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Supporters wave signs and US flags as US President Barack Obama gives his acceptance speech on the final day of the Democratic National Convention/AFP

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Obama team defends speech, says voters got it

“They first of all found it to be optimistic, they found it to be credible in terms of his ideas and goals that would help the economy,” the official said, adding that the data showed the electorate also warmed to Obama’s portrayal of Romney as a blundering novice on foreign affairs.

“We think that swing voters in this election responded well to the president’s speech. Our sense is that they responded better than to his speech in 2008 in terms of its impact.”

Obama set out to cast a stark choice between policies he sees as lifting the middle class, and Romney’s which he believes would threaten another financial meltdown.

The official also took a swipe at the Republican’s keynote the week before, which appeared to fail to clear a much lower bar.
“Mitt Romney’s speech for a convention speech was mediocre. I don’t think he advanced the ball in terms of those voters who are saying, ‘okay does this guy have the answers?’”

Obama campaign aides always painted their convention in Charlotte as a three-day effort to build a multi-dimensional picture of Obama and his presidency.

After Clinton and the First Lady offered the flourish, the president swung into provide the meat, promising policies to create jobs, cut the deficit, lift the middle class, hike taxes on the rich and keep America safe in the world.

But commentators conditioned to expect a soaring stemwinder from Obama were disappointed.

“This was the rhetorical equivalent, forgive the football metaphor, of running out the clock,” wrote Michael Tomasky, a political correspondent for the Daily Beast news website and British daily The Guardian.

“Obama clearly thinks he’s ahead and just doesn’t need to make mistakes. But when football teams do that, it often turns out to be the biggest mistake of all, and they lose.”

“Obama clearly thinks he’s ahead and just doesn’t need to make mistakes,” he surmised, warning: “But when football teams do that, it often turns out to be the biggest mistake of all, and they lose.”

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Molly Ball, staff writer of The Atlantic said Obama was on the defensive: “The speech was so befuddlingly flat as to make you wonder whether its lameness was intentional,” she wrote.

Obama gave a curtailed version of the stump speech on Friday at several campaign stops in swing states Iowa and New Hampshire and was setting out on a bus tour of the largest swing state Florida on Saturday.

Victory in all three battlegrounds in November would almost certainly assure him a second White House term.

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