President Obama sought to rekindle the passion of his 2008 victory on Saturday with a pair of huge rallies in battleground states that signaled a new, more politically aggressive phase of the campaign and a sharpened critique of Mitt Romney. [...]

“At times, the rallies had the feeling of a concert by an aging rock star: a few supporters were wearing faded “Hope” and Obama 2008 T-shirts, and cheers went up when the president told people to tell their friends that this campaign was “still about hope” and “still about change.”

The president routinely tells Democratic audiences that he knows it will be difficult to recapture the energy that powered him to the White House. He got a reminder of that struggle in Columbus: His rally drew 14,000 people to an arena that holds 18,300. And before he spoke, the Ohio State University newspaper The Lantern tweeted that ushers were asking people at the rally to move “in order for seats to look full for TV.”