Clintons launch campaign blitz for Obama
(L-R) Democratic vice presidential candidate US Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), Jill Biden, US Sen Hillary Clinton and former US President Bill Clinton greet supporters at a rally in support of Democratic presidential nominee US Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) on Sunday in Scranton, Pennsylvania.Photo: AFP
Hillary and Bill Clinton Sunday launched a campaign blitz of the blue-collar heartland that will decide the White House race, beseeching their supporters to make Barack Obama president.
Republican White House hopeful John McCain vowed to "whip" Barack Obama's "you know what" in Wednesday's final presidential debate, defying doom-laden assessments of his campaign.
McCain on Sunday gave a pep talk to campaign workers in Washington's Virginia suburbs, as he plotted a comeback in the presidential race against Democrat Obama, just over three weeks from the election on November 4.
The Arizona senator said he and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin were criss-crossing battleground states and would intensify their effort after the debate in New York state on Wednesday.
"So we're spending a lot of time and after I whip his you know what in this debate we're going to be going out," McCain said.
The couple, making their first double-barrelled campaign appearance for Obama, dominated Democratic politics for a generation, but now are supporting players, after reconciling Hillary Clinton's bitter nominating defeat.
"This election is too important to sit on the sidelines of history," said the former first lady, calling on her legions of working class and women voters to take up the banner of the man who beat her.
"It took a Democratic president to clean up after the last president Bush, it's going to take a Democratic president to clean up after this President Bush," Clinton said in a working-class corner of swing-state Pennsylvania.
"Make no mistake about it. We've done it before and we'll do it again. America will once again rise from the ashes of the Bushes."
The Clintons teamed up with Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, a native of Scranton and a man with working-class roots, just 23 days before the presidential election.
"Barack Obama and Joe Biden are for you and that's why I am for Barack Obama and Joe Biden," the former first lady told a crowd estimated at 6,000 people.
Bill Clinton, still popular with grass roots Democrats, said Biden and Obama were better prepared than Republican John McCain to pull America out of the financial crisis.
He called on his wife's supporters, in a state where she won a thumping 10 percent victory over Obama in the primary season, to look into their hearts.
"You need to remember, if you supported her, why you did it," Clinton said, urging those who shared his wife's crusade for healthcare reform and advocacy of the middle class to chose Obama.
"If you ask yourselves who has the best ideas, who's got the best instinct, who's got the best ability to understand these challenges, who's got the best supporting cast, the answer is Barack Obama.
"That's why Hillary's here, that's why I'm here," Clinton said.
Biden paid tribute to both Clintons and portrayed himself and Obama as the natural inheritors of their political legacy.
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