Charles Dharapak / AP

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigns at the Pensacola Civic Center in Pensacola, Fla., Saturday, Oct. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

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President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally at the Cheyenne Sports Complex in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Thursday.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – At his second of three events Thursday, President Obama honed his closing arguments, painting himself as a populist fighter for those who send him to the White House a second time.

His speech was lighter on direct jabs to his opponent Mitt Romney, as was his earlier address in Green Bay, Wis., although he once again ridiculed Romney’s self-characterization as an agent of change.

“My opponent can talk about change, but I know what real change looks like because I've fought for it. I've got the scars to prove it. You have too,” Obama told the 4,500 supporters gathered in a field at the Cheyenne Sports Complex.

The imagery of a fighter struggling against the status quo punctuated Obama’s entire speech.

“Our fight goes on because we know this nation can't succeed without a growing, thriving middle class and strong, sturdy ladders into the middle class. Our fight goes on because America's always been at its best when everybody gets a fair shot and everybody's doing their fair share and everybody's playing by the same rules,” he said.

He later said that he’s “not ready to give up on the fight just yet.”

And as he did in Green Bay, he listed the types of people for whom he wants to be a “champion” in Washington, saying that “the folks at the very top in this country” don’t need such a hero.

“The laid-off furniture worker who's retraining at the age of 55 after they got laid off – yeah, she needs a champion. The small restaurant owner who needs a loan to expand after the bank turned him down, he needs a champion. The cooks and waiters and cleaning staff working overtime at a Vegas hotel trying to save enough to buy a first home or send their kid to college, they need a champion.”

Obama visited some of those who fall into the last group last week, surprising hotel workers at the Bellagio casino and resort after a fundraising event with President Bill Clinton.

After his event in Nevada, the president was headed to Boulder, Colorado for his last rally of the day.

Slideshow: On the campaign trail

Reuters, Getty Images

In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.

Launch slideshow

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Perhaps the most impactful part of President Barack Obama’s speech here Thursday night wasn’t anything he said, but how he arrived.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

President Barack Obama greets supporters on the tarmac upon his arrival on Air Force One at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012.

The presidential aircraft, Air Force One, taxied right up to a crowd of 12,000 at the Burke Lakefront Airport, easing to a stop in front of the podium.

After a dramatic few minutes when the crowd cheered on the plane itself, the president descended, breaking into a full jog to the stage, the words “United States of America” emblazoned on the aircraft behind him, gleaming in stark white and blue against the darkness of the night behind it.

While such theatrics were an example of the power of the presidency, Obama’s hoarse voice proved that even presidents get run down sometimes – for example, after 48 hours covering eight states and catching a few hours of sleep on the plane – even if it is Air Force One.

“We’ve been going for two days straight, from the East Coast to the West Coast,” he told the crowd. “I’ve still got a spring in my step because our cause is right. Because we’re fighting for the future,” he continued.

The president hit some notes that he reserves for Ohio events, including a special focus on the auto bailout, popular with Ohio’s autoworkers, which his presidential rival Mitt Romney opposed.

“If Mitt Romney had been president when the auto industry was on the verge of collapse we might not have an American auto industry today,” Obama said. “The auto industry supports one in eight Ohio jobs. It’s a source of pride to this state. It’s a source of pride for generations of workers. I refused to walk away from those workers.”

After his speech, the president turned and got right back on his plane, and took off for the White House.

DENVER, Colo. – President Barack Obama is going to vote for someone tomorrow, but he won’t say for whom.

Speaking to a crowd of 16,000 in a Denver park, the president sought to lead by example by saying he would vote early in Chicago on Thursday.

“I can’t tell you who I’m voting for,” he said. “It’s a secret ballot. But Michelle says she voted for me.”

“We can vote early in Illinois, just like you can vote early in Colorado,” the president continued, driving home the importance of early voting to the Obama campaign, which is relying heavily on getting people to the polls before Election Day.

Earlier today senior White House adviser David Plouffe underscored the importance of early voting in swing states like Colorado, saying that through early vote figures, “you begin to make some assumptions about the electorate that’s going to materialize.”

