Politics is back, as Obama and Romney hit the trail again

So much for staying positive. It’s been back to politics as usual for Obama and Romney – in the first proper day of campaigning since superstorm Sandy hit land.

President Obama, who suspended all his election activities for three full days, hit the ground running in Wisconsin, fired up and determined to make up for lost time. Clad in a jacket bearing the presidential seal, he told the crowd that in times of crisis, “we see America at its best.”

“All the petty differences that consume us in normal times”, he went on, “seem to melt away. There are no Democrats or Republicans during a storm, just fellow Americans.” Stirring stuff, but there was a more directly political theme.

Describing Romney as a “salesman”, Obama said rich people didn’t need another champion in Washington. “They’ll always have a seat at the table. They’ll always have access and influence”. Instead, he promised to help the struggling middle classes, telling voters they could trust him. “You know where I stand”.

From Wisconsin, a state which polls suggest is very much in play, there’s an exhausting schedule – to Nevada and Colorado before overnighting in Ohio, the swing state of swing states – where he’ll be spending a lot of time over the next five days.

All the petty differences that seem to consume us in normal times seem to melt away. Barack Obama

For Romney, it is a case of trying to make up the momentum he had been enjoying before the storm struck, and the risk that Wednesday’s events might look seriously out of touch, against images of the President touring the disaster zone, arm in arm with New Jersey’s Republican governor Chris Christie.

Today, though, there was certainly no sign of a political truce: in Roanoke in deepest Virginia, Romney went straight on the attack, firing up the crowd with a chant – “Five more days!” He accused the Obama campaign of shrinking to ever smaller concerns, and added a new dig, at plans to create a new secretary of business.

“We don’t need a secretary of business to understand business. We need a president who understands business, and I do”, he declared. The Republicans have been careful to keep a high profile presence in Virginia, especially in the highly conservative west.

There’s a feeling that John McCain left it too late to campaign there four years ago, when Obama snatched the state from his grasp. At this point, it is impossible to tell which way the old Dominion state will go: and whether the impact of super storm Sandy will sway anyone’s vote.

A complex path to victory

For the Democrats, the real prize still seems to be Ohio: a state where the auto industry bailout has switched many votes his way, and which he will be visiting a dizzying four times in five days, with former president Bill Clinton rallying the crowds too.

And the Republicans have also made some surprising forays into states considered locked down for Obama; Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota – where the Democrats are so confident of victory that Obama strategist David Axelrod vowed to shave off the moustache he’s had for forty years if they lost any of the three.

There are two key things to watch in these final days: those elusive independent voters who, according to polls, seem to be going back and forth between the two parties from one day to the next. Then there’s the turnout operation for those base supporters – women and minorities for the Democrats – older, white voters for the Republicans.

Like the presidential candidates, polling has also been on pause these last few turbulent days: a rest, perhaps, from the baffling flurry of contradictory results, the claims and counter claims as each party claimed the statistics put them in the lead.

“We have the math, and they have the myths”, claimed Obama for America campaign chief Jim Messina, but it makes the strategising on each side a high-risk game of double or quits.

That is why there will be precious little sleep for Obama and Romney and their teams between now and election day: just look at their travel plans, and it’s virtually around the clock, criss crossing the country in a relentless dash through the battleground states.

That, and a last, final splurge on political ads: as of now, the Romney campaign has outspent Obama’s by $5 million in Ohio, but both candidates have more money than they have time to spend. Turn on the television in Virginia and you’ll see back-to-back political ads cammed into every commercial break.

There might be no Democrats or Republicans during a storm, but in the final days of an election campaign that is still too close to call? If today’s campaign events are anything to go by, party politics is firmly on the agenda again; if indeed, it ever left.

Felicity Spector writes about US politics for Channel 4 News