Clinton-Kaine campaign bus leaves Philadelphia for the heartland amidst promises of action on jobs

Governor Pence hints he is working to lift Trump campaign ban on media outlets

Clinton and Kaine, with their spouses, prepare to board a campaign bus out of Philadelphia (Getty)

One day after making history becoming the first woman to accept the presidential nomination of a major political party, Hillary Clinton held one last rally in Philadelphia on Friday before starting a weekend bus tour of two states critical to her chances of winning, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Standing alongside running mate Senator Tim Kaine, who boarded the bus with her, Ms Clinton managed to get one last dig at her rival, Republican nominee, Donald Trump, saying the point of the journey was to visit “places that make things". He, she then asserted, “doesn't make anything in America except bankruptcies.”

The Clinton campaign said that at every stop of the tour, both Democrats would emphasise bringing back jobs to America, including in technology and advanced manufacturing. Talking to the crowd in Philadelphia, she said that in the first 100 days of her presidency she would move to make the biggest investment in new jobs in America since World War II.

Ms Clinton is reprising a bus tour her husband, Bill Clinton and his running mate Al Gore, undertook straight after accepting the Democratic nominations at the 1992 party convention. Like them, she and Mr Kaine will ride through parts of the American heartland hit hardest by the decline in manufacturing and traditional industry.

The most recent polls suggest that while Ms Clinton has a slight lead in Pennsylvania, she and Mr Trump are essentially tied in Ohio. No Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio on election day. Mr Trump is expected to visit the state on Monday.

While Mr Trump got a small but handy boost in the polls from his party’s convention in Cleveland a week ago, the Clinton camp hope that she will get at least as big a leg-up in the wake of her party’s warmly reviewed bash in Philadelphia.

“This has been such an invigorating, exciting week,” Ms Clinton said on Friday.. “I don't know about you but I stayed up really late last night, it was just hard to go to sleep. It was so exciting,” she said to loud cheers from an estimated 5,000 people who had gathered at Temple University in downtown Philadelphia under a hot sun.

Elsewhere, Governor Mike Pence, the Republican vice presidential nominee, hinted that he was attempting to persuade the Trump campaign to drop a ban it has placed on certain news outlet’s reporters from covering its events, including the Washington Post. Saying the campaign was evaluating its position, he suggested future events would be “available to the media, whether they're fair or unfair”.

Both campaigns were meanwhile expected on Monday to move into neighbouring offices in the same building in Washington DC to begin assembling transition teams to begin preparing to govern in case they are the victors on election day, now just 100 days away.

The two parallel operations are expecting to involve staffs of several hundred and there were questions whether Mr Trump, who already has a bare-boned campaign infrastructure by usual standards, would be able to build his up fast enough.