President Obama. Credit: AP/file.
By Jessica Yellin
(CNN) - As the Republicans do battle in the primaries and caucuses around the country, President Obama is laying out his case for re-election.
On Super Bowl Sunday, President Obama looked for a win of his own.
"I deserve a second term," he said.
That comes just three years after another Super Bowl Sunday when he said this about turning around the economy: "If I don't have this done in three years, then there's gonna be a one-term proposition."
Republicans have used that line against him ever since.
Now, unemployment is falling; it's down to 8.3 percent. Still, no modern president has been re-elected with a rate that high.
So the Obama victory plan? Try to make this election all about a vision for the future economy.
If critics pounce, the president has a slew of statistics at the ready.
"We've created 3.7 million jobs over the past 23 months. We've created the most jobs since 2005. We've created the most manufacturing jobs since 1990," he said.
And wait, they've even got a chart, and it shows private sector job growth has increased during the Obama years.
So how's it going over? A brand new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows President Obama with a nine percent lead nationally against Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney. That's a dramatic 10 point change in less than a month.
But it's not all good news for the White House. Mitt Romney still holds a slight lead over the president when it comes to who Americans trust to handle the economy and who they trust to create jobs.
That's no surprise. Mitt Romney pounced and said the president does not deserve a second term, though his case that the president had been unable to create jobs may be harder to make if the unemployment picture continues to improve up to the election.
CNN