Campaigning Friday in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the Democrat who would be the United States’ first black president derided McCain for a nomination acceptance speech Thursday night at the Republican National Convention that Obama said did little to resonate with a country grappling with a mortgage crisis, high gasoline prices and a litany of credit woes.

On a day when the U.S. government said the jobless rate hit a surprising 6.1 percent in August, Obama said Republicans are woefully out of touch with the plight of America’s working class.

“If you watched the Republican National Convention over the last three days, you wouldn’t know that we have the highest unemployment in five years because they didn’t say a thing about what is going on with the middle class,” Obama told workers at a specialty glass factory near Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The economy has factored large for months in the U.S. presidential race, mostly eclipsing the Iraq war in the minds of voters. Both candidates have repeatedly seized on the issue to win over crucial working class voters and others in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

McCain, campaigning with vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin, told supporters in Wisconsin, another battleground state, that the sagging economy had squeezed everyone in the country.

“My friends, a little straight talk, a little straight talk,” McCain said. “These are tough times. Today the jobs report is another reminder these are tough times.

They’re tough times in Wisconsin, they’re tough times in Ohio, tough times all over America.”

He did not, however, say how he would fix the economy.

“Change is coming, change is coming,” McCain promised the audience at a rally in the town of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, borrowing the same theme that Obama has made the centerpiece of his run for the White House.

The Republican team plans to campaign together in hotly contested states — they hit Wisconsin and Michigan on Friday, and were headed for Colorado and New Mexico on Saturday — and then go their separate ways. Palin is expected to return to Alaska just briefly and then go back to the campaign trail, perhaps on Monday.

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