Slideshow: On the Trail

To date, 37 percent of early Colorado voters are registered with the Democratic Party. Thirty-nine percent are registered with the Republican Party and 23 percent are registered with unaffiliated parties. (The rest are registered with other parties.)

But because those unaffiliated voters do not have to pick a party, it is difficult to get a precise read on which presidential candidate is getting the most early votes.

After the Denver event, the president headed to Los Angeles, Calif. to tape a segment for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Later Wednesday he was slated to attend a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nev.

DAYTON, Ohio – Taking his campaign into car country, President Barack Obama touted his from-the-start support of the auto industry bailout, contrasting it with what he said was Mitt Romney’s shifting position on the issue.

Highlighting what is a popular topic in this swing state, where one in eight jobs is tied to the auto industry, Obama joked that his Republican opponent had “Romnesia” in Monday night’s debate when he said he would have helped car companies avoid bankruptcy during the 2009 auto crisis.

“If you said that you love American cars during a debate, you’re a car guy – but you wrote an op-ed titled, ‘Let Detroit Go Bankrupt’ – you definitely have a case of Romnesia,” Obama said as he spoke to a crowd of 9,500 at a public park here.

Seeking to characterize his opponent as untrustworthy, Obama said, “Last night Gov. Romney looked you right in the eye, looked me in the eye, tried to pretend that he’d never said, ‘Let Detroit go bankrupt.’ Tried to pretend he meant the same thing I did when we intervened and worked to make sure management and workers got together to save the U.S. auto industry.”

“Pretended like somehow I had taken his advice,” Obama said.

But, he continued, “People don’t forget. The people of Dayton don’t forget. The people of Ohio don’t forget,” he said.

The president returned to the White House after his Dayton event; he heads Wednesday to Davenport, Iowa where he kicks off another two days full of campaign events.

Updated 10:07 a.m. - ATHENS, OH – Energized by a huge crowd and, likely, his improved debate performance against Mitt Romney Tuesday night, President Barack Obama went on an extended riff during remarks here about what he said was Romney’s inauthentic support for coal energy.

Noting that Romney praised coal during the debate at Hofstra University, Obama pointed out that as governor of Massachusetts, Romney appeared in front of a coal factory to criticize its high level of toxic pollution, saying, “that plant kills people.”

Obama said voters should be skeptical of Romney’s embrace of coal, mocking him as “running around talking like he’s Mr. Coal,” as a crowd of 14,000 at Ohio University cheered him on.

“Does anybody ever actually look at that guy and think, man, he’s really into coal?” Obama asked the audience as he chuckled.

Obama then brought up an ad, released earlier this week, that showed Romney speaking to workers at an Ohio coal mine, saying the workers in the ad were forced to attend the August Romney event – which the mining company and some of the workers have refuted.

“Did you see when he was doing that ad, he was in front of all those guys – all these miners with hard hats. Find out later they had to come. Boss made them come. Come on, gotta be on the level if you want to be the president of the United States!” he exclaimed.

The Romney campaign responded to the president's remarks in Athens by releasing a statement from spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg. "“As we approach Election Day, President Obama’s rhetoric and personal attacks will not mask a failed record that has left middle-class families hurting.  Under this President, permits for drilling on federal lands have declined, over one hundred coal-fired plants are schedule to close by the end of the year, and gas prices have more than doubled.  Mitt Romney has an all of the above energy strategy, which will create millions of jobs and put our nation on a course toward North American energy independence by 2020.”

Obama returned to the White House on Wednesday night. He heads to New Hampshire Thursday before taping "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" in New York City.

COLUMBUS, OH – As the presidential race heats up in Ohio, President Barack Obama took to the state the same day as Mitt Romney to urge young people to vote -- and to hammer his rival’s positions on foreign policy and cuts to popular government programs.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images

President Barack Obama greets supporters after speaking during a campaign event at the Oval at Ohio State University October 9, 2012 in Columbus, Ohio.

Telling a crowd of about 15,000 at Ohio State University to take advantage of Ohio’s early voting period, Obama said, “Grab your friends and grab everybody in your dorm, grab your fraternity or sorority” and go to a polling place after his speech, adding that buses waited around the corner to shuttle voters there.

