While Obama was out campaigning, McCain stayed in the Washington, D.C.-area monitoring by phone the congressional negotiations on a deal on stabilizing U.S. financial markets. Obama did the same while on the campaign trial, with aides saying he spoke by phone to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., as negotiators inched toward a deal.
"Unlike Sen. McCain, it didn't take a crisis on Wall Street for me to realize that people are hurting," Obama said.
Obama returned to Washington Saturday night for a Congressional Black Caucus dinner before taking off again Sunday for campaign stops in Michigan, a crucial battleground state.
Earlier in the day, Obama debuted his post-debate attack on McCain with a campaign swing through North Carolina, another traditionally Republican state like Virginia where Obama hopes to make inroads.
The Illinois senator repeatedly took McCain to task for not talking about any plans for helping the middle class in the midst of the country's financial and fiscal crisis.
"Through 90 minutes of debate, John McCain had a lot to say about me, but he didn't have anything to say about you," Obama told the cheering 20,000-plus crowd at the J. Douglas Galyon Depot in downtown Greensboro. "He didn't even say the words 'middle class.' He didn't even say the words 'working people."'
The Obama campaign tried to back up that point in its newest ad, a spot released Saturday that also notes McCain never mentioned the middle class during the debate. "McCain doesn't get it," the announcer says. "Barack Obama does."
McCain's campaign suggested Saturday that the Arizona senator had referred to the middle class during the debate when he argued that Obama had voted in favor of higher taxes on families making $42,000 a year and proposed hundreds of billions in new government spending that would place a crushing burden on families and businesses. Obama disputed both of those assertions and said that 95 percent of America taxpayers would not pay more in taxes under his plan.
"If he was honest, Barack Obama knows he was unable to debate the merits of supporting higher taxes on the middle class, and bloated government spending during a looming economic crisis - it simply proved indefensible last night," McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement.
Appearing with Obama on Saturday, running mate Joe Biden called McCain's judgment on every important issue "wrong."
"At this moment in history, we need more than a brave soldier. We need a wise leader, and that man is Barack Obama," said Biden, a Delaware senator.
Obama's wife, Michelle, and Biden's wife, Jill, visited Tallahassee, Fla., together to urge young people and minorities to vote in November, capping a two-week voter registration drive.
In Michigan, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigned for her ex-rival, saying that Republicans shouldn't be rewarded "for what they have done to our country."
"We cannot turn over our country with these deep deficits, with these serious economic problems, with the international challenges, to the same team that got us into this mess in the first place," Clinton told more than 1,000 people gathered at a park in Grand Ledge, Mich., about 10 miles west of Lansing, the first of three campaign stops scheduled in the state.
Obama advisers said they were encouraged by his performance in the foreign policy arena at the debate at the University of Mississippi but immediately started dampening expectations for future debates.
"This was supposed to be John McCain's turf, and Barack Obama owned it," Biden said.
Obama adviser David Plouffe told reporters the Democrat "spoke really to people in their homes about needing a president who is going to fight for the middle class, who is going to work on things like education and health care."
The presidential hopefuls are scheduled to debate twice more, at Belmont University in Nashville on Oct. 7 and at Hofstra University in Hempsted, N.Y., on Oct. 15.
The next debate will be a town hall format, and Plouffe called McCain the "undisputed town hall champion."
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On the Net:
McCain: http://www.johnmccain.com
Obama: http://www.barackobama.com
