Obama talks 2nd term; Romney targets economy
Associated Press
DAVENPORT, Iowa
President Barack Obama is confidently predicting speedy second-term agreement with Republicans to reduce federal deficits and overhaul immigration laws, commenting before setting out Wednesday on a 40-hour campaign marathon through battleground states that could decide whether he’ll get the chance. Republican Mitt Romney looked to the Midwest for a breakthrough in a close race shadowed by a weak economy.
Romney declared, “We’re going to get this economy cooking again,” addressing a boisterous crowd in Reno, Nev., before flying back eastward to tend to his prospects in Ohio and Iowa. Romney urged audience members to consider their personal circumstances, and he said the outcome of the Nov. 6 election “will make a difference for the nation, will make a difference for the families of the nation and will make a difference for your family, individually and specifically.”
With 13 days until Election Day, opinion polls depicted a close race nationally. Romney’s campaign claims momentum as well as the lead in Florida and North Carolina, two battleground states with a combined 44 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Obama’s aides insist the president is ahead or tied with his rival in those states and in the other seven decisive battlegrounds.
Not even Obama, in an interview with radio host Tom Joyner, predicted that fellow Democrats would win control of the House from Republicans, who are looking to renew a majority they won two years ago.
The president’s major focus was his coast-to-coast-and-back again tour.
“We’re going to pull an all-nighter. No sleep,” the president said after Air Force One touched down in Iowa, first stop of a swing that included Colorado, California, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Florida, with a quick stop in Illinois to cast an early ballot, before he returns to the White House this evening.
On his second stop of the long day, Obama told a crowd of about 16,000 people at Denver’s City Park that he was “fired up” — though temperatures dropped near 50 degrees. It was in Denver that Obama had his lackluster first debate performance early in the month. He didn’t mention that Wednesday.
Romney, in Reno, departed from previous speeches and sought to personalize the choice voters face.
He listed hypothetical situations — a senior struggling to pay for health care, a young family trying to educate their kids, an unemployed worker looking for a job — and insisted each would be better off under a Romney administration.