Dinesh Ramde / AP

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, right, talks with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus at a Republican campaign office in Germantown, Wis., on Sunday, June 3, 2012.

MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Organized labor is staring down the prospect of a bitter disappointment here on Tuesday, where union members are working furiously to unseat Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and replace him with a Democratic challenger.

Wisconsin has become the front line in the battle between unions and reform-minded Republicans, and organized labor arguably has more on the line in Tuesday's recall election than any other constituency.

Union members have spearheaded the effort to remove Walker from office and replace him with a Democratic challenger after the governor, who was elected in 2010, pushed a controversial bill through the state legislature stripping most public employee unions — which were birthed in Wisconsin — of their collective bargaining rights.

"I'm still angry," said Sandy Jacobs, an active member of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, who spent Sunday afternoon knocking on union members' doors in the Milwaukee neighborhood of Bayview. "[Walker]'s not representing middle class people; he's representing his own agenda, and I'm angry."

Walker's bid to overhaul collective bargaining sparked weeks of protests in the state capitol, and dramatic national media coverage. A million Wisconsin voters signed the initial petition to force a recall election.

But the white-hot furor toward Walker has tempered somewhat over time. Some Wisconsinites wonder whether ending the governor's term early is premature. By all accounts, tomorrow's election will be a close one, and Walker has battled his way to a small advantage over Democratic challenger Tom Barrett in public polls.

"I’d be lying to you if I said it wouldn't be a disappointment, but that’s not going to stop us," said Lee Saunders, the secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employee, of the prospect of a Walker victory.

Roger Schneider / AP

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett serves eggs at a dairy breakfast in the Town of Rockland, Wis., on Sunday, June 3, 2012. Next to him is Republican Rep. Reid Ribble.

If Wisconsin voters retain the conservative governor, it would cap a series of political disappointments that have plagued organized labor in recent years.

Labor groups backed President Barack Obama heavily in 2008, but the stimulus sought by the White House shortly after his inauguration was far smaller than what union leaders had desired.

CPI: Wisconsin recall battle is state’s most expensive election

At the height of the battle for health care reform, labor voices were some of the loudest advocate for the so-called “public option,” a government-administered insurance plan available to consumers as a health care alternative. Democrats jettisoned that component to advance the bill over the finish line.

And most bitterly, the Employee Free Choice Act – a piece of legislation intended to enable organizing workforces into unions – was left for dead by the White House and Democrats in Congress after Republicans and business groups turned it into a toxic issue politically.

Leigh Ullman puts a yard sign in the lawn of a Tom Barrett supporter while knocking on doors Sunday in the Bayview neighborhood of Milwaukee.

“I think it’s stating the obvious that it’s a hard time to be a union member – or any worker,” said Michael Podhorzer, the AFL-CIO’s political director.

The organized labor community and most Democrats have sought to downplay the import of any single election, let alone the recall in Wisconsin.

And the campaign here has, to a degree, shifted away from the initial controversy involving collective bargaining. Walker has campaigned on signs of job creation in the state, and his team has made the argument that a recall election isn't an appropriate way to resolve a policy dispute.

The Barrett campaign hasn't talked as much about collective bargaining, either; the Milwaukee mayor has instead emphasized the need to bring unity to Wisconsin, and has attacked Walker for his association with former aides who are facing a criminal corruption probe.

The divide between organized labor and the Republican Party isn't especially new, though. Presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney has made a point of condemning unions in his stump speeches, and other rising stars in the party, like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, have seen their stock rise by doing battle with organized labor in their respective states.

The relationship between labor and the GOP is "not very good," at least when it comes to public employee unions, said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, a native of Wisconsin.

"They’ve spent millions and millions of dollars of their rank and file trying to defeat our candidate. I would say, given that record, obviously things could be a whole lot better," Priebus said in an interview last week with NBCPolitics.com.

Republican Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, whose district includes plenty of union members, downplayed the notion that the GOP and unions are at war politically.

Mark Hertzberg / AP

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, speaks at a rally held by the Racine Tea Party PAC in Gorney Park in Caledonia, Wis., on Saturday, June 2, 2012. The rally was held in opposition to the recall election.

"In my mind, since I come from a union area, there is a difference between public and private sector unions," he said, adding that he thought public employee unions had "over-flexed their muscle" in seeking Walker's ouster.

To labor, exactly the opposite is the case. The recall, said Podhorzer, will show that it was Walker who "overreached." He said that Republicans had always been anti-labor, but the rhetoric has become especially "virulent" as of late.

"I think they are at war with unions. Everything they’re proposing to do is to gut the gains we’ve made for middle class families," said Saunders.

But union members on the ground in Wisconsin are already looking past Tuesday. They acknowledge the millions that Walker has spent on advertising to retain office might help him accomplish that goal.

Leigh Ullman, the president of Local 5011 Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, who was also knocking on doors in Bayview, said he would be "sad and disappointed" if voters retain Walker.

"I would have to redouble my efforts and work that much harder, especially for Obama in the fall," he said. "But I'm not prepared to that; I'm going to be celebrating on Wednesday."

Darren Hauck / Reuters

Tom Barrett and Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker talk during a debate held at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee on May 31.

Updated 5:14 p.m. — Democrats and their allies in organized labor are heading into a final weekend of campaigning in hopes of avoiding an embarrassment in their goal of recalling Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

The Badger State has played host to months of furious campaigning since Walker, the conservative governor first elected in 2010, sought major reforms for public employee unions. He pushed through legislation to strip them of collective bargaining rights and force them to contribute to their pensions.

