Obama and Biden together in South

by James Oliphant

GREENSBORO, NC--No problem finding the Barack Obama campaign event here Saturday.

By 11 a.m. a line snaked down Elm Street downtown, stretching as far as eight to 10 blocks, heading toward a restored train depot.

Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, are campaigning here in a bid to put this Republican bastion in play. That the election is a little more than a month off and the ticket is investing its precious time and resources here is a testament to the campaign's belief that that is possible.

Earlier Saturday, campaign manager David Plouffe, in a conference call with reporters, championed Obama's performance in the Oxford debate, saying that Obama beat McCain on McCain's "home field" --national security.

To that end, Plouffe pointed to a CBS News poll taken after the debate that showed a 16-point gain in uncommitted voters on the question of whether Obama is "prepared to be president."

"We think we moved the ball down the field in a very major way," Plouffe said.

Plouffe also hammered McCain for ignoring the middle-class in the debate and said that the CBS poll showed a 21-point gain for Obama among undecideds on the question of whether Obama "understands their needs and problems."

Of course, Plouffe said all this all while downplaying the effect any single debate can have for undecided voters or in the battleground states.

Later in the day, Obama and Biden will move on to a rally in Virginia, another state the campaign hopes to capture. That state hasn't voted for a Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson.