CHICAGO (AFP) — Barack Obama is delving into the Clinton playbook to hammer his White House rival John McCain on the economy, turning for inspiration to the couple he dethroned to become the Democratic Party's new champion.
On a pre-convention campaign swing through southern states this week, the Illinois senator has been invoking the populist rhetoric that propelled Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992 and fired up Hillary Clinton's own shot at the Democratic nomination this year.
"I want to wake up every single day in the White House thinking about you, and about how I can make your lives just a little bit better," Obama is telling voters, using words that could have come straight from either Clinton.
The Democrat received a political gift from the Republican McCain Thursday, after the Arizona senator confessed to not knowing how many properties he and his wealthy wife Cindy own.
Cue a rhetorical avalanche from Obama and his surrogates portraying McCain as woefully out of touch with hard-pressed Americans, and cue comparisons to the first president George Bush's surprise at seeing a supermarket barcode scanner for the first time.
Obama said the property portfolio flap showed McCain was fundamentally disconnected from the plight of ordinary voters.
"Because if your president doesn't hear what's going on in your life and doesn't see what's going on in your life, then that president is not going to be fighting for you. And that's what you need," he said here late Thursday.
Obama has sometimes struggled himself to connect with ordinary people in a way that Bill or Hillary Clinton never did, hurting himself with observations such as that "bitter" small-town Americans cling to guns and religion.
But since returning from a vacation in Hawaii last week, Obama appears to have reinvented himself on the hustings into a Clintonesque fighter, with polls showing the faltering economy is by far the top worry of anxious voters.
This week, he has introduced a new line into his stump speech observing that under Clinton's presidency, average family incomes went up 6,000 dollars. Under President George W. Bush, he says, they have fallen by 1,000 dollars.
"I was raised to believe the American Dream was built on rewarding hard work. But we have seen the folks of Washington turn the American ethic on its head," Clinton said in accepting the Democratic nomination first time round, before running a campaign that famously declared: "It's the economy, stupid."
Compare that to Obama's campaign rallies today, when he describes his own life story and the old economic model that allowed factory workers to live comfortably, save for their retirement and send their children through college.
"That's the essence of the American Dream and people feel like it's slipping away," he says, railing against the "special interests" that he argues now run the nation and are bankrolling McCain's rival campaign.
Obama is shedding the professorial air of detachment that characterized some of his interactions with ordinary voters. Instead of wonkish policy prescriptions, he is highlighting the wrenching tales of people who have lost their jobs, their health insurance and their hope for a better tomorrow.
Such tales became the hallmark of Hillary Clinton's doomed quest to wrench the nomination from Obama, after she failed to defeat his candidacy in this year's early primaries and evolved into a scrapper for the working classes.
"For the past seven years, so many people in this country have felt invisible, like your president didn't even really see you," she said after the final contests on June 3, before conceding the race four days after.
"None of you is invisible to me," the New York senator insisted. "I've been fighting for you my whole adult life, and I will keep standing for you and working for you every single day."
During their primary epic, Clinton racked up wins over Obama in rust-belt states reeling from industrial decline -- states including Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia that he will need in his tally come November's election.
Choosing her as his running mate would see the lingering doubts of blue-collar workers dissolve and guarantee an election drubbing of McCain, Clinton's backers insist.
Obama does not appear ready to go down the "dream ticket" route. And as he moves toward the final two months of campaigning after next week's Democratic nominating convention, some of his words are all his own.
"I'm skinny but I'm tough," Obama said Wednesday, vowing to repel Republican "lies" and fight all the way to victory on November 4.
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