After convention high, Clinton hits campaign trail in US ‘Rust Belt’

Democrat Hillary Clinton yesterday took her newly-energised campaign to become America’s first woman president on the road  to “Rust Belt” swing states that might decide the fate of the November 8 election.
After presenting an upbeat view of the country in her keynote address to the Democratic convention on Thursday night, the former secretary of state launched a campaign tour of Ohio and Pennsylvania, two heartland states hit by the decline in US manufacturing.
Clinton is likely to face a tough challenge in such states from Republican nominee Donald Trump, a New York businessman who is trying to win white working-class voters with rhetoric against free trade and illegal immigration.
“This has been such an invigorating, exciting week,” Clinton told a rally in Philadelphia yesterday.
“I don’t know about you but I stayed up really late last night, it was just hard to go to sleep. It was so exciting,” she said to enthusiastic cheers.
In the biggest speech of her quarter century in politics, Clinton formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday at the convention in Philadelphia.
She cast herself as a steady leader at a “moment of reckoning” for the country, and contrasted her character with what she described as Trump’s dangerous and volatile temperament.
Clinton and her vice presidential running mate, US Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, addressed a crowd of more than 5,000 people at Temple University near downtown Philadelphia, before heading out on their three-day bus tour.
Clinton reprised themes from her Thursday night speech, saying the country faced a “stark choice” in the November election.
Opinion polls show a potentially tight race in Ohio and Pennsylvania, both of which were won by President Barack Obama in the 2012 election.
Clinton and Trump are essentially tied in Ohio, where the Republicans held their convention last week, according to an average of polls by RealClearPolitics.
Clinton has a lead of 4.4 percentage points in Pennsylvania, the website’s average of recent polls showed.
Ohio and Pennsylvania are among a handful of states that are traditionally viewed as decisive in US presidential elections, since they do not lean heavily either Democratic or Republican.
Nationally, opinion polls show Trump moving into a slight lead after receiving his party’s nomination at the convention in Cleveland.
Clinton is likely to get a similar boost after the Democratic convention, where she was lauded by Obama and other senior Democrats as a tough fighter with a long-held passion for helping the underprivileged.
Clinton, a former first lady and US senator, promised in her speech on Thursday to make the United States a country that works for everyone if she is elected.
“We are clear-eyed about what our country is up against. But we are not afraid,” she said.