Biden: McCain is out of touch

Americans have been knocked down by the failed economic policies of President Bush, but it's time to get up and work together to change things, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr. told supporters yesterday.

"I've never seen so many Americans knocked down," Biden said. "It's time for us to get back up. It's time for us together to get back up and demand the change we need."

It was Biden's second day of campaigning in Virginia, a state that hasn't backed a Democrat for president in 44 years. Biden made two stops in Virginia on Friday. He told more than 900 supporters yesterday that Virginia is crucial to a Democratic victory.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we win here and we win the presidency," he said.

After calling Republican presidential candidate John McCain out of touch on economic issues and the Republican ticket out of line in its refusal to end the war in Iraq, Biden said the country must become united and that the divisive politics must come to an end.

He said Gov. Sarah Palin's remark in North Carolina that she likes campaigning in "pro-American" regions of the country and a McCain adviser's recent comment that the more rural parts of the state are the "real Virginia" just add to the divisiveness and prevent progress.

"We are one nation, under God, indivisible. We are all Americans," Biden said, growing louder with each word as the crowd cheered.

Polls in the past two weeks show Obama edging ahead in Virginia.

Suffolk is a city that has swung its loyalty from Democrats to Republicans in recent elections. It's part of Hampton Roads and a neighbor of Norfolk, home to the world's largest Navy base.

But McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, is struggling in the region, which should be his natural constituency.

A poll last week, conducted for the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc., showed Barack Obama and McCain in a close race, but McCain trailing Obama by 5 percentage points in Hampton Roads.

Margaret Joern of Chesapeake, a social worker and lifelong Democrat, said it was great to finally have a national campaign come to Virginia, taken for granted for decades as a sure thing for Republicans.

Joern said she missed seeing Obama when he was in Virginia Beach recently, and that she was excited to see Biden because she thinks they offer the first chance for real change.