In Ohio stumping, Clinton draws contrasts with Obama, McCain

McCain made some jabs at Obama over whether he’d accept public funding.

LYNDHURST, Ohio (AP) — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton smothered Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain with kindness Friday, then declared her rivals wrong on the issues and vowed to beat both in her quest for the presidency.

She said Obama, her Democratic foe, has run an “extraordinary campaign,” and called McCain, the likely Republican nominee, “a man of great heroism.”

But she said McCain represents “more of the same” in Iraq, and she cast Obama as an obstacle to universal health care.

Her remarks came on a day when she characterized herself as the “candidate of, from and for the middle class of America” and endeavored to keep her Democratic coalition in Ohio intact against a hard-charging Obama.

She accused Obama of mailing brochures to voters “that sound like they’ve been written by the health insurance industry and the Republicans, talking about how we can’t possibly get to universal health care.”

“My opponent has given up the fight before we’ve ever started,” she told a gathering of Democrats at a party fundraiser outside Akron.

Clinton has relied on working-class Democrats for much of her support in six weeks of presidential primary contests across the country and is counting on them even as Obama racks up important union endorsements.

Clinton did show off her grasp of details, easily reciting facts and figures on subjects from foreclosure to foster care. The occasion was a round-table session designed to feature Clinton’s proposal to address credit card abuses, but the discussion strayed to a variety of economic issues.

Throughout the day, Clinton demonstrated her new approach and easily slipped from policy to combat.

“We’re going to end every single tax break that still exists in the federal tax code that gives one penny of your money to anybody who exports a job. Those days are done,” she said, her voice rising. “It is wrong that an investment money manager in Wall Street making $50 million a year gets a lower tax rate than a teacher, a nurse, a truck driver, and autoworker making $50,000 a year.”

In other campaigning Friday, McCain, in Oshkosh, Wis., admonished Obama for hedging on his promise to accept public funding if he wins his party’s nomination or use his prolific fundraising operation.

“I made the commitment to the American people that if I were the nominee of my party, I would accept public financing,” the likely GOP presidential nominee said Friday in Oshkosh, Wis. “I expect Senator Obama to keep his word to the American people as well. This is all about a commitment that we made to the American people.

“I am going to keep my commitment,” he said. “The American people have every reason to expect him to keep his commitment.”

Obama told reporters Friday that it would be “presumptuous of me to say now that I’m locking myself into something when I don’t even know if the other side is going to agree to it.”

McCain said that if Obama becomes the nominee and decides against taking public money, he might do the same.

“If Senator Obama goes back on his commitment to the American people, then obviously we’d have to rethink our position,” McCain said. “Our whole agreement was that we would take public financing if he made that commitment as well. And he signed a piece of paper, I’m told, that made that commitment.”