President Obama’s re-election campaign is continuing its attacks on Republican Mitt Romney as a job killing profiteer during his career in private equity, launching a web video Monday centered on the experience of workers at Ampad, a paper company.

Bain Capital, where Romney was CEO, bought Ampad in 1992, mostly with borrowed money, then acquired other paper companies over the next several years. By 1999, the company carried $400 million in debt, and it went bankrupt in 2000. Bain realized a profit of $100 million on its initial $5 million cash investment.

The latest Obama video focuses on a paper company in Marion, Ind. that Bain-controlled Ampad bought in 1994; all 250 workers were immediately fired and made to reapply for their jobs – at much lower wages and benefits. That plant closed one year later. The video features interviews with several workers who saw their middle-class lives fall apart.

Romney, who was governor of Massachusetts from 2003-2007, touts his Bain experience as an important credential as a job creator. Obama strategists believe there is a darker story: of a man who pursued profits at the expense of workers, an enemy of the middle class.

The Obama campaign came under fire from a top surrogate on the Bain issue on Sunday, when Newark Mayor Cory Booker said on NBC’s Meet the Press that he found the attacks “nauseating.”

"I'm not going to sit here and indict private equity. To me we're getting to a ridiculous point in America," Booker said on Meet. “If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses, and this, to me, I'm very uncomfortable with.”

Later Booker released a video, presumably after heat from the Obama camp, in which he sought to clarify his comments. He said that Romney’s record at Bain was fair game, and added he had been making the point that there are too many negative attacks on both sides of the presidential race.

Last week, the Obama campaign highlighted a GST Steel, a Kansas City-company that was bought by Bain and then went under (though it was also under heavy pressure from imports of cheaper foreign steel.)

The Romney campaign Monday called the Obama attacks “an assault on the free-enterprise system.”

Here is the web video that the Obama campaign is circulating :

Republicans are starting to use their SuperPAC network for air support in the presidential race, an advantage much feared by Democratic strategists..

Crossroads GPS, the independent group co-founded by Karl Rove, Wednesday announced a $25 million ad buy in Pennsylvania and other battleground states, matching President Obama’s campaign dollar-for-dollar through the end of the month.

The ad argues that Obama has not kept his campaign promises, citing a continued wave of home foreclosures, taxes, the deficit and health care, among other problems that it says have not abated in the past four years.

The Pennsylvania portion of the ad buy is $487,000 and the spot will run from Thursday through May 31, Crossroads GPS said in a statement. The group is prohibited by law from coordinating with Mitt Romney, but any effort it undertakes can only help the campaign of the GOP nominee-in-waiting Mitt Romney conserve resources.

In addition to Pennsylvania, the ad will air in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia. Those are the same states Obama targeted in his first major ad buy, with the exception of Michigan.

Mitt Romney wants voters to see his 15 years at the head of the private equity firm Bain Capital as his chief strength: he’s a fix-it guy who knows how the economy works and how to create jobs.

President Obama’s team knows that sluggish job growth is a weakness, so it is busy writing a darker Bain story, of Romney the “vampire” capitalist who sucked dozens of companies dry, laying off workers and looting pensions, so he and other super-rich investors could reap bigger profits.

On Tuesday a super PAC supporting Obama – Priorities USA -- bought $4 million worth of time on TV and online in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Virginia. The spot is centered on the tale of GST Steel in Kansas City, Mo., shuttered in 2001, the same case study used in an Obama campaign ad released on Monday. (It will be shown Wednesday during the network evening news in the battleground states.)

Priorities USA’s ad features Pat Wells, a former steelworker who lost his job and benefits while Bain got nearly $9 million in profit. “He promised us the same things he’s promising the United States,” Wells said. “And he’ll give you the same thing he gave us. Nothing. He’ll take it all.”

Illinois U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, the co-chair of Obama’s campaign, said in an interview the point is not to attack private equity companies per se but to show that Romney’s claims of job creation are exaggerated.