But the Republican governor leads Tom Barrett, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee and Walker’s opponent in the 2010 general election, by 7 points, according to a Marquette Law Poll released Wednesday.

“Democrats really were just foolish in this way they approached this recall,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a sit-down interview with NBCPolitics.com this week. “They set up this World Series event in Wisconsin, built it up. They put on the ballot a candidate who’s not worth two nickels – he’s already lost twice statewide, and is going to lose a third time now.”

The recall battle carries high stakes for not only for Walker, who has become the face of a generation of reformist conservatives, but also for Democrats and organized labor, which vowed revenge in the aftermath of the politically divisive fight to push the collective bargaining law through the state legislature.

That battle drew tens of thousands of protesters to the state Capitol in Madison, and a million people put their names to paper in support of an initial petition seeking Walker’s recall.

Jeffrey Phelps / AP

A supporter of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, right, talks with a supporter of Democratic opponent Tom Barrett at a recall election rally Friday, June 1, 2012, in Milwaukee.

Several state senators were recalled in 2011 as a result of the collective bargaining clamp-down, and Democrats almost succeeded in unseating a state Supreme Court justice, too.

But Walker’s been the beneficiary of a marginally improved state economy and overall fatigue associated with the recall. His chief advantage, though, comes from the millions more he, and supportive groups, have been able to spend on the campaign. Walker and those groups have spent $23 million in his race against Barrett; the governor’s fundraising was enabled by a loophole in state law allowing him to collect funds in large sums.  Barrett and labor groups have spent $12.4 million, by contrast.

"From recruiting volunteers and registering voters to organizing on campuses across the state, the DNC and OFA are working alongside the Barrett campaign and the state party to build the ground game that is crucial for success on Election Day.  And we will continue to utilize both our substantial network of activists, volunteers and supporters and extensive online resources to lay the groundwork for victory," said Melanie Roussell, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee. 

The DNC and Organizing for America — the president's political arm — have invested almost $1.5 million in staffing, offices and support in order to help Barrett pull out a win on Tuesday.

The campaign has taken a turn toward bare-knuckled politics, though, in which Walker and Barrett have traded barbs at debates and in those paid advertisements. Barrett has sought to stoke suspicions regarding the so-called “John Doe” investigation, in which former Walker aides stand accused of allegedly misappropriating campaign funds.

The Walker campaign, in turn, has questioned Barrett’s crime record as mayor, and their overarching strategy has involved questioning the wisdom of the recall in the first place.

Eager to fight off the sense that the recall is all but lost, Democrats have been furiously contesting public polls that show Walker ahead, and releasing a flurry of internal surveys that, they say, depict a much tighter race.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was in the state this week to help raise money for Barrett, and on Friday, former President Bill Clinton will stump against Walker in Wisconsin. For his part, Walker brought his own heavyweight to the fight: South Carolina Gov. Nikki campaigned with him Friday in Sussex.

But the Obama administration has been somewhat removed from the campaign; the president has no plans to campaign in the state for Barrett, and the White House was forced on Wednesday to clarify whether Obama had even endorsed the Democratic nominee (he has).

The saving grace for Democrats might lie in a labor-driven turnout effort. But Republicans have been equally enthusiastic about retaining Walker, whom they treat as a vanguard for efforts to rein in public employee unions and entitlement spending.

But Republicans contend that, between the 2010 elections and two intervening recalls before this one, they have built a voter outreach machine on par with few others – one which could pay dividends in an election like Tuesday’s, which may hinge on each side’s ability to drive supporters to the polls.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) enjoys a 7-point advantage over Democratic challenger Tom Barrett among likely voters in Tuesday's recall election.

Darren Hauck / Reuters

Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker debates with Democratic challenger and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett before the start of the debate in Milwaukee.

Fifty-two percent of likely voters said they would vote to retain Walker, according to a Marquette Law School poll released Wednesday; 45 percent of likely voters said they would support Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee.

The poll suggests that Walker is heading toward victory on Tuesday, which would deliver a stinging rebuke to Democrats and members of the labor community who had sought the first-term governor's removal after he pushed a controversial bill curbing collective bargaining rights for many public employees through the Wisconsin state legislature.

The Marquette poll has been tracking the trajectory of the recall election for the better part of this spring. The survey found Walker and Barrett locked in a virtual tie ahead of the Democratic primary in early May, though a May 16 poll reflected Walker opening an advantageover his Democratic opponent.

Labor groups and Democrats supportive of Barrett have been circulating a number of internal polls over the past week showing a closer race than many outside observers have expected.

In the meanwhile, Walker and Barrett have debated, and the campaign has evolved into a rather pointed battle between the two candidates, who squared off in the initial 2010 gubernatorial contest.

Barrett has demanded that Walker release records associated with a criminal investigation into former aides, while Walker has barnstormed the state to brag of positive economic indicators that, he contends, were made possible in part by his initial collective bargaining reforms.

Thousands of dollars in outside spending have also flooded Wisconsin airwaves in this high-stakes contest. Republicans are hoping an organization forged in Walker's 2010 election and last year's state Senate recalls carries the day; Democrats are meanwhile enjoying the assistance of organized labor.

Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was in Wisconsin on Wednesday to help with fundraising, and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who heads Democratic gubernatorial campaign efforts, will be in the state this weekend.

A series of Republican heavyweights, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, have also campaigned in support of Walker, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus will be in his native Wisconsin this weekend, too.

The poll, conducted May 23-36, has a 4 percent margin of error.

