A month to the day from his last visit to Ohio, Obama began a strategic swing to an area that was unfriendly to him in the March primary election, stressing that his economic plan offers more to voters than "John McCain's George Bush policies."

Obama zeroed in on another dismal day on Wall Street following yesterday's 679-point Dow Jones loss.

"Now is not the time for fear or panic; now is the time for resolve and leadership so we can steer out of this crisis," Obama told a huge outdoor gathering at Shawnee State University.

Obama was joined at every stop yesterday, including Dayton and Cincinnati, by Gov. Ted Strickland. But nowhere does he need Strickland's help more than in Ohio's 29-county Appalachian region, which Strickland won with 70 percent of the vote in 2006 and Obama lost by an average of 44 points per county to Sen. Hillary Clinton in the March primary.

Greeted like a hometown hero, Strickland beseeched the crowd "to put aside the angry rhetoric and smear tactics" of the McCain campaign and vote for Obama in their own economic self-interests.

On the same day that the National Rifle Association endorsed McCain, Strickland reassured voters in a gun-loving region that "if you are a hunter or a gun owner ... you have nothing to fear from Barack Obama. You spread the word -- Ted Strickland said so."

Appalachia Ohio is a traditional swing area in presidential elections -- Republican President George W. Bush won it twice and Democratic President Bill Clinton won it twice before him -- because voters often are in a throw-the-bums-out mood because of chronically high unemployment.

Obama sought to exploit that sentiment by continually tying McCain to Bush's economic policies, saying they share a big portion of the blame for the nation's current fiscal woes.

Obama said he is the leader to steer the nation out of the economic crisis: "It will take a real change in the policies and politics of the last eight years ... I will take on the corruption in Washington and on Wall Street to make sure a crisis like this can never, ever happen again."

It was Obama's second visit to the state's Appalachian region, having campaigned in Zanesville on July 1. Portsmouth, seat of Scioto County, had an August unemployment rate of 9.3 percent, and Ross County, which Obama will visit this morning, had an 8.6 percent rate. Scioto and Ross counties gave Clinton 81 percent and 69 percent of their votes, respectively, in the Democratic primary election.

Strickland and others have acknowledged that race will be a factor for some voters in the region, and the Obama campaign is making a concerted effort to try to convince them to subjugate prejudice to economic self-interest.

Earlier yesterday, Obama outlined his plan for economic recovery in Dayton, a city devastated by job losses. Storied companies such as Mead, NCR and Delphi Automotive have left or downsized, partly explaining Montgomery County's 7.8 percent unemployment rate in August, the highest in west-central Ohio.

Obama stood at a dais on second base at Fifth Third Field, home of the Dayton Dragons minor-league baseball team, and addressed an estimated 8,500 supporters in the grandstand on a resplendent autumn day.

Obama urged the crowd not to be distracted by attacks against him by McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, saying, "They don't want to talk about the economy; they want to talk about me.

"I can take four weeks of John McCain's attacks, but America can't take four more years of John McCain's George Bush policies."

Obama was sharply critical of the plan McCain introduced during the second debate Tuesday to have the government buy up bad mortgages, calling the plan a "bailout of banks" with taxpayers' money.

McCain spokesman Paul Lindsay's take on Obama's remarks: "John McCain's homeownership resurgence plan represents absolutely no new expense to the taxpayer, but simply refocuses priorities to more directly assist the homeowners who are hurting instead of greed on Wall Street."

During an afternoon rally at Ault Park in Cincinnati, Obama essentially reiterated his Dayton speech, again focusing on the economy, as 15,000 scattered on hills around a makeshift dais cheered wildly.

Obama criticized McCain's actions and statements during the Wall Street crisis, telling the crowd: "You can't afford that kind of erratic and uncertain leadership in these uncertain times."

Obama will appear at the Ross County Courthouse today at 10 a.m. (gates open at 8), then will go to Columbus' riverfront Genoa Park for a free event. Gates there open at 11.

jhallett@dispatch.com