SUFFOLK (AP) -- 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 Joe Biden told supporters Saturday.

"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 900 to 1,000 supporters Saturday how crucial Virginia was 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. 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 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, a social worker and lifelong Democrat, said McCain signs still dominate her neighborhood in Chesapeake. She 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 they offer the first chance for real change.

"It's just been heartbreaking the last eight years to see what's happened, so I'm just really hopeful that things are going to be different," Joern said.

Biden said an Obama-Biden administration would be committed to restoring the middle class by creating jobs and cutting taxes and to reclaiming America's respect in the world, first by bringing an end to the war in Iraq.

Donna Lewis, a mental health services worker from of Suffolk, said Obama and Biden seem to be the most concerned about workers like her.

"I do believe the ticket truly is committed to the middle class and to making some changes that with impact our nation and perhaps the world," Lewis said.

Biden's latest tour not only reaches voters in Virginia, but those across the border in North Carolina, another Republican-voting state that's now in play for the Democrats.