“None of the heads of these other companies is running for president of the United States,” Schakowsky said. Romney’s record at Bain, she said, shows that he has “a philosophy that workers are expendable, communities are expendable.”

In addition, Romney’s economic program would cut tax rates for the wealthy further in an attempt to spur growth, and he has endorsed the budget plan put forth by Rep. Paul Ryan (R.,Wisc.) that would curtail Medicare costs by giving seniors grants to buy private insurance.

“As the president has said over and over, we want to make sure that everyone gets a fair shake,” Schakowsky said. “Romney rules are different for the rich and for the middle class.”

She was in Philadelphia Tuesday for a news conference with labor leaders to discuss Romney’s Bain record.

“We have a big job ahead of us, talking with our people about the issues and the comparison between these two guys,” said Pat Eiding, president of the Philadelphia Council of the AFL-CIO. “Mitt Romney would take us back to the way things were in the eight years of George Bush, when the rich got richer and working people had no representation at all.”

President Obama's campaign launched a new television ad Monday morning that goes straight at Republican Mitt Romney's chief credential, business experience, attacking him as a greedy corporate executive who killed jobs and was indifferent to the suffering of workers.

The two-minute TV commercial uses the example of GST Steel, a Kansas City steel mill that was purchased by Bain Capital, Romney's former private equity firm, then restructured and ultimately closed, costing 750 jobs. It features former workers who describe the devastation and the lost pension benefits.

"It was like a vampire," former GST Steel worker Joe Cobb said. "They came in and sucked the life out of us."

Andrea Saul, spokeswoman for Romney, said the campaign welcomed "the Obama campaign's attempt to pivot back to jobs and their failed record."

She said that the bankruptcy of GST Steel and the layoffs occurred two years after Romney had stopped working at Bain, in 1999. (Romney left to manage the Salt Lake Olympics, but he was listed as CEO of the firm at the time of the bankruptcy and received in come from his ownership stake in Bain.)

Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Obama, said in a conference call with reporters that it did not matter whether Romney was actively involved in Bain decisions that affected the steel company.

"He set this in motion," Cutter said. "It was his structure that was put in place, and he....was still making profits off this deal, and continues to profit off of Bain Capital today," she said. "So I do think it’s absolutely on the table as an indication of Romney’s values."

The ad is running in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia and Colorado. Republican media buyers said that the Obama campaign had only put up $83,000 for air time for the spot.

The ad was merely the beginning of a broad assault on Romney's career in private equity, including a web site.

Democrats continue to pounce on Republican presumptive nominee Mitt Romney’s claim that he can “take a lot of credit” for the comeback of the U.S. auto industry, given his strong opposition to the federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler in late 2008 and early 2009.

President Obama is betting that the decision to give direct loans to the automakers, who are now doing well, many help politically in areas where suppliers to the auto industry employ hundreds of thousands of people, including Michigan, Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

“Mitt Romney has made a long list of absurd statements, but this may be at the top,” Michael Lamb, Pittsburgh city controller, said Wednesday on a conference call with reporters organized by the Obama campaign. “It’s tone deaf and blind to reality…He’ll say anything to get elected.”

At the time the plan was being put together in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, Romney opposed the idea, arguing that GM and Chrysler should be reorganized under a managed bankruptcy process. “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” he wrote in an oft-quoted New York Times op-ed in 2008.

But on Monday, Romney claimed paternity of the auto bailout idea.

“My own view, by the way, was that the auto companies needed to go through bankruptcy before government help, and frankly that’s finally what the President did,” Romney said during an interview with WEWS-TV, the ABC News Cleveland affiliate.

Romney’s approach, however, would have relied on capital markets infusions of money into the two automakers rather than government loans. “We can’t forget what the financial market was like in December 2008 and January 2009,” Lamb said. “There was no private financing available.” Without government aid, he contended, the result would have been the “liquidation” of GM and Chrysler rather than reorganization.

