EAU CLAIRE, WIS. — Heading into the final days before he accepts the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama set off a four-day campaign swing through presidential battleground states Sunday, portraying himself as the champion of the middle class and blue-collar workers.
“This election is about you,” he told about 400 people at the Gun and Rod Park in Eau Claire. “The teachers, the nurses, the cops, the firefighters, the farmers, who are out there struggling.”
The relatively small, short event, with a softer-spoken Obama, was a sharp contrast to the throngs of people who turned out in Springfield, Ill., on Saturday to see him introduce Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate.
Obama’s stop in Eau Claire, as well as in other towns he plans to visit this week in Iowa, Missouri and Montana, are part of the candidate’s overall strategy to campaign in areas Democrats usually don’t.
“We like to go to places which aren’t Democratic strongholds, where there are Reagan Republicans and areas where the (voter) registration is tilting,” said Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki. “If we don’t, and don’t introduce him to people, we will never have a chance.”
Wisconsin Democrats won control of the state Senate in the mid-term elections, in part because of two seats it wrestled from Republicans in Eau Claire. At an event in Davenport, Iowa, today, only Republicans, Independents and undecideds have been invited. And Obama’s stop in Montana — his fifth — is territory that Democrats usually don’t even fly over.
