CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — To a nation short on job security, President Barack Obama has his night to protect his own.

Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday will be about promises he says he kept, and the hope he wants to stir once more. He will take people back to the start of his presidency to make a case why their lives are better, but his bigger imperative is to sell himself as better for middle-class America than Republican Mitt Romney.

Gone is the newness of the last time he accepted the nomination of his party.

Obama, the graying incumbent, will not try to recreate it.

Instead he will whittle the election down to a choice between economic opportunity for all or, as he says, Republican ideas that favor the few.