Obama, Romney play up their differences

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Two days from judgment by the voters, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney raced across competitive battleground states Sunday, stressing differences on the economy, health care and more while professing a willingness to work across party lines to end gridlock in Washington.

"You have the power," Obama told thousands of cheering supporters in New Hampshire as the race moved toward a close finish Tuesday.

Boos from Romney's partisans in Cleveland turned to appreciative laughter when the Republican nominee began a sentence by saying, "If the president were to be elected," and ended it with, "It's possible but not likely."

After a campaign that began more than a year ago, late public opinion polls were unpredictably tight for the nationwide popular vote. But they suggested an advantage for the president in the state-by-state competition for electoral votes that will settle the contest.

Conceding nothing, Romney set his first foray of the fall into Pennsylvania. The state last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1988, but the challenger and his allies began advertising heavily in the campaign's final days.

The theme from "Rocky" blared from the loudspeakers as he stepped to the podium. "The people of America understand we're taking back the White House because we're going to win Pennsylvania," Romney told a large crowd that had been waiting for hours on a cold night.

"I've got a plan [to fix the economy]. I can't wait for us to get started," Romney said in a new television commercial, possibly the last of the campaign, as he appeared in Iowa, Ohio and Virginia as well as Pennsylvania.

In Des Moines, he said he would meet regularly with "good men and women on both sides of the aisle" in Congress.

Obama had New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio and Colorado in his sights for the day, and judging from the polls, a slight wind at his back. So much so that one conservative group cited a string of surveys that favor the president as it emailed an urgent plea for late-campaign donations so it could end his time in the White House.

In New Hampshire, the president said he wants to work across party lines, but said he won't give up priorities such as college financial aid or the health care law he pushed through Congress.

"That's not a price I'm willing to pay," he said, a reference to Romney's frequent pledge to dismantle the health law that Republicans derided as "Obamacare."

The two rivals and their running mates flew from state to state as the last of an estimated 1 million campaign commercials were airing in a costly attempt to influence a diminishing pool of voters.

More than 27 million ballots have been cast in 34 states and the District of Columbia, although none will be counted until Election Day. Nearly 4 million of them were deposited by Floridians, and Democrats cited unprecedented demand for pre-election day voting as they filed a lawsuit demanding an extension of available time.

Obama and Romney disagree sharply about the approach the nation should take to the slow-growth economy and high unemployment, and the differences have helped define the campaign.

Most notably, Romney wants to extend tax cuts that are due to expire without exception, while Obama wants to allow them to expire on incomes over $250,000.