EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) — Michelle Obama fought back Wednesday against criticism that her husband is elitist, painting the presidential candidate as an ordinary man whose family once lived on food stamps and saying they both understand the plight of working America.

"He reached out to regular folks," she told a crowd of about 700 people at a westside Indianapolis middle school, the second stop of a three-city Indiana campaign swing ahead of the state's May 6 primary.

"His view of fundraising was $23 is just as important as $2,300. ... The grass roots support for Barack looks like every segment of society," she said.

Her husband has drawn fire from Democratic rival Hillary Clinton since he told donors at a private San Francisco fundraiser that blue-collar voters "cling to guns or religion" because of bitterness about their economic lot. Clinton characterized those remarks as "elitist," but Obama has said he chose the wrong words to describe the economic insecurity many people face.

And Michelle Obama told the Indianapolis audience Americans are "decent people" who don't mind working hard and making sacrifices as long as the bar to success isn't constantly being raised.

"Barack and I know this all too well with our elite selves," she joked.

She described herself as a product of a public school education and from a working-class background.

"There's been talk about elitism," she said. "Barack and I assume folks don't know the whole story. ... The lens I view the world through is from the south side of Chicago."

Still, she said, difficulties people everywhere face are real.

"Folks are struggling like never before," she said at an earlier stop Wednesday at a high school in Evansville. "We shouldn't be surprised that people are cynical. There is a level of cynicism that comes when you feel like no matter how hard you work, no matter how much you do, you never catch up and you certainly can't get ahead. So you don't believe that politics can do anything for you, you lose hope. Naturally, you fold your arms in disgust of the process."

As a result, she said, people become isolated.

"They feel lonely and oftentimes they're embarrassed by their struggle because they feel like somehow they must be doing something wrong," she said.

That can make people "susceptible to being led by fear," she added.

"We become afraid of everyone and everything because when you don't have things right in your own life, you always think that it's someone else's fault. And we get afraid. It's like there's this veil of impossibility that's over our heads in this nation."

At the Indianapolis middle school, she never mentioned Clinton or Republican John McCain by name, but made repeated references to Obama's opponents "trying to label him with every name in the book."

"It is a game," she said. "When power is confronted with real change, they will say anything."

She noted that she and her husband felt fortunate to have paid off their student loans thanks to two books he wrote. But millions of couples aren't so lucky, she said. Many are still paying off those loans even as they need to begin saving for their children's educations.

Others struggle to find affordable, quality child care, she said.

"This is how I see the world," she said. "You tell me. Am I out of touch? Does this sound familiar?"

Wednesday's appearance was Michelle Obama's first in Indiana, which has 72 pledged delegates at stake. She also spoke at Anderson University on Wednesday night.