WARREN, Ohio (AP) — Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Tuesday that Republican John McCain is offering no new ideas for a financially distressed nation, only the same negativity toward Barack Obama.

"What did John McCain do? He laid out some new attacks on Barack Obama," Biden said in criticizing McCain's latest stump speech. "The distinction could not be clearer — one guy is fighting for you and the other guy is fighting mad."

Biden spoke to about 1,000 high school students and union members at an amphitheater in downtown Warren, a park-like setting starkly different from the boarded-up restaurants, closed gas stations and half-vacant shopping plazas on the city's outskirts.

Warren sits in the heart of a three-county region that is about to be made part of Appalachia by the federal government, a designation that will allow the economically depressed area to receive assistance from the Appalachian Regional Commission.