Obama, Romney swing through battleground states

DAVENPORT, Iowa -- President Barack Obama confidently predicted speedy second-term agreement with Republicans to reduce federal deficits and overhaul immigration laws and set out Wednesday on a 40-hour marathon through battleground states that could decide whether he'll get the chance.

Republican Mitt Romney looked to the Midwest for a breakthrough in a close race shadowed by a weak economy.

Romney declared, "We're going to get this economy cooking again," addressing a boisterous crowd in Reno, Nev., before flying back eastward to tend to his prospects in Iowa and Ohio.

Romney urged audience members to consider their personal circumstances, and he said the outcome of the Nov. 6 election "will make a difference for the nation, will make a difference for the families of the nation and will make a difference for your family, individually and specifically."

Opinion polls continued to depicted a close race nationally. Romney's campaign claims momentum as well as the lead in Florida and North Carolina, two battleground states with a combined 44 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Obama's aides insist the president is ahead or tied with his rival in both of those states and in the other seven decisive battlegrounds.

The president's major focus was his coast-to-coast-and-back-again tour.

"We're going to pull an all-nighter. No sleep," the president said shortly after Air Force One touched down in Iowa, his first stop of a swing that included Colorado, California, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Florida, with a quick stop in Illinois to cast an early ballot, before he returns to the White House Thursday evening.

Obama's far-flung rallies were somewhat overshadowed by a day-old interview with top editors of the Des Moines Register, originally meant to be off the record, made public by the White House under public pressure from the newspaper.

Without ever saying so, by his comments Obama sought to undercut Romney's oft-repeated claims that he had worked successfully with Democrats while governor of Massachusetts and would do so again in the White House.

The president said he is "absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain" on the federal budget that he and Republicans futilely pursued in 2011, including $2.50 in spending cuts for every $1 in higher revenue, with steps to reduce the costs of health care programs.

As for immigration, another issue that seems permanently gridlocked, the president said, "Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community."

It was a suggestion that Republicans will have to ease their opposition to measures giving illegal immigrants a path to permanent residence or citizenship if they lose the election.