Obama lays out ‘The Choice’ for voters in new ad

Looking directly at the camera, President Barack Obama lays out "the choice" voters face in November in a new ad scheduled to run in the key battlegrounds of Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The minute-long message won't air in Colorado until Saturday, an acknowledgement of the tragic mass shooting at a movie theater there.

"Sometimes politics can seem very small. But the choice you face, it couldn't be bigger," Obama says in the ad. The commercial echoes one of his campaign's main messages on the economy, accusing Romney of favoring "the very top" of American earners and wanting to "roll back regulations on big banks."

"We tried that top down approach. It's what caused the mess in the first place," the president says, adding that he wants "the wealthy to pay a little more" in taxes.

The ad was released as Obama raced through the West Coast on a dash for cash from big donors.