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Candidates hit battleground states

by William Douglas and Anita Kumar, McClatchy Newspapers –

CONCORD, N.H. — President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney clashed Sunday over who could deliver change to a gridlocked nation as they crisscrossed the country on the second-to-last day of campaigning in a race that remains too close to call.

No battleground state was too small for a personal visit — by noon Obama had appeared in New Hampshire — which has just four electoral votes—and Romney was rallying in Iowa, which has only six.

With former President Bill Clinton at his side, Obama sought to reprise the glory days of the Clinton years while telling an enthusiastic if chilled crowd outside the gold-domed New Hampshire state Capitol that Romney represents a return to failed policies.

“New Hampshire, we know our ideas work,” Obama told an audience estimated at 14,000. “We tried them and they worked for middle class families. We tried giving big tax cuts to the wealthiest, .And what did we get? Falling incomes and record deficits that we’ve been cleaning up ever since.”

Obama’s campaign rhetoric belied the fact that incomes have dropped on his watch, too, and dropped more since the end of the recession than during it. Also, he has presided over the four largest budget deficits in history, adding to the national debt rather than reducing it.

At the close, Obama shook hands along with Clinton as the former president’s 1992 campaign anthem, “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)” blared from loudspeakers.

In Des Moines, Iowa, Romney sharpened his attack on Obama’s handling of the economy, saying the president “cared more about a liberal agenda than he did about repairing the economy.”

He belittled Obama’s record, asking the audience estimated at 1,440 in a convention center whether it believed that Obama’s health-care law created jobs.

“Did his war on coal, oil and gas create jobs?” Romney said. “Does raising taxes put people to work?”

He painted a bleak picture of America under Obama, charging that four more years would lead to “lower take-home pay, higher prices for gasoline, for health insurance, for food, for clothing.”

Romney cast himself as an agent of change, saying Obama promised change, but didn’t deliver.

“I not only promise change, I have a record of achieving it,” Romney said.

As the candidates worked the voters, strategists for both sides took to TV and Twitter, seeking to exude confidence about winning a race that is going to come down to who best can get their voters to the polls.

Both candidates made pitches Sunday in the big battleground states, too. Obama appeared at a high school in Hollywood, Fla., and at an indoor rally in Cincinnati with Stevie Wonder. He was to end the day at a community college in Aurora, Colo., with rocker Dave Matthews.

Romney stopped in Cleveland, where his campaign plane taxied past Air Force Two carrying Vice President Joe Biden. Romney was capping the day with a stop in Morrisville, Pa. — a Democratic-leaning state that the Romney campaign maintains might be ripe for the taking.

 

Romney advisers said Obama is polling below 50 percent in Bucks County, Pa. — an area outside Philadelphia with a high concentration of swing voters.

“We can have an impact on that region and then ultimately be in a position to win the state,” said Kevin Madden, a Romney senior adviser. He added that with Obama under 50 percent, “he’s in a place where he’s in a position of vulnerability in that state.”

The Obama campaign dismissed Romney’s Pennsylvania pitch but will counter Romney Monday by sending Clinton to rallies in Philadelphia, Blue Bell, Pittsburgh and Scranton.

 

The two sides battled it out on the Sunday talk shows as well, with strategists from each camp insisting his candidate would win.

Obama adviser David Plouffe said Obama’s ground game would push the president over the top in the battleground states. He called Romney’s sudden Pennsylvania trip “a desperate ploy at the end of a campaign,” noting that Obama has “been working there for two years.”

Romney adviser Ed Gillespie compared the visit to Obama’s trip to Indiana in 2008. Indiana was then viewed as a Republican stronghold, but Obama ended up winning it.

“The map has expanded,” Gillespie said.

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