WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is pitching a broad economic argument to voters before next week’s debate with Republican opponent Mitt Romney, buying TV time in seven battleground states to promote a “new economic patriotism.”
In a two-minute ad, Obama looks into the camera as he promotes an economic plan he says will create 1 million manufacturing jobs, cut oil imports and hire thousands of new teachers.
[youtube id=ZYI7qPO5wVw width=”600″ height=”350″]
The ad set to air in New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and Colorado comes as both men shadow each other while looking for votes in a closely contested race. It was not running in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, underscoring the states where the president’s campaign contends the election is truly being fought.
On Thursday, the two candidates are scheduled to campaign in the same state for the third straight day, this time in Virginia, a critical battleground in the Nov. 6 election. Romney is to appear in suburban Washington for a veterans’ event, while Obama speaks in Virginia Beach.
The simultaneous visits follow an all-day duel Wednesday in Ohio, where Romney declared he can do more than Obama to improve the lives of average people. Obama scoffed that a challenger who calls half the nation “victims” was unlikely to be of much help.
Amid the hunt for working-class voters, Romney released a new ad Thursday aimed at coal miners. It included video of Obama as a candidate in 2008 saying he would support laws to force emitters of greenhouse gases to buy allowances at auction. “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them,” Obama says in the ad.
