PHILADELPHIA - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton chastised rival Barack Obama for reportedly telling a San Francisco audience that some Pennsylvanians are bitter because of their economic frustrations.

"Well, that's not my experience," she told a crowd on Friday, describing the state's residents as resilient, optimistic and hardworking.

"Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them," she said. "They need a president who stands up for them."

The New York senator was speaking at Drexel University in Philadelphia, a key city in Pennsylvania's April 22 presidential primary.

The Web site Huffington Post reported that her opponent in the race for the presidential nomination, Obama, speaking of some Pennsylvanians' economic anxieties, told supporters at a San Francisco fundraiser Sunday: "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. ... And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."