“Every day when I get up and the sun’s up I feel pretty good,” Clinton confided to one man who stood to meet him, with a laugh.

BRIDGEPORT, Ohio — Bill Clinton chewed gum as he moved through a tiny, tin-ceilinged diner here in the eastern part of the state, casually gliding from one group to the next. He didn’t wear a tie. He posed for photos, lots of them.

“It doesn’t take long to live a life, does it?” he whispered to an elderly woman at the Third Street Deli in Marietta, dripping his signature Arkansas drawl and squeezing her hand.


Clinton took his legendary campaign skills on a tour this week through Mahoning Valley, hustling for small bunches of votes in tiny towns heavily populated with white Ohioans with relatively low levels of education and modest incomes.

In other words, in this election, Donald Trump country.

These are the voters Clinton won in 1992 and 1996, but who voted Republican in later years. As his bus rolled down two-lane roads and through towns with just a few stoplights but plenty of Trump signs, the trip was one part nostalgia tour, one part policy lecture, one part desperate bid to get his wife elected.

Bill Clinton spoke on Tuesday. Jared Wickerham for The Boston Globe/Globe Freelance

In tone, the tour was a far more relaxed affair than his wife’s hectic and meticulous schedule. With local TV crews and a smattering of reporters following him, it also was the sort of assignment that would keep Clinton away from the glare of the cable news spotlight, where he is prone to making the wrong kind of news with barbs aimed at protesters or Democrats (like Senator Bernie Sanders) who have crossed the Clintons in the past.

But he did not seem to mind the return to ground-level campaign life, staying one night at a Courtyard Marriott near Youngstown — not the kind of place with a presidential suite.


During the day he relished visiting multiple diners, even insisting on an unscheduled visit to a Dairy Queen (he ordered a Diet Coke; no Blizzard) while his motorcade waited.

At one stop he seemed to be heading for the exit, then detoured through the kitchen to meet more people.

Clinton’s knack for empathy was on full display. He didn’t actually say, “I feel your pain,’’ but he frequently acknowledged the anger in the electorate here.

“Look, there’s a reason for the road rage today. People have gone 15 years without a raise and they’re mad,” he said in Youngstown Tuesday morning. And in Athens he warned people that Trump was “the best I’ve ever seen at rubbing salt in open wounds. He’s really good at it.”

Geographically, his bus traced a route similar to a trip he took in 1992 during his first presidential campaign. But the former president’s shaking hands, the spectacles he wears to consult notes when he wants to get the figures right, and the person who is actually on the ticket — his wife — are reminders of how much has changed.

The former president stands an excellent shot at making history by returning to the White House as the nation’s first first gentleman. But a sense of defensiveness, and of the political world having gone a bit crazy in the last 24 years, lent a touch of melancholy to the proceedings at times.


Clinton reminded almost every audience that he just turned 70.

He told students in Athens, at Ohio University, that he’d visited before when he was running for president “back in the dark ages,” he said. “Before most of you could vote and many of you were born.” Later he added: “I can tell you, having lost it, youth matters.”

A few minutes later he returned to the theme. “I would love to be your age,” he said.

His wife, he promised, will enact a massive infrastructure package that will bring jobs back to places like Ohio. She’ll punish companies that pull up stakes and leave, as so many have here. “We’ve got to make good things happen,” Clinton said. “She ought to be elected president.”

Doreen Canestrato, left, of Mingo Junction, Ohio, and Gina Hashbarger, of Bloomingdale, Ohio, held signs in Steubenville, Ohio. Jared Wickerham for the Boston Globe

But in between the appeals for Hillary Clinton, the former president couldn’t quite resist settling old scores — calling out both Bernie Sanders and later Joe Biden for voting for a 1994 crime bill (which Clinton signed) after a heckler yelled on Tuesday, “I will not vote for a candidate that sent millions of my people in prison.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait. I agree,” Clinton said addressing the man in Tuesday in Athens, where Sanders walloped Hillary Clinton in the primary. “Hillary didn’t vote for the ’94 crime bill, even though Senator Sanders did.”

Earlier in the week, in Michigan, Bill Clinton sparked controversy after referring to a provision in the Affordable Care Act as “the craziest thing in the world.” Subsequently, he made a point of mentioning his support for President Obama’s health care law at every stop in Ohio. And he assured a cadre of reporters traveling with him that he’s not in trouble with his wife’s campaign for the remark, which was widely replayed on cable news even 48 hours later.


But nobody’s going to tell a former president what to say. And in Youngstown Wednesday, after saying he supported Obama’s signature legislation, he added: “There are problems with it. There are problems with it. Everyone knows that. “

Another moment harkened back to a kinder and gentler time in US politics, when the discourse wasn’t so mean. That came Tuesday night, when a supporter in Steubenville yelled from the crowd that Trump should be locked up.

“No,” Clinton said from the podium, gently admonishing the audience member. “That’s the way they talk about us. Don’t say that. Don’t do that. Don’t lock him up. Vote.”

Clinton tried to connect with voters here in a way his wife has failed to do by reminding them he came from the same humble beginnings. But while mostly Ohio hosted Clinton graciously, it was clear he had his work cut out for him.

“The Mahoning Valley, that’s blue collar Democrats, but it’s Trump country this year,” said Matt Borges, the Republican state chairman in Ohio.

Clinton’s bus — wrapped with Hillary Clinton’s campaign logo plus a presidential seal — was greeted by protesters at a few stops, including a man who’d set up a placard simply asking: “Hey, Bill where are the jobs?”


Looming like a storm cloud over this trip was the distinct possibility that Republican nominee Trump would make good on his threats to ignite a national debate over Clinton’s serial infidelities.

Asked about Trump’s intentions, Clinton replied: “Look, he should run his campaign and she’ll run hers.”

President Bill Clinton greeted attendees at a rally in Steubenville, Ohio. Jared Wickerham for The Boston Globe

Annie Linskey can be reached at annie.linskey@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @annielinskey.