President Obama embraces June McKiernan as he greets the crowd after a tour of the Boeing 787 factory in Everett, Wash.
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President Obama leaves after speaking during a Democratic campaign fundraiser in Bellevue, Washington, February 17
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San Francisco last night:
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Women react in the Red Room after meeting First Lady Michelle Obama in the Blue Room during their White House tour, Feb. 16, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
Secretary of Defense Leo Panetta, First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden at an event to announce a new report outlining opportunities and best practices for states to better support military spouses serving in professions with state licensure requirements at the Pentagon in Washington
Nate Silver: The last time I considered Barack Obama’s re-election chances in this magazine, in mid-November, things were looking pretty bleak for the president. The statistical model I used measured three key factors — a president’s approval rating, economic growth and the ideological orientation of his opponent — and taken together, they showed that Obama had become a slight underdog to win re-election.
Three months later, his position is much stronger……
PPP: Michigan is looking more and more like it won’t be in the swing state column this fall. PPP’s newest poll there finds Barack Obama leading the entire Republican field by double digits.
The biggest surprise in the numbers might be how badly Obama is beating Mitt Romney- he leads him by 16 points at 54-38. That’s a major departure from PPP’s previous 3 Michigan President polls, which found Obama ahead by only 4-7 points. Romney’s seen a major decline in his personal favorability in the state over the last 6 months from 39/43 to now 29/58. His numbers have dropped across the board but the most striking shift is with independents. He’s gone from a +14 spread with them at 48/34 to a -20 one at 32/52.
USA Today: President Obama has outraised the top Republican presidential fundraiser in two-thirds of the country, including battleground states such as Pennsylvania and North Carolina considered crucial to his re-election prospects, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
In 19 states, Obama collected more than his four major GOP rivals combined… Obama also has a fundraising edge over Romney in all but two of a dozen swing states – Florida and Michigan, where Romney was born and his father served as governor in the 1960s.
Thursday: PBO will attend campaign events in Corona del Mar, California before traveling to San Francisco, California to attend campaign events. He will spend the night in San Francisco.
Friday: PBO will travel to the Seattle where he will continue to discuss his blueprint for an economy built to last. He will also attend campaign events in the Seattle area before returning to Washington, D.C. later in the evening.
BMG: The next big prize in the GOP primaries is Michigan, one of Mitt Romney’s five home states. He’s released an ad showing him driving around in a fancy Chrysler while he talks about how much he loves Michigan, and all…..
And here’s the problem: that Chrysler that he’s driving is a 300 model, and the 300 is made in Canada…..
President Barack Obama speaks about Egypt during his joint news conference with Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington
The Obama Diary 
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