Clinton, Obama Discuss Faith at Messiah College Forum

Her campaign hastily arranged for her to go door-to-door for 30 minutes in Scranton, a small city in northeast Pennsylvania where Clinton has now stopped three times over the last month to stump, never forgetting to remind voters that her father grew up there.

Clinton seemed frustrated when a reporter turned the issue towards her, asking when she had last attended church or fired a gun.

"That is not a relevant question for this debate," Clinton said. "We can answer that some other time. I went to church on Easter, so . . . but that is not what this is about. This is about how people look at the Democratic Party and the Democratic leadership. We have been working very hard to make it clear we have millions of Democrats who are churchgoing or gun-owning and we are tired of having Republicans, or having our own Democrats, give any ammunition to the Republicans."

Pressed on whether she had seen "bitterness" on the campaign trail about illegal immigration or free trade, she continued to tear into Obama.

"You don't have to psychoanalyze or patronize people to conclude we have problems," Clinton said. "Of course we have problems. After seven years of George Bush, how could we not? . . . It's also unfortunate that, since the beginning of his campaign, Senator Obama has consistently denigrated and criticized the Clinton administration, the last successful two-term Democratic president. I frankly think people in Pennsylvania believe they were a lot better off when Bill Clinton was president than they are now."

Obama has suggested that Bill Clinton's administration was a time of intense partisan battles in Washington, and he has criticized free trade agreements promoted by the president.

Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), an Obama supporter, said of people in his state, "They're not going to judge him by one statement."

"He understands why some people could be offended by those words," Casey added on CNN's "Late Edition." "But here's the larger point: He was trying to express the frustration that people feel, not only with this economy but what's been happening in Washington."