The chairman of the state oil company, Rafael Ramírez, is head of voter mobilisation for the Maduro campaign.
Mr. Romney's swift move to concentrate on the economy, to two audiences and a news conference Tuesday morning, reflected the belief by his advisers that his managerial background was as much an asset to him in this kind of environment as Senator John McCain's military background was for him at a time when the war and national security were at the head of voter concerns.
There is still far more opportunity for Obama than there is for McCain in the electoral college map, but what a challenge it must be for the Democrat to try to get into the head of voters whose mind can actually be changed by the kind of toxic dribble emanating from McCain, Palin and their surrogates.
What if the blizzard of statistics and the trade theory is just going straight over the heads of voters?
In a speech this month, she decried another job swap between the Russian president and prime minister that "made many Russian citizens feel that things were being decided between only two men, over the heads of voters".
This wasn't an issue before, but after years of driving this idea into the heads of voters, the question of the Russian language has really become an important factor in Ukrainian politics.
Aside from the fact that they don't — that the complicated psychodramas concocted by pundits exist only in their heads, not the heads of voters — experience shows that nothing Obama can do will satisfy these guys; they need, professionally, to maintain the pretense that both sides of the political divide are equally extreme.
Where is her vote?" Susanne Kendler, head of the voter registration organisation LetmevoteUK, described the process as "confusing" as registering for EU elections required a second set of forms to complete the process.
"Individual Electoral Registration has replaced the outdated head of household voter registration system and is both increasing the accuracy of the register and giving people more control and ownership over the process," a spokesman said.
If and when Romney comes to debate Obama, he will doubtless try to explain that he was talking about mandates at the state level, rather than mandates at the federal level, which he never supported — a distinction that may well go over the head of many voters.
And while Iraq and health care appear to head the list of voter concerns, Mr. Edwards is promoting himself as someone who cares about the poor and who has risen from the bottom himself.