Is Mitt Romney playing with fire in his dealings with Donald Trump?

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee will appear with Trump, the pugnacious real estate mogul and reality television star, at a fundraiser Tuesday in Las Vegas. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a nemesis of Romney's throughout the Republican presidential primary, will round out the group.

Steve Marcus / Reuters

Real estate mogul Donald Trump's ties to presidential candidate Mitt Romney run deeper than most run-of-the-mill supporters of the former Massachusetts governor.

Setting aside Gingrich’s own bombast, it’s Trump who could prove the bigger long-term headache for Romney. The latest example of that came Tuesday morning, when Trump said he’s still unconvinced that President Barack Obama was born in the United States, further linking Romney to that sentiment in a subsequent tweet from his @realDonaldTrump handle:

@BarackObama is practically begging @MittRomney to disavow the place of birth movement, he is afraid of it and for good reason. He keeps using @SenJohnMcCain as an example, however, @SenJohnMcCain lost the election. Don’t let it happen again.

It’s become clear that Trump’s ties to Romney run deeper than most run-of-the-mill supporters of the former Massachusetts governor. Romney and Trump appeared together when the “Apprentice” host made official his endorsement on Feb. 2. Since then, Trump’s become an involved surrogate for Romney, doing radio interviews and robocalls during the height of the GOP primary. He’s also hosted fundraisers for Romney, most notably one on Ann Romney’s birthday that netted the campaign $600,000.

“Donald Trump is playing an extremely important role, which has been acknowledged by both Ann and Mitt Romney, which has been acknowledged by them in election night speeches,” said Michael Cohen, a spokesman for Trump, in an interview.

Romney put some distance between the two men, though, before taking off for Colorado late on Monday night. "You know, I don't agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don't all agree with everything I believe in. But I need to get 50.1 percent or more and I'm appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people," he told reporters aboard his campaign charter plane.

Romney was burned back in April when conservative rocker (and campaign supporter) Ted Nugent called Obama “evil,” and said if the incumbent were to win re-election, “I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

FIRST THOUGHTS: Playing the Trump card

Democrats stoked that story in the media, forcing Romney to personally address the Nugent controversy; now, it appears as though they’re hoping for another opportunity to do the same with Trump.

That is, when — not if — Trump goes off-message, Romney will have to answer for the controversy. His campaign won’t have the luxury of shrugging off a figure like Trump, who’s undeniably much closer to the Republican nominee than Nugent.

"It raises a question, that's come up before during this campaign, as to whether Gov. Romney will embrace these extreme voices in his party, or stand up to them," Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said Friday on MSNBC.

And already, the Obama campaign released a video on Tuesday bracketing the fundraiser this evening, contrasting Romney's relative silence toward Trump with the actions taken by Republican nominee John McCain in 2008 to shun extreme voices in the GOP.

For now, the Romney campaign has emphasized its singular focus on the economy, casting media firestorms around Trump or Romney’s previous work at Bain Capital as nothing less than a distraction.

"In a world of record job loss, record home loss, more people falling into poverty than time since the Depression, I don't think this stuff matters," said a Romney aide. "I would think the last few weeks would be a good lesson in that. From the anniversary of the Osama bin Laden killing to gay marriage, this election is just about one thing: are you happy with the economy and who do you think will do a better job?"

But the irony for Romney is that, for a campaign that prides itself on discipline and focus, its association with Trump threatens at any moment to knock the candidate off-message.

• Consider just a small sampling of the things Trump has recently said:
  May 22: Trump said on CNN that invoking Obama’s association with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the campaign, which Romney had disavowed, is fair game. "These tapes are devastating for the president. I mean, Rev. Wright is an angry man. He's extremely angry at the president,” Trump said on CNN. “I see nothing wrong with using it."
  May 22: Also on May 22, Trump stoked the flames of “birtherism,” skepticism of whether the president was born in the U.S., despite Obama having released his long-form birth certificate a year earlier, showing he was, in fact, born in Hawaii. Trump tweeted: “I wonder if @BarackObama ever applied to Occidental, Columbia or Harvard as a foreign student. When can we see his applications? What do they say about his place of birth.”
  May 7: Trump suggested, during the Chen Guangcheng incident, that the United States’ economic tension versus China could translate into an actual war in due time. “It's not a war with bullets, but it's certainly a war,” Trump said of those economic tensions. “Maybe someday, it ends up with bullets because, frankly, they're building a military like you wouldn't believe.”

And there are more politically substantive examples of Trump breaking with Romney and the GOP.

“I just think it’s very dangerous,” he said of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposals this March on FOX. “Already, the Democrats are just starting to write their campaign literature based on this plan. I think it’s very dangerous for the Republicans.”

Cohen said that Trump didn’t presume to speak for Romney.

“Donald Trump is his own individual, and he will make statements that he feels are accurate, are on the minds of other Americans and are significant in showing the voters who the real Barack Obama is,” he said. “Whatever questions will be posed to Gov. Romney and the Romney camp, they are certainly entitled to answer as they see fit. The current president and vice president don’t agree on all topics. Not all Republicans agree with all Republicans, and not all Democrats agree with all Democrats. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.”

And to Trump’s credit, he’s never been known as a shrinking violet. His views have certainly been publicly aired at this point, and voters may be able to better distinguish between his headline-grabbing comments and the more staid sentiments of Romney.

But in a campaign cycle driven by grievance politics (“When will Mitt Romney/Barack Obama apologize for…?”), it’s difficult to imagine Romney not having to answer for some outburst of Trump’s between now and November.

