President Obama's campaign used Bill Clinton to make the case that Obama was a decisive bin Laden killer in March, and now it's using Clinton again, this time to remind voters that the economy can be good under a Democratic president. In the new ad, Clinton says Obama "has a plan to rebuild America from the ground up" to strengthen the middle class. "That's what happened when I was president!" Clinton says. The ad is airing in eight swing states -- most of which happen to have unemployment rates that are lower than the national average.

Clinton has popped up in several election ads, and not all of them from Democrats. Republicans have been playing on Clinton nostalgia -- and other, less warm-and-fuzzy feelings -- in ads accusing Obama of gutting welfare reform. (These claims have been found false by almost every fact-checker.) The latest ad from the Republican National Committee, for example, says that if Obama had been president, welfare reform would have never even happened. Obama is reclaiming Clinton's legacy.

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Elspeth Reeve