Georgia Berner, president and CEO of the family-owned manufacturing firm Berner International in New Castle, Pa., said that the steps Obama took to help the auto industry had boosted demand for the air doors it makes and helped it maintain 60 jobs. General Motors is one of the firm’s customers, she said.

“A few years ago the auto industry dropped off the radar, they disappeared for us,” Berner said. “I did not initially support the (bailout) decision, but it turned out to be a good decision.”

Pennsylvanians know that former Governor Ed Rendell (D) is not one to mince words.

On Tuesday, he bluntly told President Obama to "man up" and take a position on gay marriage.

"I think he should do exactly what Michael Steele said he should do, he should man up and say ‘this is what I believe,'" Rendell said, in response to a question from host Thomas Roberts on MSNBC.

President Obama has said he opposes legalized same sex marriage, but also has said his stand on the issue is "evolving," and that he supports equal civil rights for gay couples. Most analysts to believe that the president cannot openly support the change for fear of offending conservative Democrats and independents in swing states such as North Carolina.

In addition, polls have shown many African American voters oppose same-sex marriage. Obama needs a huge turnout of black voters if he is to reassemble his winning coalition from 2008.

An amendment banning gay marriage is expected to pass easily Tuesday in North Carolina. Earlier, Obama had canceled a planned primary day speech in Asheville, N.C. The president did travel Tuesday to Albany, N.Y., where lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo legalized same-sex marriage last year.

Obama would not be harmed politically if he came out in support of marriage equality, Rendell maintained. "I don't think he's going to lose any African American voters," the former governor said. "And the people who vote solely on this issue, a single issue voter, gay marriage, none of them are voting for Barack Obama now, and they're not going to vote for him whether he says he's against it."

Roberts said to Rendell: "Take a look at this though, because President Obama is attending a $2500 a plate LGBT fundraiser Monday in New York City. It’s hosted by Ricky Martin. There’s the invitation there, I’ve got one in my hands right here. The Washington Post is reporting today that certain LGBT donors are withholding money from the president’s campaign. Governor, I’m going to ask this of you, with some pushing to have this put on the DNC platform at the convention, how does the President walk this political tightrope?”

The Obama campaign Monday announced a $25 million television ad buy in nine battleground states, including Pennsylvania, to air a spot aimed at reminding voters what the president has accomplished despite taking office in deep economic crisis.

“We’re not letting our foot off the pedal,” campaign manager Jim Messina said in a conference call with reporters Monday morning. “We have a very simple choice between going forward and going back.”

Messina and senior adviser David Axelrod said that the spot, called “Go,” is part of broader effort to set administration achievements in the context of Obama’s having inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression and two wars. The ad emphasizes the auto-industry bailout, successfully ending the Iraq war and winding down the war in Afghanistan, and modest growth in jobs, while acknowledging that the economy is “still too hard for too many.”

Axelrod said that the ad contrasts with Republican Mitt Romney’s efforts to blame continuing economic problems on the administration without offering a believable alternative plan for turning things around. Instead, Romney has smothered opponents with negative ads.

“We’re in a different place,” Axelrod said. “We’re fighting through. There are still significant headwinds.” Messina said that Romney acts as if “world history began” when Obama was inaugurated in January 2009.

On the contrary, President Obama does not want to accept responsibility for the failures of his policies, said Amanda Henneberg, spokeswoman for the Romney campaign.

“After a doubling of gas prices, declining incomes, millions of foreclosures, and record levels of unemployment, Americans know they’re not better off than they were four years ago,” Henneberg said. “Mitt Romney’s pro-growth agenda will get America back on track and stop the middle-class squeeze of the Obama economy.”

The Obama spot is also airing in Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, Iowa, North Carolina, Florida and Colorado.

Axelrod told reporters that the Obama re-elect is prepared to counter attacks from Romney and added that the campaign would treat ads from independent super PACS supporting the Republican as if they came from the candidate himself. Axelrod mocked the Koch brothers, conservative billionaires who have financed several anti-Obama groups as “contract killers over there in super PAC land who are going to continue to pound away on behalf of Gov. Romney.”