“He’ll stand up next to Donald Trump, and he’ll talk about why he wants to be president, and why he believes the economy needs to be turned around,” Romney adviser Kevin Madden said Friday on MSNBC of the way Romney would relate to Trump. “Anytime that something goes off of that – or something where Gov. Romney would disagree – he’s going to make that very clear, just as he has in the past, and he’ll do it in the present, and he’ll do it in the future.”

NBC’s Garrett Haake contributed to this report.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., speaks to reporters following a weekly strategy session, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, May 8, 2012.

The distinction between legislating and politicking will blur this summer on Capitol Hill, as House Republicans lay out a laundry list of priorities largely intended to set the stage for this fall’s election.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., outlined the GOP's priorities through August in a memo to fellow Republican lawmakers on Friday.

The agenda calls for votes on some items of substance -- reforms of the U.S. Postal Service and Food and Drug Administration  among them -- but seems largely intended to shape Republicans' messaging efforts when they stand for re-election.

"In line with our underlying principles for legislation, the House will move forward this summer with a number of proposals aimed at addressing job creation and the economy, reducing spending, and shrinking the size of the federal government while protecting and expanding liberty," Cantor wrote. "Above all, we must continue to focus on economic growth and small business -- producing results that get Americans back to work."

But the most consequential votes taken by the House are set for this summer, and very few of the proposals likely to pass through the House are expected to become law. The period between late June and the yearly August recess will be dominated by pillars of the GOP's re-election effort: energy, taxes, and regulations.

Republicans will push legislation to expand energy exploration after Father's Day, just as the driving season kicks into high gear for motorists and gas prices are set to explode.

Read Cantor's memorandum on the majority leader's website

In July, Republicans will embark on a number of efforts, many spearheaded by the freshmen lawmakers first elected in 2010, to eliminate regulations -- an effort, Cantor said, to spur job creation and assist small business owners.

And before breaking for recess, Cantor wrote that the House would vote "on legislation preventing the largest tax increase in history." While the GOP is working on comprehensive tax reform, Cantor said that such an intiative would "take time," necessitating an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts past Dec. 31, when a previous two-year extension of those tax cuts is set to expire.

But the agenda outlined by the Republicans is starkly different than the "to-do" list being pushed by President Barack Obama as the campaign season hits its stride.

That list includes efforts to expand tax credits for small business hiring, proposals to spur clean energy manufacturing, and initiatives for employers who keep jobs that could be outsourced in the United States. Obama has also pushed for a veterans-hiring campaign, and expanded refinancing for Americans with troubled mortgages.

The two sides' agendas shape the contours of the fall's battle for control of Congress. Republicans are looking to emphasize their efforts to rein in spending and cut regulatory rules, in part to appease a conservative base that was frustrated toward the GOP's role in last year's spending fights. While Obama and Democrats point to a "do-nothing" Congress, accusing it of doing nothing tangible to spur job growth.

Underscoring the record-low unpopularity of Congress, Obama has taken strides, too, in tying Republican rival Mitt Romney to GOP lawmakers.

NBC-Marist polls: Dems have slight edge in three key Senate races

"After a long and spirited primary, Republicans in Congress have found a nominee for president who has promised to rubber-stamp this agenda if he gets the chance," he told cheering supporters in during his official campaign launch earlier this month.

And on Thursday in Iowa, Obama noted the electorate's frustration toward Congress's inaction.

"It's always easier to be cynical. It's always easier to say nothing can change, especially after we've gone through such a tough time," he said.

"And despite all the changes we've made, despite all the good things we've done, things are still tough. And so, the other side, they are going to try and play on that sense that, well, things aren't perfect, Congress is still arguing, the politics is still polarized. But you're the antidote to that."

Case-in-point was the standoff on Thursday that saw no resolution between Democrats and Republicans on separate bills to extend low student low rates, something which both Obama and Romney have endorsed.

The Senate rejected the House bill to extend the lower interest rates on student loans because it contained a veritable poison pill for Democrats: a provision to pay for the cost of the bill by axing a part of the president's health care reform law. The Democratic version, which leaned on eliminating a tax break for the wealthy, also failed to secure the necessary votes for passage.

Cantor made no mention of that impasse in his memo to colleagues on Friday. Barring action by Congress, student loan rates will double on July 1.

President Barack Obama’s most glaring vulnerabilities this election cycle are laid bare in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, in which Americans say the incumbent commander in chief has either made no impact on pocketbook issues – or even made them worse.

More respondents said Obama made worse the budget deficit (47 percent), health care (43 percent), and the partisan divide in politics (39 percent) than those who said the president had improved – or at least made no difference – upon them during his first term in office.

Those are numbers that help explain the Romney campaign’s almost singular focus on the economy in prosecuting his case against Obama.

“What these polls are telling us is that we have a close race, and the number one issue on people's mind is the economy,” said an adviser to the former Massachusetts governor. “If you look at the president's performance on that No. 1 issue, he's getting failing grades across the board.”

Obama leads big with Latinos

There are issues on which the president has an advantage – Americans view Obama as having improved the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. auto industry, and protections for the middle class. And more respondents (32 percent) in the NBC/WSJ poll said they’re quite or extremely confident that the Democrat’s policies would improve the economy than the 19 percent who said the same for his Republican rival.

But Obama faces serious and stubborn frustration toward his handling of the economy. The number of Americans who said they expect the economy to improve over the next year dipped slightly, and 50 percent of poll-takers said that last month’s jobs report – which showed the economy added 115,000 jobs in April – was no reason for optimism.

