In final push in Pa., Clinton puts emphasis on local roots

Rests her fate on the support of working class

As part of her final swing though Pennsylvania, Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton greeted supporters at a rally at the Scranton Cultural Center yesterday. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

SCRANTON, Pa. - The Hillary Clinton who sought to close the deal with Pennsylvania voters yesterday was not the policy wonk, not the healthcare specialist, not even the thick-skinned, I-can-take-whatever-Republicans-throw-at-me veteran of partisan politics.

She was something much more elemental: the hometown gal.

Making her final campaign swing across the state, Clinton rested her fate in today's primary on the working-class voters who have been the bedrock of her campaign, believing her cultural affinity with them and tangible promises for a better future will earn their support at the polls.

Clinton came out on stage at the Scranton Cultural Center to John Mellencamp's "Small Town."

Clinton was not actually born here, but she cast herself as the next best thing, noting her grandfather's toils in the Scranton lace industry, childhood vacations at nearby Lake Winola, and marination in the "common-sense values" of middle America.

"We cared about our families, we cared about our faith," Clinton told a throng of mostly older supporters, whose chants of "Hillary! Hillary!" and "Madam President! Madam President!" interrupted her often. "We believed in working hard and we had an abiding faith in our country, an abiding faith that never ever quit."

Clinton's use of the past tense underscored her contention that the United States has lost its sense of promise and possibility, and that only a "fighter" for regular people can restore it.

"I am so certain that we can not only win this nomination and win this election, but we can win the future of America again," she said.

In recent days, Clinton has also used her fluency in domestic affairs to draw that vision of a future in a more grounded way for blue-collar voters - many of whom are struggling financially - than rival Barack Obama tends to do.

She promises 5 million new jobs in clean energy, and 3 million in rebuilding the country's infrastructure. She advocates tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gas prices and keep the independent truckers she has met in business.

And she stresses the importance of making sure manufacturing remains an integral part of the economy.

"We need to still be a manufacturing nation," she said at a rally in downtown Pittsburgh yesterday, as a woman in the crowd shouted "Right on!" "I don't think a country that doesn't make things can remain strong and vibrant and leading in the global economy."

The fighter for the underclass that Clinton portrays herself to be is what voters such as Lois Palajsa, 56, a retired special-education teacher from outside Pittsburgh, is looking for in a president.

"I love the fact that she has a good background - that she has fought for so many underdogs," she said.

But not all voters watching Clinton's Pittsburgh rally were buying her litany of promises.

"I don't believe she's going to do all the things she says she's going to do," said Sharon Brown, 48, a home healthcare aide from Pittsburgh who supports Obama.

Clinton is still pursuing her other lines of attack against Obama - arguing in a new TV ad laced with images of world crises past and present that she is ready to handle the job and he is not.

But her most forceful case in the closing hours of a six-week campaign for the hearts of ordinary Pennsylvanians is to cast herself as one of them.