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COLUMBIA, Mo. | Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama continued to hammer John McCain over the faltering economy Thursday night, linking the Republican nominee to unpopular incumbent President George W. Bush. With five days until the election, Obama noted a third-quarter decline of the country's gross domestic product at an annual rate of 0.3 percent. The GDP is the value of all goods produced within the United States. The new figure, announced earlier Thursday, was the worst since the 1.4 percent rate of decline in the third quarter of 2001, when the nation was suffering through its most recent recession. "If you want to know where Sen. McCain will drive the economy, just look in the rear view mirror," he told a University of Missouri-Columbia crowd estimated at 40,000. "John McCain has ridden shotgun with George Bush, every step of the way." Obama's 30-minute speech capped a day spent campaigning in Florida, Virginia and Missouri ? traditionally Republican states he hopes to capture Tuesday. Obama returns to Missouri on Saturday night, joining his wife Michelle at a Springfield rally in a socially conservative corner of the state long dominated by the GOP. Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, the Democratic nominee for governor, acknowledged the state's importance to the national campaign in his introduction of Obama. "As Missouri goes, so goes the nation," Nixon said, a nod to the state's historical status as a bellwether state. Obama made no new pronouncements at the campus event, instead seizing the opportunity to rally excitement over his campaign into a strong turnout Tuesday, especially among college students and other young voters. Students from 18 other colleges, including Missouri State University in Springfield and Truman State University in Kirksville, boarded buses and other caravans to attend the Columbia rally, according to the Obama campaign. "We can't afford right now to slow down, or sit back or let up for one day or one minute or one second of the next five days," Obama said. In a written response to Obama's remarks, a Republican National Committee spokesman said the true culprit for the recent economic turmoil is Bush's predecessor, Democrat Bill Clinton. "Earlier this year, Barack Obama was attacking Bill Clinton's economic legacy as the cause of America's unfolding credit crisis," said RNC spokesman Alex Conant. "While Clinton balanced the budget and reformed welfare with a Republican Congress, Obama would blow the deficit wide-open and implement massive tax increases with an all Democrat government." Earlier Thursday, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden visited the St. Louis suburb of Arnold and pledged to do more for the middle class if he and Obama are elected to the White House. Joined on stage by dozens of laid-off auto workers, Biden said the union members did right by their employer, but 2,400 in nearby Fenton lost their jobs this fall in poor economic times. The workers at Chrysler's South Assembly Plant in Fenton rolled the last Dodge minivan off the assembly line Wednesday, two days ahead of schedule. "At the end of the day, it's ultimately about jobs," Biden said. He outlined ways the ticket would help the middle class ? cutting taxes for working people and small businesses, ending the nation's dependence on foreign oil and investing in the country's infrastructure. He said ending the war in Iraq would help America reclaim respect in the world and help domestically. "Stop spending $10 billion a month in Iraq and spend it creating jobs here in the United States," he said.