President takes health-care battle to battleground states

Saturday, August 1, 2009

(CNN) — President Barack Obama takes his battle for health-care reform to two battleground states Wednesday.
The president will hold a town hall at Broughton High School in Raleigh, North Carolina and another later at a Kroger supermarket in Bristol, Virginia, along the Tennessee border.
When the president leaves the nation's capital for events across the country, the location matters. And North Carolina and Virginia matter.
Both states hold important elections over the next year and a half. In North Carolina, Republican Senator Richard Burr is up for re-election next year. In Virginia, Democrats are trying to hold on to the governor's office in this November's election.
Next week, Obama campaigns in Virginia with the Democrats' gubernatorial candidate, Creigh Deeds.
While 2012 may be a long way down the political road, presidential campaign politics may also be at play. Both states are considered swing or battleground states, which both parties think they have a chance of winning and will fight for in the next race for the White House. Obama won both states last year, the first Democrat to win a presidential election in North Carolina since 1976 and Virginia since 1964.This is Obama's second trip to both states since taking over in the White House in January. It may just be coincidence, but many of the states Obama has visited since his January 20 inauguration — Virginia, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, and Nevada — are all potential battlegrounds in the next presidential contest.
"The White House doesn't make decisions on presidential visits by chance," says Stuart Rothenberg, editor in chief of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report.Obama is no stranger to Bristol, Virginia. On June 5, 2008, at the end of the Democratic primaries, he kicked off his general election campaign in the southwestern Virginia city. And he last campaigned in Raleigh in late October, just days before the presidential election.
"Has the next presidential campaign started? No, the last campaign never really ended," adds CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider.