ELKHART — Sen. Barack Obama held a town hall meeting in Elkhart Wednesday, where he talked about his plan to turn the economy around.

The line to get in stretched into the thousands.

”I need the gas prices to come down,” said Henry Emerson. “I need the food prices to come down.”

“I’m ready for a change,” said Mark Ostrom, who works in the struggling RV industry.

Today, Elkhart’s jobless rate is 7 percent above the state and national average.

“Certainly the economy needs to be straightened out and I believe we're going to see a change if Obama's elected,” said Ostrom.

Inside Concord High School's gym Wednesday morning, Obama criticized Washington for ignoring the problem, and pitched his energy plan to fix it.

“In 10 years we're going to eliminate the need for oil from the entire Middle East and Venezuela,” Obama said. “All of it.”

Doing away with the need for overseas oil he said will boost America’s need for alternative energy like wind, solar, and bio-fuels. This will lower the cost of utility bills and gas, while putting 5 million Americans to work in the process to make it all happen.

“In the same way that John F. Kennedy said, 'We can go to the moon in a decade,' even though at the time the technology didn't exist, nobody knew how we were going to do it, we can set those same kinds of goals today and American ingenuity and determination will help us get there,” Obama said.

The most recent polls show Obama ahead of Republican Sen. John McCain in Indiana but not by much, only about five points. Still, experts say that's significant. Indiana hasn't had a contested race for president in more than 40 years.

And Wednesday morning, in the heart of Republican territory, 2,000 people showed up to give the thumbs up to a Democrat.

One woman asked Obama what his top priorities would be for his first 1,000 days in office. He said number one would be energy independence, followed by health care reform, and a responsible withdrawal from Iraq.

After the stop in Elkhart, Obama and Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh stopped for lunch at a diner in Portage. Obama ordered four cheeseburgers to go, but avoided questions about Bayh as a possible running mate.

When a reporter asked Bayh, he only said, “Don't get me in trouble.”

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