KEENE, N.H. — Hillary Rodham Clinton has a dismal assessment of the U.S. economy. She says it’s “stalled out.”

Campaigning for president, Clinton toured a wood furniture factory in Keene, New Hampshire, on Monday. It’s her first visit to the early primary state since she launched her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

As she showed in Iowa last week, Clinton is highlighting struggles of “everyday Americans” even if her remarks undercut the message of President Barack Obama, a fellow Democrat who sees the economy in a brighter light.

In Keene, Clinton said she came from a small-business family and the country needs to do more to help entrepreneurs. As she put it: “It’s not enough just to tread water.”

Road tripping for her new campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton is in New Hampshire to try to recapture the magic of the 2008 Democratic primary victory that gave that year’s faltering effort a second wind.

As she did in Iowa last week, Clinton is forgoing the packed rallies that marked her previous presidential campaign and focusing on smaller roundtable events with supporters. And, also like last week, she again traveled from her New York home in a van nicknamed Scooby, though not nearly as far.

She arrived in the pouring rain Monday for a stop at a bakery in the liberal enclave of Keene, where she ordered black tea with milk and signed “I love you” to a deaf server while settling down at a table with patrons.

She was also visiting employees of Whitney Brothers Inc., a small business that makes wood furniture, before a roundtable event on Tuesday with students and teachers at New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord.


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