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Like her husband, Michelle Obama back on campaign trail post-Aurora

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DAYTON, Ohio -- Resuming her campaigning after the Aurora theater massacre, First Lady Michelle Obama squeezed in a pair of stops Tuesday in the battleground state of Ohio before a planned departure for the London Olympic Games later this week.

At both Ohio campaign events, she acknowledged the victims of the Colorado shooting.

“We cannot forget,” she told a crowd of more than 1,000 at the municipal convention center in Dayton, before launching into her standard stump speech.

Obama had suspended her campaign activities after the mass killing early Friday, canceling events in Virginia that day and in Indiana on Sunday. The president and his Republican opponent Mitt Romney also curtailed campaigning, but both went back to criticizing the other at events Monday.

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Earlier Tuesday, Michelle Obama addressed about 2,000 people at a high school gym in the Columbus suburbs. After that event, she visited with children at the Westerville Community Center summer program. She declined a request from a group of older children who wanted her to do the Dougie, the hip-hop dance that she demonstrated at an appearance last year at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington.

“I do [know how to do it], I have to say,” Obama told a reporter from the Ohio capital. “They were asking me to do the Dougie. There just wasn’t the beat.”

The first lady is scheduled to leave Washington on Thursday as head of the presidential delegation to the Olympic Games. She told reporters this week that she intends to use the trip to promote her “Let’s Move” campaign against childhood obesity.

Follow Politics Now on Twitter.

paul.west@latimes.com

Twitter: @paulwestdc

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