Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama intensified their populist economic appeals on Monday in an effort to attract support from economically struggling voters in Ohio and Texas, which are taking shape as potentially decisive contests in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mrs. Clinton, campaigning in Wisconsin but looking forward to the big state primaries on March 4, issued a 12-page compendium of her economic policies that emphasized programs that aid families stressed by high oil prices, home foreclosures, costly student loans and soaring health care premiums. In public appearances and in her economic manifesto, she took aim at common targets of populist appeals, including overpaid hedge fund managers, oil company profits, drug company subsidies and trade agreements that she says encourage companies to export jobs.

Many of her applause lines reprise the rhetoric employed by former Senator John Edwards, who dropped out of the presidential contest late last month after running on an explicitly populist economic message.

“We need tax breaks for the middle class, not for the wealthy and the well-connected,” Mrs. Clinton said at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wis., Monday morning. “We’re going to rein in the special interests and get the $55 billion in giveaways and subsidies they’ve gotten under Republicans back into your pockets.” She referred to the “two oilmen in the White House” and proposed multi-billion-dollar windfall profits tax on the oil industry to finance development of alternative energy sources and creation of “green jobs.”