CINCINNATI _ Tall and vegan-slender since his quadruple bypass, the former president steps off the stage and meanders down a rope line. His thick shock of silver hair disappears as he bends down to shake hands with a child, then re-emerges, only to disappear again in a sea of people, sometimes three deep, reaching for him.
Bill Clinton is casually dressed in an open-collar shirt and jacket, his pace as languid as his familiar Southern drawl. He chats with his ardent fans at a megachurch on the outskirts of Cincinnati and poses for selfies.
He seems to be enjoying every moment, every speck of attention, as he campaigns in battleground states for his wife, Hillary, who is seeking the presidency. Over two days last week, he visited six cities and towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania. He popped into universities, union halls, churches and auditoriums.
"They send me to where her opponent is strong," he told a crowd of still-sleepy students one morning in Cleveland.
Onstage, sometimes he pauses, midsentence, and it seems like maybe he's lost his thread. That can happen at the dawn of your eighth decade. But he's just considering his next line, and he always finishes his thought.
He no longer fires up a crowd like the Obamas, undisputed rock stars of the Democratic campaign trail.
But he brings something to the race that the Obamas cannot: his white, working-class bona fides.
Clinton is not just the country's most popular ex-president, he is also the Democrats' best bridge to Donald Trump's base of blue-collar men who are angry about the way they've been buffeted by a changing economy and the country's relentless demographic changes.
"I spent my life watching people play my working-class white family off African-Americans," Clinton said in Cincinnati. "No, you can't have a raise. But you can look down on these people over here."
During his administration, he reminds the crowd, the country experienced its longest economic expansion in history, and its lowest unemployment rates in 30 years. And this, ultimately, is what Clinton is selling. Vote for us _ well, her _ and it can happen again.
In Aliquippa, a western Pennsylvania steel town, Michael Good, a 47-year-old steelworker, waited to hear Clinton. Good is like many of the Rust Belt voters who have flocked to Trump. Over the years, he has faced layoffs and a seesawing income. But, he said, "I lived well under Bill Clinton."
