Published: March 20, 2008 08:52 am            

Bill Clinton campaigns for wife in northeastern Pa.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Stumping through a critical battleground region of Pennsylvania, Bill Clinton said Wednesday that his wife is best equipped to right the nation’s troubled economy, end the war in Iraq and beat John McCain in November.

The former president said an impressive win in Pennsylvania would give New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton enough momentum to capture the Democratic nomination over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

“You give her a big victory here, she can be the nominee, and she will be the president if you nominate her,” Clinton told an overflow crowd of at least 800 supporters at the Hotel Bethlehem, part of a four-stop swing through the Lehigh Valley and northeastern Pennsylvania.

The Lehigh Valley, an area that includes Bethlehem and Allentown, is a swing region in the April 22 primary.

Hillary Clinton is expected to do well in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton region, where her husband campaigned later Wednesday and which has a large population of older, blue-collar, culturally conservative voters.

In Bethlehem, Clinton said the nation has returned to “trickle-down economics” under President Bush, which he said has squeezed the middle class and led to rising income inequality.

Contending the nation is in “in a terrible economic fix,” Clinton said his wife would call for a 90-day moratorium on mortgage foreclosures and a five-year freeze on mortgage interest rates to help people keep their homes.

He also said she would “stop these ridiculous deficits” that saddle future generations. He said the ballooning national debt had imposed a $30,000 “birth tax” on every child born this year.

“We cannot afford to make a mistake in managing these very serious financial problems,” Clinton said.

On Iraq, Clinton said his wife plans to withdraw troops from Iraq “as quickly as we responsibly can,” perhaps one or two brigades per month.

Clinton was joined on the dais by Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll, Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairman T.J. Rooney, the mayor of Bethlehem and the chief executive of Lehigh County, underscoring the support his wife has garnered from many top Democrats in the state.

Clinton carried the message to students and others at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, where he said the New York senator has the economic and national-security credentials to beat McCain in the fall.

He called McCain a “fine man” but ridiculed his stance on Iraq, saying Iraqis would never achieve political reconciliation so long as American troops were there in force.

Clinton received his warmest reception of the day in Wilkes-Barre, where he told wildly cheering supporters assembled in a high school gymnasium: “You have been so good to her and I am grateful beyond my ability to say. We love Pennsylvania.”

His final stop was in the Poconos, where his audience at a Stroudsburg high school was more racially mixed than at the previous three stops. The Poconos has swelled in recent years with middle-class black commuters from New York and New Jersey.

“As I look around this crowd tonight, I see the face of America today and tomorrow,” he said. “We’re here without regard to race, or religion, or gender or age. ... And this is the way America ought to work, it ought to be an idea that here we are all equal and we have shared opportunities, shared responsibilities, and we’re building a country of shared benefits. That’s her vision and we’re a long way from it today.”

        

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