ALIQUIPPA, Pa. _ Former president and potential future first gentleman Bill Clinton delivered his patented mix of policy and folksy charm to 200 people in Aliquippa on Friday morning. But he said a friend in Texas gave him his closing pitch for his wife's presidential campaign.
"If you don't want someone to drive the truck off the cliff, do not give them the keys," he said. "I want you to give Hillary the keys."
Clinton did not mention the name of his wife's opponent, but he didn't spare Republican nominee Donald Trump, either. Neither did the crowd.
At one point, as Clinton discussed Trump's use of Chinese steel in building projects, a member of the crowd shouted, "Lock him up!"
"No, don't do that," Clinton said. "That's the kind of stuff they say. ... I don't want you to lock him up. I want you to lock him out of the White House."
With a week and a half remaining before the Nov. 8 election, Clinton offered a familiar mix of policy proposals, blending discussion of tax credits for depressed areas with anecdotes, including a 10-year-old who told Clinton he was supporting Hillary Clinton "because I'm autistic, and I know she won't make fun of me."
Clinton also touted his wife's college-affordability proposals, which include a plan to let students refinance student loan debt. "A college loan is the only loan in the entire United States of America that you can't refinance when the interest rates go down," he said. "It is wrong."
If such problems were addressed, he joked, "Everybody could move out of their parents' house."
More broadly, Clinton reinforced the idea, central to the campaign, that his wife was offering a sunnier, more inclusive vision of the country's future. The campaign slogan "stronger together," he said, "means we need to prosper together, and we also need to live together and work together."
"There are still places that have been left out and left behind" of economic growth, he allowed. But Trump's vision of change, he said, "is going back to the past _ go back economically, go back socially." Trump, he added, "says, 'Vote for me and I will cut taxes one more time for millionaires, billionaires and big companies.' ... How'd that trickle-down economics work out for you before?"
Beaver County has trended Republican in recent presidential elections, and earlier this month Trump visited Ambridge, located almost directly across the river, for a rally that numbered in the thousands.
But although Aliquippa is a post-industrial steel town, like many communities Trump has visited, it remains a Democratic stronghold. It's also nearly 40 percent black, a population to which Trump has done little to endear himself, in part because he has repeatedly described black communities as violence-ridden.
"I'm trying to figure out what he's ever done for the United States," said Alisa Moore, a lifelong Aliquippa resident. "This is a good place. ... I know I can walk down the street."
Aliquippa "may be down now, but it'll grow when everybody comes together."
Sean Allingham, of nearby Chippewa, struck a similar note.
"A lot of my friends are Trump supporters," he said. "They're so upset about Hillary." That kind of divisiveness was holding the country back, he feared. "But we can find common ground."
In any case, Allingham, doubted that Trump was likely to turn Aliquippa's prospects around.
"Maybe if he bankrupts it a couple times first," he scoffed.
