Obama launches marathon trip to rally base, sway undecided voters

DENVER — With Election Day less than two weeks away, President Obama launched a campaign blitz across battleground states Wednesday to sway remaining undecided voters and rally his Democratic base, while Republican challenger Mitt Romney urged Americans not to settle for “more of the same.”

Campaign officials said Obama’s exhausting jaunt across eight states, intended to save a historic presidency that began with great promise but now is potentially imperiled by Romney’s challenge, has been in the works for weeks. The president is flying coast to coast, visiting six battlegrounds: Iowa, Colorado and Nevada on Wednesday and then Florida, Virginia and Ohio on Thursday. All are states critical to his reelection prospects. Obama is also stopping in California on Wednesday to appear on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and will squeeze in a Thursday trip to his home state of Illinois to become the first sitting president to vote early.

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Romney, campaigning in Nevada, told supporters at a rally in Reno that the nation is slipping backward under Obama’s leadership and vowed that Republican policies would get it on track.

“You can boil what he’s saying down to four simple words — more of the same,” Romney said. “And we don’t want more of the same.” He said he and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), “have a plan with five simple steps,” which he promised “are going to get America’s economy just cooking again.”

After speaking at a late-night rally in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Obama plans to skip staying at a hotel, instead remaining overnight on Air Force One and flying to Tampa, where he will go directly to his first event on Thursday. From the plane, he will call undecided voters (though presumably not in the middle of the night).

“We’re doing this now because we feel this is a pivotal time in the election,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday morning aboard Air Force One. She noted that early voting has begun in many states and that in Colorado, one stop on the president’s itinerary, 78 percent of people voted early or by mail in 2008.

Obama is excited about the trip, Psaki added. “We’re all going to be going on adrenaline for the next 36 hours or so, and that’s the fun of it,” she said.

Obama’s campaign has remained confident in the face of polls showing the race in a dead heat and Romney’s momentum in recent weeks, insisting that the president still has more paths to secure an Electoral College majority in the Nov. 6 election.

At his first stop Wednesday morning, a fairgrounds in Davenport, Obama was exuberant and clearly energized by the approaching end of the campaign. Taking the stage to loud cheers from a crowd of 3,500 supporters packed into an open field, he called out the refrain that evoked his epic rallies in 2008: “Hello, Iowa!... Are you fired up? Are you ready to go?”

The crowd roared in the affirmative.

Obama talked about the trip to come. “This is the first stop on our 48-hour fly-around marathon campaign extravaganza,” he said. “We’re going to pull an all-nighter. No sleep.”