Nightly News   |  October 16, 2012

Debate target: suburban women

NBC’s Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell and ‘Meet the Press’ moderator David Gregory take a closer look at the upcoming debate, the outcome of which could provide big gains for either candidate. Romney’s campaign is expected to find a way to bring up the Benghazi attacks and ignore the attacks from Obama, while the Obama campaign will focus on restoring his edge.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>> team, starting with our political director and chief white house correspondent chuck todd also on the ground of the campus of hofstra university tonight. you said you could make an argument that we're now entering the most important single 36 hour period of this campaign thus far. give us a viewer's guide for tonight?

>> well, i know that we can be accused of over hyping the moment. this is one of those times we're not overhyping. this is the moment, this is the time you can see this campaign shift. it is not in cement, if you will. let me tell you what the romney campaign thinks. they have huge confidence here. they're acting as if they're the front-runner, they have nothing new to do. they plan on ignoring many of the attacks that the president is going to put out at them. they say, and instead try to have a conversation with people. as for the president, aids admit to me he failed to answer the simple question that ted kennedy famously couldn't answer which is why do you want a second term and what are you going to do. that's something you plan on doing. the big target of tonight's debate is suburban women. the romney folks have not peeled them away from the president, you're going to hear the president talk a lot about abortion. you're going to hear romney talk about pocketbook issues. thinking that's the way to target this specific group.