Debates over, Obama resumes campaign
UPDATED 3:27 p.m. Eastern Time
DELRAY BEACH, Fla. With the high-risk debates behind him, President Obama is plowing into the home stretch of his re-election campaign, launching a new effort to spotlight his policies in a second term.
The Romney-Ryan campaign has made it a daily point of criticism that the president has yet to state his priorities if elected to four more years.
So today, two weeks before Election Day, the Obama campaign unveiled a new 60-second TV ad to be aired in seven swing states outlining the president's priorities. They include: deficit reduction, education, job training, boosting manufacturing and expanding American-made energy.
In addition to the ad, the president's campaign is printing 3.5-million copies of a 20-page booklet on his secnd term priorities titled "A Plan for Jobs & Middle-Class Security."
The programs in the ad and the booklet have been previously offered up by Mr. Obama and are part of proposals he could not get Congress to enact.
The political objective, says a campaign aide, is "to ensure every voter knows what a second term of an Obama presidency would mean for middle class Americans."
It's also another effort by the Obama campaign to draw a distinction between the president's policies and those it says "devastated our economy and punished the middle class." Those are the policies Mr. Obama repeatedly attributes to Mitt Romney.
The Romney Campaign dismisses the booklet as a political stunt.
"A glossy pamphlet two weeks before an election is no substitute for a real agenda for America," says Romney Policy Director Lanhee Chen.
"And you can't fool the American people into thinking you have a real plan for the future when all you are offering is more of the same," said Chen in a written statement distributed to reporters.
She said Mr. Obama is re-proposing policies "that have already proven ineffective. And coming 14 days for Election Day, "this is further proof of the intellectual bankruptcy of the Obama Administration. They simply have nothing new to offer to the American people."
The president began the final two weeks of his campaign with a rally here in Delray Beach, Fla., about 20 minutes from Lynn University in Boca Raton, site of last night's final debate, still on the president's mind. He urged supporters to visit his website and share the plan with friends, family and co-workers.
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The president again accused his rival of suffering from "a severe outbreak" of Romnesia, the invented word Mr. Obama uses to mock Romney for shifting his policy positions from far right to center.
It was at least a "Stage 3 Romnesia," said the president to cheers and laughter from his supporters.
He again accused Romney of advocating policies that are "wrong and reckless."
"Last night, he was all over the map," said the president.
Mr. Obama was introduced at this rally by Scott Van Duzer, the pizza and pasta man from Ft. Pierce, Fla., who bear-hugged the president when he visited Van Duzer's restaurant last month. Van Duzer, a Republican, said he voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and would do so again now. He gave the president another bear hug - but didn't lift him off the ground.
Mr. Obama will be spending the next two weeks focused almost exclusively on the nine battleground states whose results will determine if he wins a second term: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
From his rally here, Mr. Obama headed to Dayton, Ohio where he was to be joined at an outdoor event by Vice President Biden.
The president returns to the White House tonight but sets out again in the morning on a two-day campaign blitz that will take him to eight states, including repeat visits to his destinations today: Florida and Ohio.
The Obama campaign's objective now is to get out the vote in the hope of duplicating, to the greatest extent possible, the turnout that helped him win election in 2008. The president's political team is counting on its ground game to make sure supporters are registered and can vote early.
Mr. Obama hopes to set an example for his supporters by casting his own early vote on Thursday during a stop in his hometown of Chicago.
