(AFP) – Oct 11, 2008

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AFP) — Democratic White House nominee Barack Obama is making a populist pitch to blue-collar, working class "Joe Six Pack" voters in swing state Ohio, who time and again have held the destiny of the White House in their hands.

Three weeks before election day, Obama is telling rural Ohioan voters who trend conservative on social policy that with an economic crisis ravaging their wallets and emptying their pension plans, they simply cannot afford to vote for Republican John McCain.

Obama was hammered by Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary in the gritty midwestern state, fueling suspicions that his lofty hope-fueled rhetoric and appeal for national unity fell flat in the rustbelt.

There is also the sensitive question of whether Obama's race will put some centrist working class swing voters out of reach.

These are perceived weaknesses that the McCain campaign has tried to exploit -- vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin especially, with repeated appeals to her "Joe Six Pack" bretheren and by unleashing cultural war issues that helped Republicans in the past, including abortion, gun ownership and religion.

McCain had also raised his opponent's background and past associations, asking the question, "Who is the real Barack Obama?"

In a two-day bus tour through Ohio, Obama largely steered clear of the big cities where Democrats get most of their support.

On Thursday, he drove for hour after hour across empty Ohio prairies, and stopped his shiny black bus at the Fireside Diner in the small town of Georgetown.

After ordering a humble fare of a coconut creme pie and a happily named "Big O" cheeseburger, he met the diner's manager, William Seip, who describes himself as a diehard Republican. But Seip admitted his business had fallen on hard times.

"If you keep hitting your head against a wall and nothing happens, you might just think to yourself 'well let me just try it out, Democrats can't do any worse, they might do better'," Obama told him.

Obama's early attempts to court working class voters were halting. But he appears to have learned from Clinton's populist transformation.

Taking the stage to "The Rising" by Bruce Springsteen, the bard of blue collar America, he struck populist themes and nominated himself as a champion of the working class.

"How many people here earn more than a quarter of a million dollars," he says at every rally, jokingly identifying the block that he says will profit from his middle class tax cut.

"We don't need to make cars in Japan and Korea, we can make them here in Ohio, in the United States of America," he adds.

Obama is not reaching out to the heartland alone. At many of his rallies he was introduced by those feeling the economic squeeze.

"In May, I was laid off for the third time in eight years," said Matt Kendall, an Obama volunteer who welcomed the Illinois senator to the small town of Chillicothe on Friday.

"When I became unemployed, I lost my health coverage too... I have fallen further and further behind in my mortgage payments."

Obama is also using two men who have solved Ohio's electoral puzzle as ambassadors to a state which has lost thousands of factories and seen low wage jobs flee abroad -- Governor Ted Strickland and Senator Sherrod Brown.

In Chillicothe, Strickland, a former Clinton backer, spoke directly to gun owners seeking to allay industry lobbies claims that Obama would introduce tight new gun control laws.

"I say to you as a result of a direct conversation with Barack Obama, 'You have nothing to fear from Barack Obama'," he said.

Strickland also accused the "McCain-Palin campaign" of trying to hoodwink voters into believing that Obama, who has had to fight Internet rumors that he is a closet Muslim, does not share their basic American values.

"Barack Obama is a strong, Christian family man," he said.

Brown was also by Obama's side throughout his bus tour. The Ohio senator won a tough fight against an incumbent Republican in 2006 with a message linking populist economics and vehement opposition to the war in Iraq.

Obama was set to return to Ohio on Sunday to prepare for the final presidential debate in New York next Wednesday.

By the time he leaves, he will have spent five out of six days in the state -- a sure sign of Ohio's political importance.

No Republican has ever reached the White House without Ohio in modern times. The last Democrat to do so was John F. Kennedy, in 1960.

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