President Obama's re-election campaign has released a new ad across swing states, but this time they've laid off the Bain attacks and adopted a different tone.
This time the president let's us know: "Over the next four months you have a choice to make. Not just between two political parties or even two people. It's a choice between two very different plans for our country."
However, the campaign kept in their criticisms of Romney's economic plan.
"Governor Romney's plan would cut taxes for the folks at the very top, roll back regulations on big banks, and he says that if we do our economy will grow and everyone will benefit. But you know what? We tried that top-down approach. It's what caused the mess in the first place," the president said.
The Morning Joe panel discussed the ad this morning, with Joe Scarborough saying this type of ad would work better for the president than a Bain slam.
"The class warfare stuff doesn't work," he said. "But do you know what does work? Barack Obama being Barack Obama."
"This ad, I think, is a seminal ad in a lot of ways," New York Magazine's John Heilemann suggested. "It’s really, actually, a comparative ad. It’s not just a negative ad. It’s an ad where he says ‘This is what Romney says; this is what I say.’ There’s no scary music; there’s no unflattering pictures of Mitt Romney. It’s just Obama making the case."
The Huffington Post notes the minute-long commercial is set to air in battleground states Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. And the Washington Post notes the Obama campaign is set to spend $5.3 million on ads in the next two weeks — $1,679,235 in Florida, $924,568 in Virginia, $701,346 in Ohio, $631,394 in Colorado, $373,968 in Nevada, $344,130 in North Carolina, $320,485 in New Hampshire, and $312,660 in Iowa.
Watch the Morning Joe conversation here: