CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (CNN) — President Barack Obama will set specific goals for economic growth, energy development and deficit reduction in his speech on Thursday night that will conclude the Democratic National Convention, which nominated him for re-election.
According to excerpts of the speech released to reporters, the president will call for the nation to rally around “a real, achievable plan” to deal with the most problematic issues facing his campaign — high unemployment, sluggish economic recovery and chronic deficit and debt increases.
Specific goals include creating one million new manufacturing jobs by the end of 2016, doubling exports by the end of 2014 and reducing the federal deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade.
Other goals include halving net oil imports by 2020, cutting the growth of college tuition in half over the next 10 years, and training two million workers for jobs.
“I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy. I never have,” Obama will say, according to the excerpts. He added that “it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades.”
In an obvious message to independents and moderate voters of both parties, Obama also will seek to distance himself from the accusation by his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, that he is a big-government liberal.
“Those of us who carry on his party’s legacy should remember that not every problem can be remedied with another government program or dictate from Washington,” Obama will say.
Following in the mold of the forceful endorsement he received Wednesday night from former President Bill Clinton, Obama also will offer an optimistic outlook for the future to contrast with Republican warnings of a nation in peril.
“Our problems can be solved. Our challenges can be met,” he will say. “The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place. And I’m asking you to choose that future.”
Romney indicated Thursday that he wasn’t planning to watch Obama’s speech.
“If I heard, or if in the excerpts that are put out, I hear the president is going to report on the promises he made and how he has performed on those promises, then I would love to watch it,” Romney said in New Hampshire. “But if it is another series of new promises that he is not going to keep, I have no interest in seeing him.”
Obama’s speech concluding the three-day convention originally was set for the 73,000-seat Bank of America Stadium, but possible thunderstorms caused organizers to move it indoors to the smaller Time Warner Cable Arena, where the political conclave has taken place so far.
In a conference call on Thursday with supporters who had credentials for the outdoor venue but won’t be able to get into the arena, Obama acknowledged their disappointment, which he said was shared by “crestfallen” campaign staff who worked for months organizing the scuttled stadium event.
“You’re doing unbelievable work in this close race,” the president told grassroots campaigners registering voters in North Carolina and across the country. “We can’t let a little thunder and lightning get us down. We have to roll with it.”
Saying he hoped credential holders would attend parties across the country to watch his speech, Obama said: “I can’t wait to share my vision for the future tonight, so I hope you’ll tune in.”
On Wednesday night, Clinton thrilled an overflow convention crowd by picking apart Republican attacks on Obama and explaining why the president, if re-elected, can achieve the same economic growth that Clinton did in the 1990s.
Clinton said the man who defeated his wife for the Democratic nomination four years ago offers a better path forward for the country, and framed the November election as an opportunity for voters to choose what kind of country they want.
“If you want a winner-take-all, you’re-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican ticket,” Clinton said. “If you want a country of shared prosperity and shared responsibility — a we’re-all-in-this-together society — you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.”
When he finished his 48-minute address, which was much longer than planned, delegates erupted in raucous cheers as Obama made his first appearance at the convention by joining Clinton onstage. The two most recent Democratic presidents embraced and stood arm-in-arm, waving to the crowd.
“He perfectly teed it up for the president,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said of Clinton. “… You had Michelle Obama talking about what the president believes in and who he cares about. President Clinton explained the past. Now it is just ready for Barack Obama to explain what he will do in the future.”
Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Fordham University, put the onus on Obama “to make a case for his own re-election, and remind voters why they elected them in the first place and what are the choices that he’s made that have been helpful and successful despite the fact that there might have been some things that the president did not achieve.”
One Republican strategist said Clinton’s speech took some of the pressure off Obama.
“If Barack Obama gets re-elected, I think tonight will be a good reason why,” said CNN contributor Alex Castellanos, adding that Clinton gave Democrats “a master class” on moving to the political center.
Still, Castellanos said Thursday that “Obama has to catch the ball that Bill Clinton threw him last night. … This speech will actually be judged on substance. He has to say, ‘Look, we’re going to take the country in a different direction.'”
The Wednesday speech was vintage Clinton, blending an expert’s command of figures and details with a down-home touch of language and emotion that made him one of the best communicators and politicians of his era.
Some analysts said Clinton did the dirty work of partisan attacks on Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, leaving Obama to tell the nation his vision for a second term in his nationally televised speech that will conclude the convention.
In his speech, Clinton responded to the attack line by Romney and Ryan that Obama’s policies made things worse for Americans already confronting economic hardship four years ago.
Noting the economic crises that Obama inherited upon taking office in January 2009, Clinton declared: “No president — not me, not any of my predecessors — no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years.”
Clinton sought to explain the disappointment cited by Republicans, telling the convention that “a lot of Americans are still angry and frustrated by this economy” and had yet to feel any benefits from a sluggish recovery under Obama.
“I had the same thing happen in 1994 and early ’95,” Clinton said, drawing a parallel between his experience and Obama’s presidency. “We could see it was working, that the economy was growing, but people just couldn’t see it yet.”
In response, the Romney campaign said the speech drew a “stark contrast” between the two-term Democratic president’s accomplishments and those of Obama in what it called “the worst economic record of any president in modern history.”
“President Clinton’s speech brought the disappointment and failure of President Obama’s time in office clearly into focus,” said the statement from campaign spokesman Ryan Williams.
Clinton takes aim at Republicans
Ryan said at a campaign event Thursday in Colorado that he and Romney want the campaign to be about a better path, rather than “the lesser of two evils.”
“We want you to have an affirming choice,” Ryan said, describing the options as the Republican plan for an “opportunity society with a safety net and a path to prosperity” or a Democratic alternative for a “welfare state with a debt crisis.”
Ryan’s comments contained traditional conservative themes and policies that defined the Romney campaign through last week’s GOP convention that nominated the former Massachusetts governor and Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman from Wisconsin.
Clinton took aim at those positions Wednesday night, saying the Republican argument against Obama’s re-election “was actually pretty simple, pretty snappy. It went something like this: ‘We left him a total mess, he hasn’t finished cleaning it up yet, so fire him and put us back in.’ ”
He criticized what he called the unwillingness of conservative Republicans to work with Obama and Democrats in any meaningful way to address the nation’s chronic debt and deficit increases and other issues.
Democratic economic policies have proved successful in the past, Clinton said, noting that Democratic administrations created 42 million jobs in their 24 years in power since 1961, compared with 24 million by GOP administrations in the other 28 years.
Clinton also listed Obama’s achievements, focusing in particular on the 2010 health care reform law that he said has lowered health care costs and provided benefits for consumers, such as allowing parents to keep children up to age 26 on family policies and preventing insurers from denying coverage for children because of pre-existing conditions.
“We’re better off because President Obama fought for health care reform,” Clinton declared, “You bet we are.”
At the same time, Clinton criticized Republican proposals to overhaul the Medicare and Medicaid government health care programs for senior citizens, the poor and disabled.
Clinton was particularly critical of Ryan, the architect of the conservative House Republican budget, accusing him of lying about issues such as the health care law and the Obama administration’s recent move to give states more flexibility in administering federally funded welfare programs. The issues have been major GOP focuses in attack ads and speeches against Obama.
In addition, Clinton derided Republican deficit reduction plans, saying “the numbers don’t add up” because of planned tax cuts without any new revenue sources. The result will be widespread spending cuts that hurt the middle class and other vulnerable segments of society, he said.
“Don’t you ever forget when you hear them talking about this that Republican economic policy quadrupled the debt in the 12 years before I took office and doubled the debt in the eight years after I left because it defied arithmetic,” he said.
Self-inflicted wounds for Democrats
The Clinton speech concluded a day of some self-inflicted wounds for Democrats. First, campaign organizers announced they were moving Obama’s address to the indoor venue, preventing tens of thousands of credentialed supporters from attending.
Later, the Wednesday convention session started with some dissension when delegates approved a change in the party platform to reinstate language recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The original platform approved Tuesday omitted that reference, which had been part of the 2008 platform, and Republicans quickly criticized it as a snub to Israel.
Another change restored the word “God” to the platform after the 2012 version omitted it, though it included language on faith as part of American society. The language referring to God-given rights was the same as in the 2008 platform.
It took three voice votes, with supporters and opponents of the changes strongly expressing their preference, before a clearly flummoxed Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared himself satisfied that a two-thirds majority backed the new language, despite groans of displeasure from some delegates.
A senior Democratic source told CNN that Obama intervened to change the platform language, saying the president “didn’t want there to be any confusion about his unshakeable commitment to the security of … Israel.” In addition, Democratic sources said Obama also asked aloud why the word “God” had been dropped.
“The platform is being amended to maintain consistency with the personal views expressed by the president and in the Democratic Party platform in 2008,” said a statement by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who heads the Democratic National Committee.
Struggle to define election
Both campaigns are fighting to define the election in the minds of voters. Republicans want it to be about Obama’s presidency, while Democrats seek a choice between differing political ideologies on the size and role of government.
In particular, Republicans seek to shrink the size of government and end chronic federal deficits and rising national debt through reducing spending, reforming entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and slashing taxes on businesses and many individuals as a spur for economic growth.
Obama and Democrats argue that a deficit reduction plan also needs additional revenue, and they propose allowing tax rates on income of more than $250,000 for families and $200,000 for individuals to return to the higher levels of the 1990s.
Republicans oppose any kind of tax increase, and the impasse over that issue has been the main impediment to a comprehensive deficit reduction agreement during Obama’s first term.
The race overall is very tight, with a new poll Tuesday showing Romney received little bounce from last week’s convention intended to introduce him to voters just now turning their attention to the presidential race.
The CNN/ORC International Poll also indicates that less than 40% of registered voters said the GOP convention made them more likely to vote for Romney. At the same time, Romney got a slight bump in his favorable rating, and on being in touch with the middle class and women, although he still trails Obama on those two questions.
By Tom Cohen, CNN.
CNN’s Kevin Bohn, Jessica Yellin, Dana Bash, Ashley Killough, Kevin Liptak, Sarah Aarthun, Halimah Abdullah, Paul Steinhauser, Adam Aigner-Treworgy, Brianna Keilar and Peter Hamby contributed to this report.
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