubber stamp” for Obama during a Sunday debate.
Nunn mockingly told Perdue he sounds like he’s “running against the president.”
“You’re running against me, David,” Nunn said.
In Colorado, Democratic Sen. Mark Udall’s best hope remains a robust ground game. He made four stops at campaign offices to fire up door-knockers, reminding them – in classic Colorado fashion – to knock on doors before the Broncos game.
“We’re going to bring this one home in the next 72 hours,” Udall said in the suburb of Centennial, telling volunteers to disregard polls that find him narrowly trailing Republican Rep. Cory Gardner.
