WINSTON-SALEM — Vice President Joe Biden today told Wake Forest graduates that history is theirs to change.

"As corny as it sounds, this really is your moment," he said. "History is yours to bend."

Biden spoke on a brisk, sunny morning to 1,500 graduates and a crowd estimated at more than 10,000. He received an honorary doctor of laws degree, Jim Morrill reports.

Unlike President Obama's commencement address at Notre Dame Sunday, Biden attracted no protesters. In his 30-minute speech, he urged the graduates to help bring fundamental changes in the world.

"You graduates give hope that we will not only survive today but thrive tomorrow," said Biden, wearing a black robe. "We're either going to fundamentally revive our economy or we’re going to fall behind."

It was Biden's third visit to North Carolina in recent weeks, a fact not lost on Republicans.

More after the jump.

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Doug Heye thinks John McCain should go Down East.

In a column on National Review Online, the veteran Republican political consultant argues that McCain's best chance in this state is to win eastern North Carolina, "home of voters known as 'Jessecrats,' conservative Democrats who generally vote Republican.

The McCain campaign was smart to send Governor Sarah Palin to Greenville, the largest city — and largest media market — in northeastern North Carolina. Swing voters in the region have shown a tendency to support Republican candidates. In 2004, the Northeast gave Senator Richard Burr his second highest margin of swing voters in the state — second only to his home region of the Triad.

Heye suggests that McCain copy the primary campaign playbook of Hillary Clinton, who targeted conservative Democrats who read the Dunn Daily Record.

"Although Clinton did not win North Carolina, her campaign can serve as a road map for McCain to find the conservative Democrats and swing voters he needs to carry the state," he writes.

Doug Heye says Hillary Clinton will have a hard time winning North Carolina.

A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Richard Burr's successful 2004 campaign, Heye writes on his blog on the National Review Online that demographics favor Barack Obama in the Democratic primary.

He argues Clinton will have a hard time competing in areas around military bases, among black voters and with college students here.

He also says she may be hurt by her husband's presidency, citing the failed campaigns of Erskine Bowles for U.S. Senate.

Judging solely from the literature and advertising from the Bowles campaign, one would have been hard-pressed to realize Erskine Bowles had ever met Bill Clinton. A campaign ad touted Bowles’s experience as a White House chief of staff — including a picture of Bowles in the Oval Office — but left it to the voters to determine which president he had served under. Reagan? Carter? Nixon? McKinley?

He points out that Bowles' opponents, Burr and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole were the ones who brought up Clinton in those races.