Obama speeds up election campaign

COLORADO - Agence France-Presse

US President Barack Obama. AFP photo

U.S. President Barack Obama took his campaign to Colorado yesterday as he and Republican challenger Mitt Romney fight for votes in key battleground states that will determine the outcome of the November election.

The president was on a four-day trip through swing states in the lead-up to his re-nomination at the Democrats’ meeting in North Carolina on Sept. 6. Obama will say he deserves four more White House years despite national economic despondency and disappointed hopes stretching back to 2008.

With his job in peril, Obama will use the Democratic National Convention to counter the cutting Republican charge that though his election was historic and rightly celebrated, his presidency is a bust.

Today, he is expected travel to Louisiana to tour damage in the wake of Hurricane Isaac, which forced the Republican convention to start a day late. He will visit Virginia on Sept. 4.

Gearing up for this week’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, Obama on Sept. 1 rallied supporters in Iowa. He mocked last week’s Republican gathering in Tampa, Florida for promoting an outdated policy agenda from the “last century” heavy on conservative social policies.

“It was a rerun. We’ve seen it before. You might as well have watched it on a black and white TV,” Obama joked to supporters in Urbandale. “Let me recap it for you: Everything’s bad, it’s Obama’s fault and governor Romney is the only one who knows the secret to creating jobs and (making) the economy” grow. He lambasted Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, for failing to offer any new ideas in his address to Republican activists.