Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/395923
ByJimKuhnhenn The Associated Press WASHINGTON President Barack Obama is all in with his economic pitch. The American public is not. Over the next 27 days, either the public or the president is going to get the message. In a midterm campaign strategy fraught with risk, the White House is betting that Obama's tight embrace of the economic recovery and populist proposals for gender pay equity and a higher minimum wage will galvanize his core support- ers and persuade fence-sit- ting independents to help Democrats retain narrow control of the Senate in No- vember. Addressing young en- trepreneurs Thursday at a start-up center in Califor- nia, Obama will be high- lighting his economic re- cord for the third time in eight days. While noting that he's not on the ballot in this election, Obama has be- come fond of saying that his policies are at stake. The line has prompted a reflexive flinch from Dem- ocrats who are trying to fend off a concerted Re- publican campaign to link Democratic opponents to the president. For Democrats, the prob- lem is not Obama's message; it's the pitchman. "The mes- senger is not the most pop- ular guy on the planet right now," said Democratic poll- ster Mark Mellman. Public opinion polls show substantial support for Obama's proposals to raise the minimum wage, seek pay equity for women and close corporate tax loop- holes. But on the economic issues he's most associated with — the fitful recovery from the Great Recession and his health care law — the American public is not with him. A September AP-GfK poll found 40 percent ap- prove and 58 percent disap- prove of his handling of the economy, and that 41 per- cent approve and 58 percent disapprove of his handling of health care. Overall, Obama's national approval ratings are 44 percent, com- pared to 51 percent who dis- approve, according to the latest numbers from Gallup. That said, Obama does have an economic story to tell. Unemployment has dropped from a high of 10 percent in 2009 to 5.9 per- cent last month. The econ- omy grew last quarter at a better clip than many ex- pected. The stock market has rallied to record highs. He inherited a federal def- icit of more than a trillion dollars; the deficit has been cut by more than half to $486 billion. But, to the frustration of the White House, that mes- sage hasn't gained much traction against a head- wind of nearly stagnant wage growth. "An awful lot of Ameri- cans, they read in the pa- per that the economy is growing, but they haven't seen their own paychecks advance, they haven't seen their old opportunities grow and they haven't seen their own children get good job offers," GOP pollster White Ayres said. Ayres recently conducted a joint poll with Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg for NPR and discovered that in states with closely con- tested Senate races, both Republicans and Demo- cratic voters were equally energized "It's all about the inde- pendents in those states," he said. "The independents are going to be moved more than anything else by the reality of the economy they feel in their daily lives. At least at this point, far too few have felt a significant recovery." It's a point not lost on the White House. Last week, af- ter describing the recovery's trajectory, Obama added: "The facts that I just laid out don't mean that there aren't a lot of folks out there who are underpaid, they're underemployed, they're working long hours, they're having trouble making ends meet." As a result, Obama is also pushing his proposals to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, to ensure equal pay for women, to overhaul the immigration laws and provide universal pre-school for children as an effort to create contrasts with Republicans who have opposed those efforts. "The president does be- lieve there is a clear choice for voters across the coun- try between candidates who are supportive of pol- icies that will benefit the middle class, and candi- dates who are supportive of policies that will benefit those at the top in the hopes that the benefits will trickle down to the middle class," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. Obama held a town hall at Cross Campus, a Santa Monica hub for startup companies and entrepre- neurs, on Thursday, where highlighted policies such as college aid and health care that officials say have espe- cially benefited members of the millennial generation. POLITICS Ob am a wa nt s el ec ti on a bo ut t he e co no my , no t hi m SUSANWALSH—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS President Barack Obama waves as he walks to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Thursday for a short trip to Andrews Air Force Base, Md. By Kimberly Pierceall The Associated Press LAS VEGAS Frustration turned to elation Thursday as a dizzying legal wrangle ended with gay couples re- ceiving marriage licenses in Las Vegas — the marriage capital of the world — and other cities across Nevada. Thomas Topovski cried as the Clark County clerk announced to cheers that marriage licenses would fi- nally be issued. He and Jef- ferson Ruck, his partner of 14 years, returned Thurs- day for their marriage li- cense after standing in line for hours the day before. About 10 same-sex cou- ples were standing in line as the announcement came shortly after 5 p.m. "It's amazing, this is it," said Theo Small as he stood next to his partner, Antioco Carillo, and looked down at their marriage license, the first issued in Las Vegas. "We're walking on clouds," Carillo said. "This is unreal." About 430 miles north, Kristy Best and Wednes- day Smith became the first same-sex couple in the state to get a license at about 3 p.m. Thursday, said Eliza- beth Phelps, a clerk in the Carson City marriage li- cense office. The hopes of gay cou- ples in Nevada had been in limbo since the 9th Circuit ruled Tuesday that gay