At the Politico/ABC candidate forum in Virginia, Creigh Deeds was asked a lot about the fact that he's trailing in the polls.

"Well, if this election is about who's the smoothest candidate, who can be the slickest communicator, I'm not gonna win," he said -- echoing some of the talk from his campaign in the wake of a Bob McDonnell supporter making fun of him for stuttering.

Deeds also added that a lot of people didn't expect him to win his Democratic primary, and when he did he's spent a lot of money and had to spend a lot of time replenishing his funds. During that time, McDonnell was able to spend a lot of money on TV advertising, getting an lead on him that Deeds has been working to overcome.

Deeds was also asked about his prior reluctance to refer to himself as an "Obama Democrat."

"I'm proud of the President, I worked very hard for his election last year," said Deeds. "I want him to be successful and quite frankly I don't think he's getting enough credit for a lot of good things that are going on in the economy. I just think it's unreasonable for two people to agree 100 percent of the time."

As an example of disagreement, Deeds cited the issue of cap and trade. But, he said, he and Obama agree on "a majority of issues."

He also discussed the national political environment. "Frankly a lot of what's going on in Washington has made it very tough. We had a very tough August, a lot of people were uncomfortable with the spending, uncomfortable with the noise coming out of Washington, D.C.," he said, but also added: "But if we can reframe this election, which I think we can, we can win this election."

Ed. note: The quotes used here are rush transcriptions, and may be subject to later editing.