Obama: Give me time to finish the job
UPDATED 1:24 p.m. ET
(CBS News) -- President Obama's re-election team unveiled a new ad Monday, striking back at the presumptive challenger Mitt Romney's assertion that Mr. Obama's three-plus years in power have been a failure.
The 60-second ad, which is slated to run in nine key battleground states, makes the case that Mr. Obama has made progress reviving the economy and creating jobs and needs more time to bring it to full speed. The campaign plans to spend $25 million to run the ad in the key states that could decide the election.
"Some said our best days were behind us, but not him," the narrator intones before showing a clip of Mr. Obama telling a crowd, "don't bet against the American worker."
Mr. Obama "believed in us. Fought for us," the announcer says before reciting a list of the president's accomplishments, including a resuscitation of the American auto industry, the end of the Iraq war and the killing of Osama bin Laden.
"We are not there yet. It is still too hard for too many. But we are coming back because America's greatness comes from a strong middle class. Because you don't quit and neither does he," the ad says, citing more than 4.2 million new jobs created since 2009.
The president officially kicked off his re-election campaign over the weekend with rallies in Virginia and Ohio.
A poll released Monday showed Mr. Obama losing ground to Romney in a dozen key battleground states. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll, the president leads Romney by just two percentage points, 47 percent to 45 percent. In late March, he had a nine point lead over the former Massachusetts governor.
Another poll, conducted for George Washington University and Politico, showed Romney leading the president by 10 percentage points among independents and by two points overall.
Among women, Mr. Obama's lead fell to 12 percentage points from 19 percentage points in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin in the USA Today/Gallup poll.
Asked about that gender gap, senior campaign adviser David Axelrod told reporters the president's record on issues that matter to women works in his favor, citing the first bill he signed while in office that makes it harder for employers to pay women less than men for comparable work.
"Contraception obviously is another place where, you know, Governor Romney would take us back 50 years," Axelrod said.
"These kinds of issues are defining and they are showing up in these polls there's just such a fundamentally different orientation on the part of these two candidates so I don't think that these numbers are accidental and I also don't think they're reversible. Governor Romney's positions are not the right positions for women in the 21st century," he said.
Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said Mr. Obama has not lived up to his promises.
"President Obama would like for voters to believe he hasn't been president for the last three years," she said, adding "Mitt Romney will get our country back on track and stop the middle-class squeeze of the Obama economy."
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A new book by Robert Draper titled "Do Not Ask What Good We Do" documents how republicans conspired to block everything President Obama proposes to bring the country out of the economic mess that republicans created. Why aren't reporters asking republicans why voters should reward them with votes for their unpatriotic, despicable, treasonous acts?
Republican teabagging extremist bigoted insurgents like B itch McConnell can't accept a Black Democratic president and are being uncooperative doing everything in their power to make sure he fails.
President Obama's biggest mistake was expecting republicans to bargain in good faith when in reality they are sabotaging anything President Obama does that might help average Americans at every turn in order to defeat him. Republicans have more allegiance to Grover Norquist and his pledge of never raise taxes under any circumstance than the constitution and country. Whatever happened to country first. F"ing treasonous republican hypocrites.
"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy."
Osama Bin Laden - November 2004
The world's largest economy NEEDS a businessman with EXPERIENCE.
Romney 2012!
As Mitt Romney famously said "Corporations are people my friend" and the republican controlled supreme court agreed.
Americans are struggling because Obama never keep his promises of Hope and change and made some stupid blunders.
We can't stand him because he's a fraud and a lying socialist that has no place in America with his ideology.
Why in heavens name you still defend him and support this empty suit is beyond reasonable comprehension.
You would rather cut you nose off to spite your face.
Admit it, you backed a loser and he let us all down
Of course you have to be an adult and have some character to do that.
Never mind
Everyone with common sense and a mind knows better.
Mr Obama told the Today show host: 'I deserve a second term,' and added, 'but we're not done.'
To that, Mr Lauer then brought up his 2009 pre-Super Bowl interview with the president, where he had said 'If I don't have this done in three years, it's going to be a one-term proposition.'
Even Obama said back in 2009 he doesn't deserve four more years.
Lets hold him to his word and vote him out this November.
Enough lies and excuses and of his blame game.
He's not president or man enough to own up to his failures.
Mitt Romney 2012!
You are the one who is dim voting for the lying promise breaking scumbag and still trying to defend this loser.
You can't comprehend what your read yet you call me dim.
LOL!
Don't you have to start doing the job first before you can finish it?
Maybe he means once he's through with is campaigning for office he start after he took the oath of the president in Jan of 2009.
I guess some people are slow starters and can't be hurried along despite the tough and demanding job ahead of them.
Mitt Romney 2012
He is not my president. Watching him is like watching Charles Barkley play golf. Neither one of them has any idea what they are doing. :) :) :) ;)
As Mitt Romney famously said "Corporations are people my friend".