On the morning of Sunday, March 2, as the Columbus Dispatch ran a headline in its Insight section that read “Once Again, It’s Up to Us,” Obama volunteers outside of Youngstown, across the border from Pennsylvania in the sharply contested northeast of the state, gathered for breakfast in the corner kitchen of the Days Inn lobby.
“It would be great if Obama was here,” said one girl stirring her cereal.
“Seriously,” said another, who complained about having worked in campaign headquarters until 2 a.m.
Greg Stewart, the field manager of the sleepy Pennsylvania field team, responded with a pep talk. He explained how much money Mr. Obama had, and pointed out—with the intent of reassuring his charges—that the campaign had spent tons of money on advertising. (Mr. Obama and his allies had spent more than $7 million on television advertising in Ohio, compared with just under $3 million spent by Mrs. Clinton and groups supportive of her campaign.)
“It’s funny,” he said. “All the campaigning we are doing here is making her spend time here and not in Texas. She’s here all day today.”
He was right. Mrs. Clinton flew back that day to defend her lead in Ohio, which according to some polls was dwindling. She did this in a much more muscular fashion than when she had left the Hanging Rock gym on Thursday.
In Youngstown, she stood onstage with middleweight boxing champion and local hero Kelly Pavlik.
“In life you get knocked down from time to time,” said Mrs. Clinton, who was coming off losses in 11 consecutive states. At the end of the speech, Mr. Pavlik raised her arm as if she had just won a bout.
The music that cranked from the speakers was new: a remix of Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” and then Gloria Estefan’s “Get on Your Feet,” which has the chorus “Stand Up and Take Some Action.” When the sound technicians, seeing the crowd thinning as Mrs. Clinton worked the rope line, lowered the music, one of the campaign aides jumped on the stage and violently motioned for them to crank it back up again.
There would be no fading out in Ohio.
She campaigned in Akron, and then at a Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Cleveland, where she said, “Probably more than any other state, Ohio doesn’t need a president who comes and gives speeches.” At Cleveland State University, she managed to bring the crowd, gathered under a four-story-high ceiling, to a hush with serious talk about their economic problems. The crowd erupted when she suddenly exclaimed, “We need a fighter, a doer and a champion in the White House,” and applauded again when she raised the specter of the frightening three-in-the-morning phone call.
“It could be some terrible national security crisis,” she said.
She had gone back to basics.
