Obama: I'm a fighter for the middle class

U.S. President Barack Obama depicted himself as a fighter for the middle class ahead of a speech in battleground Ohio a spokesman said will focus on that topic. The middle class has been "taking it for a long time," Obama told Iowa Democrats Tuesday night by video teleconference in the state that launched his presidential campaign four years ago. Speaking during the first balloting in the GOP presidential campaign -- the night before flying to Ohio to speak at Shaker Heights High School just outside Cleveland -- Obama said when he campaigned four years ago, he and his advisers didn't know how severe the economic crisis was going to be. But "we understood that what we were fighting for was an America where everybody had a fair shot, everybody did their fair share; that responsibility was rewarded and that the game wasn't fixed, that it wasn't rigged, and that if people did the right thing and worked hard -- as so many families do in Iowa and throughout the country -- that they were going to be able to live out a piece of the American Dream," he said. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama's speech Wednesday would likely be "focused on the economy and on what he can do as president to deliver on his promise to do everything he can to help the middle class." Obama would likely talk about "working with Congress, and independently from Congress, to grow the economy and create jobs, to protect the middle class, to expand it and to make the middle class more accessible to those who aspire to it. That's his No. 1 focus," Carney said. "And going back to Iowa four years ago, that was his No. 1 focus then -- even predating the economic crisis that led to the worst recession since the Great Depression," Carney said. Obama, who visited Ohio 14 other times since taking office in January 2009, beat Republican presidential nominee John McCain in Ohio 52 percent to 47 percent in 2008. Current GOP presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich narrowly edged Obama last month in a Quinnipiac University poll. While in Ohio, Obama was also to "participate in a discussion with a family at a private residence," the White House said Tuesday night, without identifying the family or the discussion topic. Obama was to leave the White House at 10:05 a.m. EST, and then fly from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, arriving in Cleveland at 11:35 a.m., the White House said. He was to meet with the family at 12:05 p.m. and deliver his remarks at the high school at 1:15 p.m. Obama was to leave Cleveland at 2:35 p.m. and return to the White House at 4:05 p.m.