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| Stand-ins for Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, left, and President Barack Obama, right, run through a rehearsal with moderator Candy Crowley, back to camera, ahead of Tuesday's presidential debate, Monday, Oct. 15, 2012, at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. |
WILLIAMSBURG, Va.
(AP) -- With the economy showing some signs of improvement three
weeks before Election Day, President Barack Obama on Monday laid down a
full embrace of the economic record many Republicans say is his biggest
weakness.
The president's first act in this
critical campaign week was to announce a new battleground state
advertisement featuring voters discussing the ways their economic
conditions have improved during his term. The ad was hitting the
airwaves as Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney huddled in
intense preparation for their second debate as polls show a closely
fought campaign.
"This race is tied," Obama
said in an appeal to supporters asking them to donate at least $5 to his
re-election effort. He promised to be "fighting" for the election on
the debate stage Tuesday night - something many of his supporters
thought he did too little of in his first face-off with Romney.
Early
voting is under way in dozens of states, giving the candidates little
chance to recover from any slip-ups that come in these final days. Obama
has been trying to get his supporters to lock in their choice now, and
his campaign announced Monday that he and his wife, Michelle, would
become the first president and first lady to cast their ballots early.
Obama
planned to vote early during a visit to his home state of Illinois next
week, while Michelle Obama told a rally in Delaware, Ohio, that she
dropped her absentee ballot in the mail Monday. "For me, it was Election
Day," she said.
Even as polls show the race
tightening nationally and in battleground states, Obama's campaign aides
say they are encouraged by public and private surveys showing voters
growing more confident about the direction of the economy. Those trends
are behind the new 30-second spot the campaign is running in Colorado,
Iowa, Nevada and Virginia.
"Stick with this
guy," a gravelly voiced man says at the end of the commercial in a point
Obama hopes wavering voters will embrace. A second ad targeted at Ohio
voters features former astronaut and Sen. John Glenn touting Obama's
character and economic record.
Aides argue
that some voters got a psychological boost when the unemployment rate
fell below 8 percent last month for the first time since Obama's
inauguration. But the campaign says it puts more stock in economic
indicators showing an increase in consumer confidence and retail
spending, which indicate shifts in voter behavior.
Retail
sales rose 1.1 percent last month, the Commerce Department said Monday.
That followed a 1.2 percent increase in August, which was revised
slightly higher. Both were the largest gains since October 2010.
Still,
with millions of Americans still out of work, the campaign is trying to
walk a fine line between touting economic gains and acknowledging that
many voters are still struggling.
GOP vice
presidential nominee Paul Ryan lambasted Obama's handling of the deficit
during an appearance Monday in Ryan's home state of Wisconsin. He
pointed to a digital scoreboard his campaign set up at the far end of
Carroll University's field house that tracked the growth of the nation's
deficit in real time.
"Look at how fast those
numbers are running," Ryan said. "We know without a shred of doubt that
we have consigned the next generation to this path of debt."
He
acknowledged that Obama inherited "a tough situation" when he took
office but argued the president has only made things worse. He touted
Romney's plan to cut taxes by 20 percent across the board as the path
back to economic growth.
Obama campaign
spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said the president would seek to run on his
economic record, not away from it, during Tuesday's debate.
"He
would be happy to spend the entire debate talking about their visions
for the middle class," Psaki told reporters gathered in Williamsburg,
Va., where Obama and his advisers were in the midst of an intense,
three-day "debate camp" at a golf resort.
Obama's
campaign, seeking to rebound from a dismal first debate, promised a
more energetic president would take the stage Tuesday at Hofstra
University in Hempstead, N.Y. Romney's team aimed to build on a
commanding opening debate that gave the Republican new life in a White
House race that had once appeared to be slipping away from him.
"The
debate was huge and we've seen our numbers move all across the
country," Romney's wife, Ann, said in an interview on Philadelphia radio
station WPHT. She talked about the larger crowds her husband has been
drawing in the aftermath of that first face-off. "That's what you call
momentum," she said.
Much of the pressure in
the coming debate will be on Obama, who aides acknowledge showed up at
the first face-off with less practice - and far less energy - than they
had wanted. Romney, who has made no secret of the huge priority his
campaign puts on the debates, practiced Monday at a hotel near his home
in Massachusetts.
Romney's advisers suggested
the Republican nominee would continue to moderate his message - in tone,
if not substance - as he did in the Oct. 3 meeting to help broaden his
appeal to the narrow slice of undecided voters. In recent days, Romney
has promised his tax plan would not benefit the wealthy, emphasized his
work with Democrats as Massachusetts governor and downplayed plans to
curtail women's abortion rights.
Ann Romney
focused on the struggles women face in her radio interview. "The numbers
don't lie and what the numbers tell us is that more women have been
hurt by this economy than men, more women are unemployed, and more women
have fallen into poverty in the last four years," she said. "We do hear
their voices."
During debate preparations,
aides are working on tailoring that message to a debate format. They're
also working on balancing aggressive tactics with the debate's town-hall
format, which often requires candidates to show a connection with
questioners from the audience.
Also Monday,
Romney's campaign announced it raised $170.4 million last month with the
Republican Party, a little behind Obama's $181 million September haul
with the Democratic Party. Romney and the GOP had been raising more
money than Obama and the Democrats by mid-summer, but that changed last
month. Both candidates are using their millions to expand campaign
offices and flood airwaves with television ads in key in the election's
final weeks.
Romney's top-flight donors are
meeting at New York's tony Waldorf Astoria hotel through Wednesday,
getting a chance to mingle with Ryan and attend strategy briefings and
policy discussions with senior Romney aides.
The
retreat appears to be a scaled-down version of a posh Park City, Utah,
gathering this summer for Romney's most generous contributors. There,
Romney officials hosted campaign updates and set ambitious fundraising
goals for the general election.