cou- ples' equal protection rights were violated by same-sex wedding bans in Nevada and Idaho. In Nevada, the last chal- lenge opposing Nevada gay marriage was dropped early Thursday, and the 9th Cir- cuit Court of Appeals again declared that its ruling al- lowing same-sex couples to marry in the state is "in full force and effect." Clerks waited for a trial judge to enforce the court's order before they started issu- ing licenses at about 5 p.m. Thursday. It came not long after Clark County Clerk Diana Alba apologized to about five gay couples waiting at the Las Vegas marriage li- cense bureau. "Nobody is more frus- trated than I am," she said. "It really is truly out of our hands. I'm kind of para- lyzed." Gay-owned chapel Viva Las Vegas, which features Elvis impersonators at the altar and themed weddings, had readied plans to offer special packages for same- sex couples. Meanwhile, gay cou- ples in West Virginia be- gan receiving marriage li- censes after the state's at- torney general dropped his fight opposing same-sex unions. At least one couple was married in a brief civil ceremony outside the court- house in Huntington, the Herald-Dispatch reported. NEVADA Gay couples in Las Vegas get marriage licenses a er spate of legal wrangling JOHN LOCHER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Tara Traynor, right, and her partner Cathy Grimes wait outside of the Marriage License Bureau on Thursday in Las Vegas. By Karl Ritter The Associated Press STOCKHOLM Patrick Mo- diano of France, who has made a lifelong study of the Nazi occupation and its effects on his country, won the 2014 Nobel Prize in lit- erature Thursday for what one academic called "crys- tal clear and resonant" prose. Modiano, a 69-year-old resident of Paris, is an ac- claimed writer in France but not well known in the English-speaking world. The Swedish Academy said it gave him the 8 million- kronor ($1.1 million) prize for evoking "the most un- graspable human destinies" and uncovering the human- ity of life under Nazi occu- pation. Jewishness, the Nazi oc- cupation and loss of identity are recurrent themes in his novels, which include 1968's "La Place de l'Etoile" — later hailed in Germany as a key post-Holocaust work. Modiano's novel "Miss- ing Person" won the presti- gious Prix Goncourt in 1978 and is among the more than 40 of his works published in French. Some have been translated into English, in- cluding "Ring of Roads: A Novel," "Villa Triste," "A Trace of Malice," and "Hon- eymoon." Dervila Cooke of Dublin City University, author of a book about Modiano, said his works deal with the traumas of France's past but have a "darkly humor- ous touch." "His prose is crystal clear and resonant," she said. "A common description of his work is of its 'petite mu- sique' — its haunting little music." Modiano was born in a west Paris suburb in July 1945, two months after World War II ended in Eu- rope, to a father with Jew- ish-Italian origins and a Belgian actress mother who met during the 1940-44 oc- cupation of Paris. He has also written children's books and film scripts, including co-writ- ing the 1974 movie "La- combe, Lucien" with di- rector Louis Malle and the 2003 movie "Bon Voyage" with director Jean-Paul Rappeneau. He was a mem- ber of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 and won the Austrian State Prize for European Litera- ture in 2012. Peter Englund, the per- manent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Mo- diano's works often explore the themes of time, memory and identity. "He is returning to the same topics again and again simply because these topics, you can't exhaust them," Englund told jour- nalists in Stockholm. "You can't give a definite answer to: Why did I turn into the person I am today? What happened to me? How will I break out of the weight of time? How can I reach back into past times?" Englund, who wasn't able to reach Modiano be- fore the announcement, said the French writer also liked to play with the detec- tive genre. In "Missing Per- son," he wrote about a pri- vate detective launching his last investigation — finding out who he is because he has lost his memory. "I've always had the wish, the nostalgia to be able to write detective nov- els," Modiano said in a rare interview last week in Tel- erama magazine. "At heart, the principal themes of de- tective novels are close to the things that obsess me: disappearance, the prob- lems of identity, amnesia, the return to an enigmatic past." French President Fran- cois Hollande congratu- lated Modiano, the 15th French citizen to win the Nobel for literature, saying he "takes his readers right to the deep trouble of the occupation's dark period. And he tries to understand how the events lead individ- uals to lose as well as find themselves." Betting on Modiano to win the Nobel surged in the last week, raising questions about a possible leak. Da- vid Williams of bookmaker Ladbrokes said Modiano's odds had shortened from 100-1 a few months ago to 10-1 before the announce- ment. Something similar oc- curred in 2008, the last time there was a French Nobel winner for litera- ture, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio. But Williams said the betting pattern on Mo- diano was not suspicious. PRIZE Modiano wins Nobel for literature CHRISTOPHE ENA — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS French novelist Patrick Modiano smiles during a press conference at his publishing house in Paris on Thursday. N EWS D AILY REDBLUFF TEHAMACOUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 PHONE: (530)527-2151 FAX: (530) 527-5774 545 Diamond Avenue • P.O. Box 220 • Red Bluff, CA 96080 Support our classrooms, keep kids reading. DONATE YOUR VACATION newspaper dollars to the Newspaper In Education Program HELP OUR CHILDREN For more details call Circulation Department (530) 527-2151 | NEWS | REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2014 4 B