The Obama campaign has also run some negative ads against Romney, including one recently in Ohio, Virginia and Iowa that mentioned his “Swiss bank account” and intimated he got rich by buying and chopping up countries, shipping jobs overseas.

Here is the new Obama “Go” ad:

Finally, nearly three weeks after he dropped out of the Republican presidential race, Rick Santorum will meet with Mitt Romney Friday at an undisclosed location in Pittsburgh to begin the peace process.

This could get awkward: Santorum, the final serious threat to Romney’s nomination, had scathing things to say about him, including calling him the “worst possible person to put up” against President Obama. (He was arguing that Romney, who had a similar program as governor of Massachusetts, could not provide contrast on the issue of repealing “Obamacare.”)

Santorum advisers have said not to expect an immediate endorsement, though it’s a gracious symbolic gesture on Romney’s part to hold the parley in Santorum’s home town – and the presumed nominee has scheduled a campaign event at a cement factory, which could provide a venue for the traditional falling on the sword.

Advisers to the former Pennsylvania senator, a hero to social conservatives, say he just wants to make sure that the concerns of his constituency – he won 11 states – are heard and honored by the victor. Santorum strategist John Brabender has said his man also wants hard assurances that Romney would make repealing the Obama health program a top priority.

It’s unclear whether Santorum will be bringing along some Tabasco to help him eat words like these:

“I heard Gov. Romney here called me an economic lightweight because I wasn’t a Wall Street financier like he was. Do you really believe this country wants to elect a Wall Street financier as the president of the United States? Do you think that’s the kind of experience that we need?” Santorum said at an Illinois campaign stop on March 19.

Or these:

Romney, Santorum said in January, was an out of touch rich guy who “has had a difficult time relating to the type of voters we’re going to need if we’re going to win this election.”

Or these:

“If Mitt Romney's an economic heavyweight, we're in trouble, because he was 47th out of 50 in job creation in the state of Massachusetts when he was governor,” Santorum said on ABC’s This Week March 18. “He may have had some success at making money for himself and his partners at Bain Capital, and I give him a lot of credit for doing so, but that's a very different thing than going out and creating an atmosphere for people to create - that create jobs.”

The Democratic National Committee made a handy web video with some of Santorum’s greatest hits on Romney for the occasion:

President Obama has opened up an 8-percentage-point lead in Pennsylvania, but Republican Mitt Romney has pulled even in Ohio and Florida thanks to a drop in support for the president, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll of the three key swing states released Thursday.

Pennsylvania voters preferred Obama, 47 percent to 39 percent in the survey, helped by a large advantage for the president among women voters.

Romney had 44 percent to Obama’s 43 percent support in Florida, with a similar statistical tie in Ohio, where Obama was nominally in the lead with 44 percent, to 42 percent for Romney.

In Florida, Quinnipiac found a 6-point plunge in the president's support compared to its survey late last month. Obama's support dropped 3 points in Ohio.

In the last Quinnipiac Swing State Poll March 28, Obama was ahead of Romney 49 percent to 42 percent in Florida, 47 percent to 41 percent in Ohio, and 45 percent to 42 percent in Pennsylvania.

At least 67 percent of voters in each state say the economy is in a recession, but at least 51 percent of voters in each state say the recovery has begun.  Voters in Florida and Ohio say Romney would do a better job on the economy.  Pennsylvania’s were divided on that question.

“Romney’s ability to cut into the president’s leads in Ohio and Florida reflects two changes in the political environment: First, since he is now the de facto nominee, Romney is no longer being attacked by his fellow Republicans, who are closing ranks behind him,” Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac survey, said in a statement. “Second, voter optimism about the economy has leveled off, reflecting economic statistics over the past month and the public reaction to them.”

Results are subject to a statistical error margin of plus or minus 2.9 percent, based on interviews with 1,169 Florida voters, 1,130 Ohio voters and 1,168 Pennsylvania voters between April 25 and May 1.