Romney’s challenge, though, lies in convincing voters that he would represent an improvement over Obama.

First Thoughts: Economic pessimism is back

The new poll data show that the private sector resume that Romney frequently cites on the campaign trail is an asset, especially as it relates to how voters expect the Bain Capital co-founder to turn around the economy and close the budget deficit.

It also explains why the Obama campaign has launched a full-fledged attack on Romney’s business experience, in hopes of diminishing his advantage – for now – versus the president on those pocketbook issues.

“It depends how credible of a messenger Romney really is. Do people think that his work at Bain made life better for the average people?” said former Texas Rep. Martin Frost, a veteran Democratic campaigner. “The public probably doesn't know too much about Romney's record in the private sector, but my bet is they'll know a whole lot more by the end of the election.”

Thirty-five percent of Americans said Romney’s private sector career at Bain Capital is a major advantage in improving job creation; another 24 percent said it’s a minor advantage. A combined 59 percent said Romney’s background was an advantage in working to reduce the federal budget deficit.

(Voters’ impression of Romney’s business background is still positive, though less so, when it comes to ensuring corporations pay their fair share of taxes, protecting workers’ rights, and enforcing environmental standards for businesses.)

The data lay the groundwork for the summertime campaign battles, which Obama himself helped launch this week, when he openly called into question Romney’s qualifications to be president.

NBC/WSJ poll: Obama, Romney locked in tight contest

"The reason this is relevant to the campaign is because my opponent, Gov. Romney, his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business expertise," Obama said at a press conference in Chicago. "And when you’re president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits.  Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot."

Obama’s aggressive tack is directed toward erasing Romney’s advantage when it comes to the economy, what may prove to be the trump card should the former Massachusetts governor end up winning in November. For instance, 41 percent of poll respondents said they’re “not at all” confident that Obama has the right policies to improve the economy (36 percent said the same for Romney).

“What the Obama campaign wants to do is to continue focusing on issues that are not important to the overall anxieties that they have in terms of the economy right now,” said the Romney adviser. “They want to offer a distorted version of the governor’s business background, and we see it as an opportunity to remind the American people of the importance of free enterprise.”

But at the same time, more Americans, 32 percent, said that they’re quite or very confident in Obama’s proposals (versus 19 percent who said that of Romney). Four in 10 voters said they’re “somewhat confident” in Romney’s proposals, a number that could prove fluid as the president campaign works to define “Romney Economics” for the general public.

Those variables could all be shaken by factors outside of either campaign’s control, though. Frost expressed particular worry about the effect of a European backslide on the U.S. stock market – a tangible symbol that could temper voters’ thoughts toward Obama. “The economic situation is still pretty volatile. The numbers could coming out of Europe could really put a damper on things,” he said. “To the extent the stock market reacts adversely, that's a problem. If the stock market just kind of muddles through, it doesn't really affect the average person.”

Mitt Romney said he expected the nation's unemployment rate to approach 6 percent by the end of his first term, should voters elect him president this fall.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said that he couldn't predict where the jobless rate might stand after a first year in office, but asserted it would decrease "quite substantially" depending on the conditions in the U.S. and abroad.

"I can't possibly predict precisely what the unemployment rate would be after one year. I can tell you, after a period of four years, by virtue of the policies we'd put in place, we'd get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent -- perhaps a little lower, depends in part upon the rate of growth [around] the globe, as well as what we're seeing here in the United States," Romney told TIME magazine's Mark Halperin.

Romney said in early May that an unemployment rate "over 4 percent is not cause for celebration."

The former Massachusetts governor said that his election and subsequent installation of policies would contribute to a change in perspective among businesses, and attract more investment as a result.

"We'd get the rate down quite substantially, and frankly, the key is we're going to show such job growth that there will be competition for employees again," he said. "And wages, we'll see the end of this decline."

The Congressional Budget Office, in its baseline projection of the economic and budget outlook, said it expects the unemployment rate to drop to around 6 percent naturally at some point in 2016, coincidentally toward the end of what would be a hypothetical first term for Romney.

The most misunderstood voting bloc in the 2012 election is the Catholic vote.

Why?

Because there isn’t one.

The religious assemblage, which has evolved over the past century from a strong Democratic constituency into a national election bellwether, is no longer discernible from most other voter groups. As the community has become less homogenous and more assimilated into mainstream culture, so has its voting habits – sending many politicians on a fool’s errand in pursuit of the “Catholic vote.”

“I think the Catholic vote is very fractured right now,” said Rev. Drew Christiansen, S.J., the editor in chief of “America,” a Catholic newsweekly published by the Jesuits.

The breakdown of the Catholic vote in recent presidential elections has been predictive of the ultimate winner, leading many casual observers to label it as a “bellwether” bloc.

President George W. Bush won the Catholic vote, 52 percent to 47 percent, in his 2004 re-election effort, according to exit polls from that cycle. President Barack Obama won the group (which made up 27 percent of the electorate, according to exit polling), 54 percent to 45 percent, during his bid for the White House in 2008.

But to call the Catholic vote a pure bellwether would be a mistake; the determination of an individual’s vote is more likely in 2012 to turn on more common political variables (like income, education, or ethnicity) – than simple religious identity.

“Catholicism was never as monolithic as its foes assumed,” said William Dinges, a professor of religion and culture at the Catholic University of America. “In many respects, Catholics are less distinguishable than they once were from other religious groups.”

A Gallup poll released earlier this month bore out those details.

