Clintons share stage stumping for Obama

Associated Press

SCRANTON, Pa. — A little more than three weeks before the fall election, Bill and Hillary Clinton joined together for the first time in this critical Pennsylvania battleground to campaign for their once-bitter rival, Barack Obama, at a rally with vice presidential candidate Joe Biden.

If you blinked, you might have missed the former president sharing a stage with his wife and with Biden and his wife, Jill. After a brief speech before an adoring crowd of about 2,000 at the Riverfront Sports Complex, Bill Clinton said he had to dash off to a campaign event in Virginia.

But before he left, he gave Biden a rousing endorsement, saying that "Barack Obama could not have made a better choice" for vice president, even though he promoted his wife for the job last spring when it appeared obvious she wouldn't get the Democratic nomination for president.

Both Clintons vowed to help Obama get elected to the White House, seeming to bury the hatchet with Hillary Clinton's former rival.

"This election is too important to sit on the sidelines of history," Hillary Clinton said.

"I haven't spent 35 years in the trenches fighting for universal health care, for children, for families, for women, for middle-class people to see another Republican in the White House squander the promise of our nation and the hopes of our people," she said.

Hillary Clinton and Obama have apparently made peace since the primary, and she has thrown her support behind him, appearing at 50 campaign events, "more than all the other runner-ups combined," Bill Clinton noted.

Biden, a son of Scranton who has campaigned in the area three times since his nomination, hammered home his message that the Democratic ticket was better on the economy and health care and would end the war.

Other stops on the campaign trail:

■ During an hourlong visit to a neighborhood of modest homes in Holland, Ohio, Obama was repeatedly asked what he could do to help struggling families.

His answers included tax cuts, aid for struggling auto companies and measures to reduce home foreclosures.

Denise Knisley, 53, a grocery store employee, said she had been thinking about voting for the Democrat, and definitely will, after talking to him for several minutes in her driveway.

■ In Arlington, Va., Republican John McCain vowed Sunday to "whip" Democratic rival Barack Obama's "you-know-what" when the two presidential candidates meet Wednesday in their final televised debate.

McCain made that pledge as top advisers said he is weighing new economic proposals to help the nation weather the financial crisis.

Addressing several dozen volunteers at his campaign headquarters outside Washington, he promised some of his signature "straight talk" about the state of the race.

"We're a couple points down, OK, nationally, but we're right in this game," McCain said to cheers.