When Joseph Vietmeier was growing up in the 1960s, there were opportunities for young people in this working-class town - jobs at the Ford plant or the steel mill.

Now he is 51 and a high school teacher with some of the brightest students he has ever taught about to launch themselves on the world. Ask Vietmeier about their prospects, and he flinches. "Limited," he says after an overlong pause. "Very limited."

The decaying industrial towns of north-eastern Ohio form the backdrop to what could be the final, decisive battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination on March 4.

More than 50 per cent of voters next Tuesday will come from the working-class towns curving down from Lake Erie.

If Clinton cannot convince these voters that she can create jobs in these dying steel towns, protect people from a terrifying rise in home repossessions, and somehow make amends for the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) signed into law by her husband in 1993, her race will be over.

She is already trailing in the delegate count that will decide the Democratic nomination, and her closest advisers — even her husband — admit that if she cannot produce a win here in Ohio, and in Texas which also holds its primary on March 4, she may be forced to quit. In the past two weeks, Obama and Clinton have held two dozen events in Ohio; all carefully calculated to address local anxieties about the prospects of another recession in a state which has lost 250,000 jobs since 2000. 

A decade ago, General Motors was Ohio's largest employer, with well-paying unionised jobs. Today it is Wal-Mart, the union-busting retail chain. "We've been hammered and hammered," Vietmeier said. "It's hard enough for our kids to find employment, let alone with the economy on the brink. We need stability."