First Read: Catholic heavyweights challenge Obama rule on contraception

While the survey found Obama and Romney tied, at 46 percent, among American Catholics, support for either candidate broke down along more familiar dividing lines. Obama led heavily, for instance, among Hispanic Catholics, and Romney led (more modestly) among Caucasian Catholics.

Similarly, Romney leads among moderately or very religious Catholics, according to Gallup, while Obama wins Catholics who describe themselves as not especially religious. Highlighting further splits within the Catholic vote along lines of church attendance.

“You want to think about Catholic voters in terms of intensity of their religion,” said R.R. Reno, the editor of the conservative religious journal “First Things.”

“Catholicism tends to be a cultural-ethnic identity ... It makes it very complicated as to how to think about the Catholic vote.”

That hasn't stopped politicians from targeting the "Catholic vote," however. Republicans were vocal critics of Obama’s proposed rule requiring employers to include coverage of contraception in their health insurance plans.

This, in particular, invoked the regulation's effect on employers affiliated with the Catholic Church.

During a February campaign stop, Romney called the proposal a “real blow” to American Catholics. "This kind of assault on religion will end if I’m president of the United States," he vowed.

That issue re-emerged on Monday, when the University of Notre Dame and the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., joined other religiously-affiliated institutions in filing a lawsuit against contraceptive coverage mandates.

Republicans haven’t been immune from Catholic criticism, either. Many congressional offices pointed to a letter issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the official voice of the church in the U.S., for its censure of cuts to social programs contained within the 2013 budget authored by Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, himself a Catholic.

“It just strikes me as more problematic for a politician to think in terms of the ‘Catholic vote,’” Dinges said.

Catholics no longer show any overwhelming loyalty to a candidate sharing their faith, at least judging by this year's Republican primary. The Catholic vote made up about a third of the electorate in three of this spring's most competitive primaries – Florida, Michigan and Ohio.

Two Catholics were on the ballot in each of those contests: Rick Santorum, a vocal proponent of the church's teachings on abortion and contraception, and Newt Gingrich, a convert to the faith who frequently screened his film on the late Pope John Paul II on the campaign trail. And yet, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is an active member of the Mormon Church, won the Catholic vote in each of those contests. Gingrich and Santorum had stronger showings among other Christians, especially evangelical voters.

To the extent that any political leader could court a segment of the Catholic vote in future elections, they might only succeed at the margins, or in very specific locations or instances.

“There's a group in the middle, maybe 10 percent, and that's a big enough group in important states like Pennsylvania and Ohio,” said Reese, not coincidentally naming two swing states this fall. “They're extremely important, and the swing voters are what we used to call Reagan Democrats – white, ethnic people who sometimes vote their pocketbook, or sometimes vote other issues.”

Reno, of “First Things,” was also more sanguine about the way higher-intensity Catholics might shift over time. Citing the example of the contraception mandate, he argued that, if the Democratic Party is increasingly seen as hostile to persons of faith, enough Catholics could shift toward Republicans in a way that makes a difference.

“If there's a shift of 10 percent in the way Catholics vote over a 10-year period,  that could be very important,” he said.

Forget a president's first 100 days. Mitt Romney's first television ad of the general election, "Day One," comes as close as anything in describing the most urgent priorities of a President Romney upon taking office.

The ad is running in five swing states, and the presumptive GOP nominee's campaign is putting $1.3 million behind it; a Spanish-language analog is running in North Carolina, with a much smaller ad buy behind it.

Nonetheless, Romney's ad is meant to drive a three-point plan: 1. Approve the Keystone Pipeline, 2. Introduce tax reform, and 3. Begin dismantling and replacing President Obama's health care law.

In short, Romney's message is about jobs, taxes, energy and health care.

So what do we know about the specifics of Romney's three-point plan?

Keystone -

Republicans, including Romney, have vocally criticized President Obama for rejecting an initial proposal by the TransCanada Corporation to build an oil pipeline through the central United States. The administration rejected the project out of environmental concerns and because it felt Republicans were rushing its approval of the project, at the expense of due diligence. (TransCanada has subsequently re-applied for a permit to build a pipeline along new routes.)

Romney invoking the example is meant to address the issues of jobs and energy.

TransCanada and supporters of the pipeline -- who range from Republicans in Congress to the organized labor community -- contend the project would create at least 20,000 jobs. The project's most ardent supporters claim these, in turn, would lead to additional job creation.

As for energy, it's much more difficult to say what the effect of building the Keystone Pipeline would have on the price of oil. Its mere approval could conceivably diminish speculation that drives up oil prices, but gauging the direct impact is difficult. Moreover, the pipeline would take years to become fully operational and deliver excess supply to gas stations in the U.S.

"Taking advantage of our energy resources is one of my priorities," Romney said Friday in a conference call with supporters. Among his other plans for his first day in office, Romney said he would also allow expanded permits for oil and gas exploration on federal lands. Romney said, for instance, he would authorize drilling on the East Coast's Outer Continental Shelf.

Tax reform -

The centerpiece of Romney's plan would include a permanent, across-the-board reduction of 20 percent for all income tax brackets.

He's also on the record supporting a number of other tax cuts, including maintaining current tax rates on investment income, eliminating the taxes on estates, cutting the corporate tax rate to 25 percent, and repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax, among other reforms.

The impact of these reforms on the rising national debt -- something Romney routinely decries -- is much more opaque, though.

Romney has said eliminating some tax deductions, combined with economic growth and cuts in spending would make the impact of his tax plan deficit-neutral at a minimum.

