President Barack Obama is greeted
by former President Bill Clinton during a campaign rally in Concord, New Hampshire, on Sunday, November 4. Obama and his Republican rival, Mitt
Romney, are darting from swing state to swing state, trying to fire up
enthusiasm among supporters and win over any last wavering voters before
election day.
(CNN) -- President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney barnstormed their way across more than a half-dozen battleground states on Sunday, making closing arguments to a closely divided American electorate before Tuesday's vote.
Obama stumped in New
Hampshire in the morning, flew to Florida and Ohio, and was headed west
to Colorado in the evening. Romney spent Sunday heading east from Iowa
to Virginia, with a stop in Ohio and a foray into Pennsylvania in
between.
Along the way, Obama
painted Tuesday's vote as a choice between policies that had moved the
country out of the depths of recession and ones that got it into one in
the first place.
"On the one hand, you can
choose to return to the top-down policies that crashed our economy,"
Obama told supporters in Hollywood, Florida, north of Miami. "Or you can
join me in building a future that focuses on a strong and growing
middle class."
Stumping with former
President Bill Clinton in Concord, New Hampshire, he said Romney is
trying "to repackage the same old ideas and pretend they're new."
Boehner very confident on Romney in Ohio
538 votes will decide the election
Courting the women's vote
How history will judge Obama
"We know what change looks like, and what he's selling ain't it. It ain't it," Obama said.
In Cincinnati, the president vowed to win Ohio and the nation's highest office, "one more time."
Campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the president was "reflective" and "nostalgic" working the crowds.
"He's enjoying himself," Psaki said, adding, "He's taking in every moment."
In Des Moines, Iowa, and
Cleveland, Romney told voters that Obama's record, particularly on the
economy, didn't warrant returning him to Washington.
"Throughout this
campaign, using everything he can think of, President Obama has tried to
convince you his last four years have been a success," Romney told a
rally in Cleveland. "So his plan for the next four years is to take all
the ideas from his first term -- the borrowing, Obamacare and all the
rest -- and do them all over again. He calls his plan 'forward'. I call
it forewarned."
In Des Moines, Romney
said that would mean "continued, crippling unemployment. It means
stagnant take-home pay. It means depressed home values and a devastated
military.
"Unless we change
course, we may be looking at another recession," he said. "We're only
two days away from a very different path, from a fresh start."
While tn Newport News, Virginia, Romney urged supporters to look beyond rhetoric, to the candidates' records.
"You see, talk is cheap,
but a record it's earned," he said. "Change can't be measured in
speeches; change is measured in achievements."
National polls show the race locked in a virtual dead heat, or tied.
A new CNN poll showed 49% support for Obama, and 49% for Romney.
A Politico/George
Washington University survey has it tied at 48%; an NBC News/Wall Street
Journal poll indicates Obama at 48% and Romney at 47%; and the latest
ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll puts Obama at 49% and Romney at
48%.
In response to the numbers, a senior official with the Obama campaign said his team is confident in its "ground game."
"Would rather be us than them," the official said.
Romney's next stop was
in Pennsylvania -- a state most published polls show leaning Democratic.
But Romney's running mate, Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan, made a stop
there Saturday, and Romney was headed for the Philadelphia suburbs
Sunday evening.
Romney adviser Kevin
Madden told reporters on the campaign plane Sunday that Obama is
"under-performing" in Pennsylvania, "and it's presented us an
opportunity."
Deja vu on the campaign trail
Dueling campaign phone banks In Ohio
The Jewish vote In Florida
Calculating who will win the presidency
"We have a really strong
volunteer infrastructure that we think could make a difference," Madden
added. "And that's why we're traveling there with two days to go, and
we have spent a lot of time in the last few weeks concentrating on
expanding the map."
The Obama campaign
discounted Romney's chances of reclaiming Pennsylvania, which hasn't
gone for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. Psaki compared
the GOP effort to "climbing Mount Everest without a guide, without a map
and without support staff."
But she added, "We're
not taking a single vote for granted," and Clinton will be campaigning
all over the state on Obama's behalf.
Obama's running mate,
Vice President Joe Biden, visited Cleveland on Sunday. He told a crowd
at a high school that Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, are
"running away from what they've stood for the last decade faster than
you can imagine."
"But like a little kid, they can't run away from their shadow until the sun goes down," Biden said. "It's going down Tuesday."
Ryan started his day
with a brief appearance at Lambeau Field, where he tailgated with fellow
Green Bay Packers fans ahead of the team's 31-17 win over the Arizona
Cardinals. He left before kickoff for Mansfield, Ohio, where he focused
on shuttered auto plants and defense cuts in a state where Romney's
opposition to the 2008 federal auto bailout of the U.S. auto industry
has hurt the GOP. Mansfield was home to plant that made body parts for
General Motors before the company's restructuring, when it was shut
down.
"It's not going the
right way in some places in America, and you know what it doesn't have
to be like this. We don't have to settle for this," Ryan said. "This may
be the best that President Obama can do, but it is not the best that
America can do."
The polling numbers are
slightly different in the battlegrounds, where Obama holds a small edge
in more states than Romney. But most of those leads are well within the
polls' sampling errors.
Obama ends his blitz
Monday with three rallies with rocker Bruce Springsteen in Madison,
Wisconsin; Columbus, Ohio, where he'll be joined by rapper Jay-Z; and
Des Moines, Iowa. First lady Michelle Obama will introduce the president
to a crowd in Iowa, where Obama's 2008 Democratic campaign took off
with a surprise win in the caucuses there. The couple then will head to
Chicago, where they'll spend Election Day.
Romney's other stops
include Sanford, Florida; Lynchburg and Fairfax, Virginia; Columbus,
Ohio; and a finish in Manchester, New Hampshire, before making the short
trip to Boston, where he'll spend Election Day.
Posts
