Romney as front-runner; Obama as underdog

The Romney camp said the Republican U.S. presidential nominee would finish the campaign as a front-runner while the Obama camp called the president an underdog. President Barack Obama's "campaign is slipping," Mitt Romney told a crowd in Henderson, Nev., near Las Vegas, "and ours is gaining so much steam." "I don't want to lose this election," Obama told supporters in an email. Romney -- portraying himself as someone who can bring the parties together -- was to host a rally in Reno, Nev., Wednesday morning, followed by rallies in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Cincinnati in the evening. Obama -- trying to strike a positive tone while arguing Romney is masking his conservative policy positions -- was to host a rally at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds in Davenport, Iowa, in the morning, followed by a rally in Denver in the afternoon, a guest appearance on NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" in the evening and a campaign event in Las Vegas after that. To rebut criticism from Republicans and even some allies that Obama hasn't said enough about what he would do during another four years in the White House, the Obama campaign released a "Blueprint for America's Future" booklet outlining proposals to boost manufacturing, slow the growth of college tuition and reduce the federal deficit. The campaign said it would print 3.5 million copies of the glossy, 20-page publication, with 1.5 million copies available for distribution from campaign field offices and the rest mailed to swing-state voters' homes. The Romney campaign said that despite the publication, Obama still hadn't laid out a second-term agenda. "A glossy pamphlet two weeks before an election is no substitute for a real agenda for America," the campaign said in a statement. A new 60-second Obama TV spot has Obama saying the nation has added 5 million jobs, seen exports and home values rise, and brought soldiers home from wars abroad. "Here's my plan for the next four years," Obama then says. "Making education and training a national priority, building on our manufacturing boom, boosting American-made energy, reducing the deficits responsibly by cutting where we can and asking the wealthy to pay a little more. And ending the war in Afghanistan." The ad is running in all the battleground states, the Obama campaign said -- Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Virginia and North Carolina. A super PAC backing Romney said Tuesday it would spend $300,000 on his behalf in Maine and $1.6 million in Michigan. The Romney campaign is also running ads in all battleground states.