"One thing I'm also going to to do is work with Congress to limit the deductions and exemptions and special deals that are in our tax code," Romney said on the conference call.

But the former Massachusetts governor hasn't specified the exemptions or deductions he would eliminate beyond a select few (for instance, the mortgage deductions associated with a second home). Romney has previously said that the wealthy might shoulder a greater tax burden under his reforms, though he hasn't said how. (An analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has suggested that might not be the case.) The Romney campaign also hasn't provided a detailed enough tax plan in order to subject it to static or dynamic scoring of its impact on the deficit and debt.

As for the spending side, Romney's website offers some additional details, but not enough to necessarily account for the total impact of his plan -- either on jobs, or the deficit.

The "issues" section of Romney's website includes an additional "Day One" promise: to send Congress a bill slashing non-defense discretionary spending by five percent across-the-board.

Other parts of Romney's site detail areas he would cut, and the savings associated with each of those cuts. Those savings include the elimination of subsidies to programs like the National Endowment for the Arts, and cuts in subsidies to Amtrak or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

"There are items that I like that I will stop funding," Romney explained during the call.

Health reform -

Romney's new ad calls for not just the repeal of "ObamaCare," but its replacement, as well.

If part or all of the law were allowed to stand following the Supreme Court's ruling next month, Romney would have some options to undo the law on his first day in office, but they would be limited.

The former Massachusetts governor has said his ultimate goal is to return health care decisions to individual states, and create incentives for more efficient health care delivery.

Romney repeated his promise to issue a waiver to states, allowing them to duck some of the requirements of health care reform that conservatives find most onerous. But many other parts of the law would remain in effect, and would require legislative action to both enact a repeal of ObamaCare and a subsequent replacement. That could conceivably pass the House if it were to remain in Republican control, but unless Republicans were to somehow win a 60-seat majority in the Senate this fall, the GOP would need to attract Democratic support for Romney's alternative.

* * *

There are other things Romney said he would do on his first day, among them labeling China a currency manipulator and putting a hold on regulations enacted by the Obama administration.

Democrats have contested Romney's ad, with the Obama campaign labeling it as full of "empty promises."

"We know why Mitt Romney didn’t keep his promises- his business experience wasn’t in strengthening companies and creating jobs for long-term economic growth. It was in reaping quick profits for himself and his investors at the expense of workers and communities," said Lis Smith, a spokeswoman for the president's re-election. "These are the values that he wants to bring to the White House by giving more budget-busting tax cuts to the wealthy and letting Wall Street write its own rules—the same formula that benefited a few, but crashed our economy and punished the middle class."

A Democratic super PAC, American Bridge 21st Century, also produced a parody ad concluding of Romney's first-day plans: "We'll pass."

Republicans moved quickly on Thursday in hopes of distancing themselves from a strategy being weighed by a GOP-oriented super PAC, which threatened to inject racial politics into the 2012 presidential campaign.

Mitt Romney’s campaign, joined by a slew of other GOP heavyweights, sought to disavow a strategy that was presented to Joe Ricketts -- the owner of the Chicago Cubs -- that would call for using a super PAC to launch aggressive attack ads against President Barack Obama. The plan, first reported by the New York Times, called for explicitly linking Obama to a former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose occasionally angry sermons touched on themes of race.

Mary Altaffer / AP

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks to reporters while boarding a charter flight May 17 in Miami, Fla.

"I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they've described," Romney told the conservative blog Townhall.

An earlier statement by Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, said the campaign would repudiate strategies that rely on personal attacks, though Rhoades made no specific reference toward Ricketts. During a gaggle this morning aboard his campaign plane, Romney told reporters that he hadn't seen the story.

Also to Townhall, Romney expressed frustration that no attention is being paid to what he considers a negative campaign by Team Obama.

"It's interesting that we're talking about some Republican PAC that wants to go after the president [on Wright]," he said. "I hope people also are looking at what he's doing, and saying 'why is he running an attack campaign?  Why isn't he talking about his record?'"

First Thoughts: When Willie Horton meets Jeremiah Wright

Romney has only one public campaign appearance today, where he could further address the controversy, but faced immediate blowback from the Obama campaign.

Jim Messina, the manager of the Obama re-election effort, said the report "reflects how far the party has drifted in four short years since John McCain rejected these very tactics," referring to the decision made in the 2008 Republican nominee's high command against attacking Obama along those lines.

"Once again, Gov. Romney has fallen short of the standard that John McCain set, reacting tepidly in a moment that required moral leadership in standing up to the very extreme wing of his own party,” Messina said.

Steve Schmidt, a top aide to McCain’s presidential campaign, said that he was never prouder than when his candidate rejected the tactic. Invoking Wright wasn’t just the wrong thing to do, Schmidt said; it was the wrong strategy.

"Putting aside that this is the totally wrong thing to do for the country, using race as a political wedge releases a poison into the body politic, and it's totally unpredictable how it plays out," he said.

Mark McKinnon, a former aide to President George W. Bush, added of the proposed strategy: "Exhibit A of what is wrong with our politics today."

Romney campaign repudiates -- but punches back, too

The McCain campaign faced pressure to invoke Wright from some of Obama's most vociferous opponents on the right. Reports at the time indicated that, in particular, then-vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was particularly interested in linking Wright to Obama, who had been forced to address his ties to the controversial pastor during his primary fight against Hillary Clinton.

A spokesman for McCain said Thursday in a statement that the senator stands by his decision at that time.

"Senator McCain is very proud of the campaign he ran in 2008," said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the Arizona senator. "He stands by the decisions he made during that race and would make them again today if he had it to do over."

Beyond the McCain campaign's judgment that making such an attack -- which would necessarily invoke race into the campaign against America's first black president -- it was judged to be bad politics.

"Would this have been a politically expedient thing for John McCain? No! Everybody knew who Jeremiah Wright was, and people who were deeply troubled by it were not Barack Obama voters," Schmidt said. "It would have been an utterly ineffective political attack."

The quick Republican backlash, though, reflects the extent to which the Obama campaign might gain traction from even the trial balloon associated with the rumored attack. It might mobilize voters, especially African-Americans, who Obama needs to help fuel his re-election, and could boost fundraising from angry supporters.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., even expressed a degree of amusement at the reported attack emanating from Ricketts, who most recently made a splash in politics by spending late in a Nebraska Senate primary on behalf of Deb Fischer, who eventually won.

"I hope they're as successful with this campaign as the Cubs are in baseball," Pelosi said on Capitol Hill, referring to the team's abysmal record.

Her counterpart, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, opted against condemning or even acknowledging the line of attack during his press conference, telling NBC News that "this election is going to be about the economy."

More broadly, the firestorm that erupted Thursday served as a testament to the outsize importance of super PACs in the 2012 campaign.

The Romney campaign had hoped to push a message about its relative fundraising prowess in April after releasing its figures to reporters early this morning. A new poll yesterday had also showed the former Massachusetts governor in a tie against Obama in Wisconsin, suggesting a narrowing battle for the White House.

"This is a function of the brokenness of the campaign finance system," Schmidt said. "One person's bad judgment -- Ricketts' -- has the potential to consume the dialog in the presidential campaign."

NBC’s Chuck Todd, Peter Alexander and Garrett Haake contributed to this report.

A new viral video starring New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker (a potential future rival of Christie's) helps underscore the value for politicians in being able to navigate new media and contemporary culture.

The video, released on Tuesday night by Christie's office, shows Booker, the Democratic mayor popularized for his antics of shoveling snow or rushing into a burning building to save a neighbor, running to the rescue every time the Republican governor encounters a mishap. But when Booker is facetiously shown talking to Mitt Romney about a spot on the Republican ticket, Christie intervenes.

The skit was produced for a legislative correspondents' dinner along the line of the White House Correspondents' Association gathering hosted every year in Washington and was quickly passed around.

Humor has always been a part of the modern political campaign -- think Richard Nixon's appearance during his run for president on the television show "Laugh-In." But humor's role has been augmented in the age of social media and viral videos; candidates and politicians, at a bare minimum, now try to show that they’re at least conversational in the language of pop culture and sufficiently self-effacing.

“The Christie video gets the No. 1 rule of political humor: It’s an incredibly powerful weapon, but in order to be able to wield it against others, you have to be willing to turn it on yourself first,” said Jeff Nussbaum, a partner at West Wing Writers, who’s worked on political humor for Democratic candidates and officeholders.

“I think that, more and more, people not only want their elected officials to have policy positions, but they also want these people to be relatable,” he said. “And humor is an incredibly good way for elected officials to show they can relate, laugh and, more importantly, laugh at themselves.”

Humor falls along the continuum of reliability, a trait on which every political candidate hopes to trade.

That broader sense of cultural versatility explains why President Barack Obama drew wild cheers from the audience of ABC”s “The View” when he correctly named which of the Kardashian sisters had divorced her husband 72 days. And it’s why Obama, a few weeks earlier, chose to
participate in a “Slow-Jamming the News” skit on NBC’s “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”

Sarah Palin’s 2008 appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” alongside parody-doppelganger Tina Fey, served many of the same purposes; it’s why Mitt Romney still might appear on the same show this fall.

Nussbaum suggested, too, that Obama’s use of humor has been most effective in deflecting his fiercest criticism, for instance, his jokes about the origin of his birth certificate in light of public scrutiny from Donald Trump.

But employing humor or trying to seem pop-culture savvy has its limits, and might not work the best for some candidates. It depends on the circumstances.

“When I first saw it, I asked myself, 'Hmm, I wonder if Mitt Romney should do something like that?'” said Republican ad man Fred Davis, who concluded that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee would be served better by a sober campaign emphasizing his competence versus Obama.

“I think most of Romney's attempts at humanizing himself have fallen a little flat,” Davis said. “Romney's path to victory is probably not being funnier than Obama on Letterman; his path to victory is being more competent than Obama.”

(“I’ll say this: I’m not eager to see Mitt Romney at an open mic night anytime soon,” Nussbaum said.)

The risk, though, always involves the humor hitting too close to home.

Some believe Al Gore’s frequent jokes about his stiffness as a candidate reinforced an existing public perception. And President George W. Bush’s jokes about being able to locate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq came against a backdrop of bloodshed in that war, which was heavily predicated on the purported existence of those weapons.

But if Christie has serious designs on getting a vice presidential nomination, the video may have hurt those chances as much as helped.  Christie’s video mentions -- twice -- his status as a favorite pick to round out Mitt Romney’s ticket, including the video’s biggest comedic payoff at the end.

“I think it maybe went one click too far in that direction, but I don’t think it crossed the more dangerous thresholds for humor,” Nussbaum said.

And Davis, whose ad firm has earned a reputation for its eyebrow-raising humor, said he far prefers to invoke laugh lines when going after other candidates.

“We're really big on humor. But where it plays the biggest role is in making an attack where that doesn’t blow back against the attacker,” he said.  “Emotion works in advertising, and humor is a very powerful emotion.”