Michelle Obama Campaigns for Her Husband in Conservative Indiana

The Democratic campaign for the US presidency today deployed its reserve weapon, Michelle Obama, sending her to traditionally Republican Indiana to tell voters they were faced with a clear choice on November 4.

Speaking in the struggling industrial town of Fort Wayne, Michelle Obama said there was only one candidate in the election who had a plan for universal health care, to ensure children could go to college and who had a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. "The choice is clear in this election. There's only one candidate who is talking about the issues that matter most to American families."

Michelle Obama's appearance in the conservative corn belt state of Indiana was a sign of the campaign's confidence. The last time Indiana's 11 electoral votes went to the Democrats in a presidential election was in 1964.

Local polls show the Republican contestant John McCain still in the lead by between 5 and 7 points, but the margins have been closing. Nonetheless, Michelle Obama gave no indication of complacency. "We are taking nothing for granted. Barack Obama will be the underdog until he is sitting in the White House. "We always act as the underdog. You have to work harder and be smarter; every day counts."

About 1,000 people assembled at the town's central conference center ? a marked increase on the crowd that came to hear Michelle Obama on her previous appearance in Fort Wayne in the primaries. "It's an amazing turnout on a grey rainy day in Republican Indiana," said Bob Caylor of the local paper the News-Sentinel.

Katia Wilson, a Fort Wayne resident, said she had come to witness history in the making. As a black woman she said Michelle Obama's address to the Democratic convention had moved her. "She has motivated and inspired me and I've come to hear her story."

Beneath four Stars and Stripes, Michelle Obama delivered a speech that stressed her husband's empathy with the plight of working families. "Barack Obama gets it," she said, referring to the daily struggle. "He didn't get it in a philosophical or intellectual way - he gets it because he's lived it."

There was no mention by name of either McCain or his running mate Sarah Palin. But she implicitly criticized the recent negative tone of their campaign by saying of Barack Obama: "He's done it all with a level of grace and poise and respect and dignity."