The result: When the president took the stage at Virginia Commonwealth University for his first official day of campaigning for reelection, the stands were filled with 8,000 adoring fans who greeted him with screams of enthusiasm.

The point, for the campaign, wasn't just to create a 2008-vintage tableau of Obama whipping up a big crowd, though in these days of political disaffection and economic sluggishness that's no small thing. Even more than that, it was to send a message: In Virginia, a state Republicans safely banked on in presidential elections for decades until it flipped in 2008, the Obama organization is back.

"We are going to win this thing," Obama told the Richmond crowd, "door by door, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood."

In 2008, that's exactly what happened in Virginia, a state last won by a Democratic presidential candidate in 1964. The commonwealth had never seen such a blitz, from the 75 Campaign for Change field offices that dotted every corner of Virginia's vast geography to the $25 million in Obama television ads. It wasn't just a matter of the Republicans' limited financial resources -- John McCain's campaign spent less than $8 million on ads in the state -- it was that the GOP was fatally slow to wake up to the previously unthinkable prospect of losing the upper bound of the Confederacy.

This year, the Obama team is promising to mount a similar all-out effort, but there will be a major difference: He won't be running virtually unopposed.

"McCain spent very little money in Virginia. They assumed it was a Republican state," said Bob Holsworth, a longtime Virginia political observer and former VCU professor based in Richmond. "That's not going to happen this time. You're already seeing the super PACs airing ads here. [Republican Mitt] Romney will not be at the same disadvantage as McCain in Virginia, and he's certainly not taking it for granted."

More than any other factor in this election -- the spin, the television ads, the speeches and debates -- Democrats hope Obama's vaunted grass-roots operation will give them the edge in the 2012 campaign. The former community organizer's massive field organization isn't just the bedrock of Obama's turnout strategy; it's a key philosophical component of his self-styled image as the leader of a people-powered social change movement. And it works. In 2008, according to one academic study, the ground game likely flipped the outcome in several states.

At this point, the Democrats have a major head start on the Republicans in Virginia. Multiple early polls show Obama leading Romney, including a Washington Post poll last week that put the president's lead at 51 percent to Romney's 44 percent.

The Obama campaign has opened 13 field offices, with a paid staff of dozens, and has been mobilizing its volunteers -- phone banking, holding house parties, registering voters -- for months. Last week, more than 500 people packed the office in Falls Church, in Northern Virginia's Fairfax County, for a "Women for Obama" event with the president's senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett. Meanwhile, the Romney campaign has virtually no presence in the state, thanks in part to the fact that the Virginia primary wasn't competitive after only Romney and Ron Paul managed to make the ballot. Romney campaigned in the state for the first time last week and just announced the hiring of a Virginia state director.