By Louise Roug and Maria L. La Ganga , Los Angeles Times|March 03, 2008
WESTERVILLE, Ohio — WESTERVILLE, Ohio -- With less than two days to go before tomorrow's crucial primary elections, Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama barnstormed across Ohio yesterday, with Clinton seeking to shore up support in a state where she holds a slim lead in the polls and Obama deriding his Senate colleague for her claims of foreign policy experience.
After focusing on national security in Texas on Saturday, Clinton shifted her emphasis to the economy during yesterday's rallies in the Buckeye State, which has been hard hit by the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs in recent years.
In Westerville, Clinton pledged to fight predatory lending practices and to create millions of jobs.
"The middle class is under tremendous pressure," she said. "The question is, how are we going to make progress together?"
Later, she told about 1,000 supporters in Youngstown that she had a better economic plan than either Obama or Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
"McCain has said he doesn't know much about the economy, other than he's going to continue the Bush policies," she told a packed crowd in the gym at Austintown-Fitch High School.
Clinton also promised to abolish tax breaks for companies that export jobs overseas.
"I have been critical of NAFTA," she said, referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. "Unlike my opponent in the primary, I've put together a very specific plan for what we're going to do about it."
Earlier in the day, at a rural economy event in the Appalachian town of Nelsonville, Obama lashed out at Clinton for her position on NAFTA.
"Here's the truth: Globalization is not going away," said Obama, who favors stronger labor and environmental protections in NAFTA. "Senator Clinton talks about [how] she wants a pause in our trade deals. The world will not pause. China's not pausing. India's not pausing. They're going full guns.
"And the only way we are going to compete is if our children are better prepared, better equipped, stronger at math, stronger at science, are creating the innovations that create high value and, as a consequence, higher wages," he said.
The Illinois senator then followed Clinton into Westerville, where he told supporters at a raucous rally that he has "tried as much as possible to spend my campaign talking not about the flaws of the other candidates but why I'm running." But he took jabs at Clinton, deriding her for voting to authorize the war in Iraq and for her argument that "she has supposedly all this massive foreign policy experience."