Obama’s appearance here comes at the end of a three-day trip that consisted mostly of fundraising events in California, while Romney, who arrived here this afternoon, will hunker down in the state for the next three days, making up for his previously light footprint here.

At Ohio State, Obama also decried Romney’s foreign policy speech Monday during which he criticized the president’s policies and said he would have kept a troop presence in Iraq.

“If (Gov. Romney) got his way, those troops would still be there,” Obama said. In a speech yesterday, he doubled down on that belief. He said ending the war was a mistake,” Obama said.

The president also added some new embellishments to his now-routine warnings that Romney would cut funding for PBS programs like Sesame Street.

“He's decided we're going after Big Bird. Elmo's making a run for the border – and Oscar's hiding out in a trash can. And Governor Romney wants to let Wall Street run wild again, but he's going to bring down the hammer on Sesame Street,” he said.

To hammer home the point, rapper will.i.am, who performed before the president arrived at the event site, blasted the Sesame Street theme song over the public address system.

NEW YORK, N.Y. – In a pre-taped interview for ABC’s The View, President Barack Obama declined to call the lethal attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Libya terrorism despite his administration’s assertion that it was.  

Asked by co-host Barbara Walters whether the attack was terrorism, the president responded, "There's no doubt that the kind of weapons that were used, the ongoing assault, that it wasn't just a mob action." 

He added that there are "extremist strains" in the Middle Eastern countries adapting to new governments in the wake of their dictators being overthrown. But, he said, "the overwhelming majority of Muslims, they want the same things families here want."

During the interview, which he taped with his wife Michelle at ABC’s studios in New York City, the president also divulged that his toughest moment in office thus far was overseeing, at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the dignified transfer of the remains of 30 soldiers killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.

"It's very raw in those moments. It reminds you that freedom's not free," he said.

The interview also had some lighter moments, as when Michelle Obama joked that she is one of the few people who can anger her husband.

"By being thoroughly unreasonable," her husband added, smiling.

And when asked what they would like to do in five years, Mrs. Obama said she would like to take a long vacation, including retracing the honeymoon road trip she and her husband took 20 years ago from San Francisco to Los Angeles along Highway 1.

Her husband said he would think about those plans after the election.

"First things first here. We do have an election ahead," he said.

Of life after the White House, Obama said, "The thing I think I would enjoy the most is spending time, working with kids. Just giving young people the sense of possibility, of opportunity."

For the first time since four American diplomats were killed during violent protests at the U.S. consulate in Libya, the White House spokesman acknowledged that the attacks were an act of terrorism. 

During a gaggle with reporters on Air Force One, Press Secretary Jay Carney called the attacks “terrorism” in the sense that they fit the definition of such an act.

“It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Our embassy was attacked violently and the result was four deaths of American officials – that's self-evident," Carney said to reporters traveling en route to Florida, where the president participated in a forum hosted by the Spanish-language network Univision.

The mention of “terrorism” – first made Wednesday by National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen (an Obama administration official) during Capitol Hill testimony -- was a marked shift in tone for Carney, who, until Thursday, had used the less-charged word, “extremists” to refer to the perpetrators.

Related: White House says Libya consulate siege that killed four was terrorist attack

“There has certainly been precedent in the past where bad actors – extremists who are heavily armed in different countries, in different regions of the world, have taken advantage of and exploited situations that have developed in order to either attack Westerners or Western assets or American or American assets,” Carney said at Wednesday’s press briefing, which took place about 45 minutes after Olsen called the attack terrorism.

But President Obama did not call the attack “terrorism” during the Univision forum, sticking to “extremism.”

“The natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests,” Obama said, declining to comment on whether or not the attacks had been premeditated.

He suggested, however, that if the attack had been planned, it would have been orchestrated by a smaller organization than al-Qaida, as Olsen suggested Wednesday. Olsen said the perpetrators were likely an offshoot of al-Qaida, similar to its North African branch, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

“In Yemen, in Libya, in other of these places, increasingly in places like Syria, what you see is these elements that don't have the same capacity that a bin Laden or core al-Qaida had but can still cause a lot of damage,” Obama said.