Obama had to change his slogan to "Forward" on the 2012 campaign. (Flickr Creative Commons)

After a weekend of very promising poll forecasts, Barack Obama enters the last day of the campaign with confidence Mitt Romney doesn't have. 

Many national news outlets are saying that the race is "too close to call" and "neck-and-neck," but the outlook of swing state polls shows a very desperate situation for Romney.  Obama only trails in polls for North Carolina and is tied with Romney in Florida, a state that Romney can't lose.

The president has had to scratch and claw his way through this campaign, getting none of the help from an unwieldy GOP ticket like he did in 2008 when Sarah Palin took their ticket for a ride.  The candidates this year have had to rely on strength of stump points rather than strength of personality--Obama's charm has tempered and Romney had to summon a base line of charisma.

Obama also had to deal with the ghost of his 2008 campaign promises, which Romney used against him by claiming to be the real agent of change in American politics. 

Obama will wrap up his rapid campaigning Monday after a spree of rallies that showcased his celebrity support.  In Aurora, Colorado, Sunday night musician Dave Matthews played to introduce the president and on Monday morning Bruce Springsteen opened for him in Madison, Wisconsin. 

On Election Day he'll play basketball with buddies in Chicago, a tradition he's kept on important voting days--except for the 2008 New Hampshire primary against Hillary Clinton, which he lost.  "We made the mistake of not playing basketball once," said former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, who has joined the Obama campaign.  "We won't make that mistake again."

(MORE: Does Obama's Lead In Swing States Mean He Will Win The Election?)

In the last election, Obama leveraged against eight years of a Bush administration that took the country into two foreign wars and widespread dissatisfaction.  Now, while the economy became the major issue of the election, Obama can't rely on his achievements in overseas conflicts to convince Americans to vote for him again.

During the campaign, he tried to paint his administration as being on course to assuage conditions for the middle class, while pointing to Mitt Romney as a millionaire's millionaire.  Romney helped him in this regard when Mother Jones released video of him denouncing the 47 percent of Americans who vote for Obama for "not taking responsibility for their own lives."

But Romney's strongest point in the debates and on the stump came back to the fact that Obama has been on watch while the economy has continued to go in the tank.  Whether there's any validity to that argument doesn't appear to matter, because most Florida voters think that Romney can handle the economy better than Obama has. 

(MORE: Breaking Down The Romney Image Before Election Day)

While suburban Democrats have few qualms about reelecting Obama because of his policies, progressives and radicals point to his ongoing drone strike program and his unwillingness to buck Wall Street as evidence that there isn't much difference between Republicans and Democrats.  It's been hard for him to say that he's already followed through on Hope and Change.  Instead he's had to use the slogan "Forward."   

However, the president doesn't have to work hard to appear to be more of an egalitarian politician than Romney, who struggled to throw off an out-of-touch corporate image by championing the virtue of small business.  He's ridden this contrast through his final TV ads, where asks Americans to help him "keep moving America forward."

Obama has made it through his second campaign without too many mistakes.  The first debate gave Romney a major boost that has made the race as close as it is now, but the president will win a second term. 

In closing, he and Romney are wrestling over who will be the true agent of change as president, and the polls are showing that Americans are more willing to believe Obama's vague promises than Romney's. 

Read more of Neon Tommy's coverage of the 2012 presidential election here.

Reach Assistant News Editor Michael Juliani here.