YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Job losses have carved a grievous wound into the eastern flank of Ohio, and particularly into this iconic city halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh in what used to be America's steel belt, now rusted through.

So it was perhaps not surprising to find a New York billionaire and a Vermont socialist here Monday where their ideologically incompatible campaigns for president meet, in their need for votes from those battered by the economy.

Bernie Sanders, the liberal Democrat, and Donald Trump, the iconoclastic Republican, made those stops the day before this state's primary, each seeing an advantage in an area where losing a job, or losing income, remains an experience felt in the bones of many, the residue of 40 years of bad times. Their visits were an illustration that the arc of politics can bend in strange ways, particularly this year.

Each would bridle at the assertion, but Trump and Sanders have some things in common. Both are seizing on the fallout of an uneven recovery that has left many workers feeling abandoned, particularly those in the manufacturing jobs that used to dominate here. Both are waging a fight against their party's establishment that has grown more caustic as the campaign has worn on — though Trump, certainly, has been more explosive.

Both Trump and Sanders are grievance candidates — but that is where the similarity ends. Sanders inveighs against the billionaires who finance campaigns, a description that fit Trump nicely until this year, when he began campaigning in the same vein. And Sanders champions not only workers but minorities, women and gay Americans, the rising edge of a country redefining itself.

Trump stands as a champion of the past — of the white, blue-collar workers who used to dominate places like Youngstown and who today attend his events by the thousands. He is pushing back, overtly and subtly, against inexorable cultural change, though he offers few specifics about how he would reverse it.

Their crowds, too, are different. The Trump crowd chants “Build the wall” when he raises the subject of illegal immigration. The Sanders crowd chants “Enough is enough” when he raises the subject of corporate America's ills.

They are the two candidates who have aroused passion in this unpredictable campaign year. Hillary Clinton may end up defeating Sanders in Ohio, on the strength of ties built over the years, particularly during her 2008 Ohio primary victory. If she does, it will not be with the sort of full-throated adulation that has greeted Sanders and Trump here, as in every other state.

On Monday morning at Youngstown's Covelli Centre, an events space built on the site of one of the long-dead mills, Sanders arrived to an astonishing roar. Like all candidates, he says much the same thing much of the time, but his audiences are enraptured. The feel is more rock concert than political event; the decibel levels soar even at the most basic Sanders statement.

Dave Williams, a 52-year-old cement finisher, was attending his first political event, and Tuesday, he said with some vehemence, he will cast his ballot for Sanders.

“He's talking about things that need to be talked about,” he said. “The middle class.”

As for Clinton, last seen in Youngstown on Saturday night, talking to entrepreneurs then quaffing a beer during a local bar's early St. Patrick's Day event?

“Been down that road,” Williams replied. She is experienced, yes, but “her experience has gotten the country to where it's gone.”

Sanders wound into a speech filled with his standards — denouncing Clinton's reliance on super political action committees, her behind-closed-door speeches to Wall Street insiders, her vote for the Iraq War, her support for trade deals that many here blame for job losses.

“What this campaign is about is doing something really radical: It's telling the American people the truth,” he said.

“Later Monday night, Trump made it to Youngstown more than an hour late, accompanied by his former competitor New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The crowd had waited for him. Trump vowed, as he always does, to be an activist president who would threaten with tariffs companies that close their doors to move overseas.

He specifically cited the case of Carrier, the air conditioning firm that has announced plans to move 2,100 jobs from two Indiana plants to Mexico in 2017.

“I'm not supposed to be calling up air conditioning companies, but I'm going to do it,” he said, pledging a 35 percent tariff would be levied on each unit. (Presidents cannot levy tariffs unilaterally, though Trump insists he will.)

“I'm going to bring your industry back,” he said.

cathleen.decker@tribpub.com