PHILADELPHIA — Barack Obama barnstormed the City of Brotherly Love on Saturday, telling tens of thousands of supporters that their votes and their volunteering would play a crucial role in deciding the presidency.
"If you will join with me, if you will work with me and organize with me and make phone calls with me and knock on doors with me, I promise you . . . we'll win Pennsylvania," Obama told 15,000 people at his first stop, in a predominantly black neighborhood near Temple University. "You and I together, we are going to change this country and we are going to change the world."
The Democratic presidential nominee made four stops in the city, highlighting the importance to his campaign of turning out votes in Philadelphia to offset Republican nominee John McCain's popularity in other parts of the state.
Obama is trying to capture the working-class voters of northeast Philadelphia who helped Hillary Rodham Clinton beat him by 9 percentage points in the Pennsylvania primary.
So when Obama addressed 5,000 people outside the Mayfair Diner on Saturday, in a northeast neighborhood full of brick row houses with pumpkins on the stoops, he portrayed McCain as out of touch with working families.
"John doesn't really seem to get what's going on with this crisis. When it first started, he talked about how the fundamentals of the economy are strong," Obama said. "Where I come from, nothing's more fundamental than a job."
Obama touted his proposals to provide every American with access to healthcare, to cut middle-class taxes and to create "green collar" jobs. And though he praised McCain's call to tone down the vitriol that has marked recent GOP rallies, Obama urged voters not to be "bamboozled" by his opponents' talk about changing Washington.
"Change isn't just a slogan," he said. "Change is an understanding of what the American people are going through."
If he wins the White House, Obama said, he will use the $10 billion the nation currently spends each month in Iraq on domestic programs.
He told a crowd of 20,000 in Germantown: "If we can rebuild Baghdad, we can sure as heck rebuild Philadelphia."
Pennsylvania's 21 electoral votes could be key to winning the presidency. Both campaigns are blanketing the airwaves, having spent at least $27 million combined since mid-June on TV ads in Philadelphia, home to 40% of the state's voters. Obama has 80 Pennsylvania field offices and has spent six days in the state since the April primary; McCain has more than 50 offices and has spent 19 days there in the same period.
