BARACK Obama was joined by his former Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton Monday in a campaign blitz through battleground Florida, a key state that could propel him to victory over Republican opponent John McCain. It was the first time the bitter opponents from the Democratic primaries have appeared together since a pair of fundraisers in early July. Those were understated affairs compared to the wild, sign-waving, overflow crowd of more than 50,000 people that gathered outside a sports arena in Orlando to see them side-by-side as the sun set. Obama and Clinton mocked the Republican ticket by saying the election's theme should be “jobs, baby, jobs” for people hurting in a nearly unprecedented economic crisis. Clinton, sharing nearly equal billing with the man who beat her for the Democratic presidential nomination, got the “jobs, baby, jobs” train going by saying that the “drill, baby, drill” chant that is popular in speeches and crowds at events for Republican John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, misses people's real concerns. The “drill” chant supports the Republican ticket's call for increased domestic oil production. Obama set aside two full days to campaign across Florida, which twice went for Republican George W. Bush - in 2000 in a heavily disputed contest that required Supreme Court intervention. Obama timed his Florida swing to coincide with the opening of early voting statewide. With polls showing Obama leading in all the states won by Democrat John Kerry in 2004, a victory in Florida would likely clinch the presidency for the first-term Illinois senator. Meanwhile, McCain spoke to a crowd of 2,000 in St. Louis, where he and supporters branded Obama a liberal and criticized feminists and the media as they rallied their conservative base in hotly contested Missouri. Obama drew 100,000 in St. Louis on Saturday. In a stump speech sharpened for the second week in a row, McCain defended running mate Palin against attacks from the “feminist left.” And Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, introduced McCain by declaring him under siege by the “liberal elite media.” “John's been there and he's met a little tougher people in his life than the liberal media,” Graham said, alluding to McCain's years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In Tampa, Obama promised he would halt home mortgage foreclosures and borrowed a famous Ronald Reagan line to criticize Republican handling of the nation's deepening economic distress. “At this rate, the question isn't just `Are you better off than you were four years ago?', it's `Are you better off than you were four weeks ago?``' Obama asked the noisy crowd of about 8,000.
