Those were Hillary’s people. Not as many as when the venue was larger. But at the Obama rally Friday afternoon at Ohio University Southern, the cheers showed that the woman who relentlessly sought the presidency a few months ago still had their hearts.

So much so that Gov. Ted Strickland stopped his speech mid-sentence when the spontaneous ovations for Sen. Clinton kept interrupting.

“You’re not going to listen to a word I say,” he joked. “I can take a hint.”

Then Clinton stepped to the podium and acknowledged the sweep she made in March in Ohio taking every county but four and pulling 79.6 percent of the vote in Lawrence.

“I’m back here because I want to finish the job,” she told the audience of a couple hundred. “We can’t afford four more years of the same old failed Republican policies.”

Going through the litany of policy differences between the two presidential candidates from health care for children to student loans, Clinton presented Barack Obama as a follower of her reform mindset.

“I have been fighting for people who need someone in their corner,” Clinton said. “I want a president who believes as we believe that we’re the greatest country in the world and get us on the right track.”

Hitting on the current fiscal debacle across America, Clinton, who voted for the bailout, made a pointed jab at the Bush answer to the crisis.

“When Wall Street came calling and said, ‘We need help,’ the Bush Administration couldn’t act fast enough,” she said. “When Bill Clinton was in the White House, we saw the economy work for everyone. It took a Democratic president to clean up after the last President Bush. It will take a Democratic president to clean up after this President Bush.”

Clinton came to Ironton after an early morning rally at Kirtland, outside of Cleveland, while her husband, former President Bill Clinton, hit the stump in Toledo. The Obama campaign has sent a network of grass roots campaigners throughout Ohio, one of a half-dozen battleground states, that has often crisscrossed with the McCain camp workers. Both sides have acknowledged that a win in Ohio is part of the formula needed to take the election.

According to a CNN poll that is a compilation of eight separate polls taken on Wednesday Obama had an 8-point lead in Ohio with eight percent not committed.