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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5 / AP) ― Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said during a Bay Area visit Saturday that he is optimistic that Barack Obama will be elected president, but he cautioned supporters not to be too confident.

The Delaware senator crisscrossed the San Francisco Bay on Saturday to headline fundraisers that brought in $2 million that will be spent in key battleground states.

He urged supporters not to get overconfident even though Obama is leading in national polls.

"I've been campaigning in these so-called battleground states," Biden said in the backyard of a San Francisco home perched above the Pacific Ocean with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. "In those states, we're up in most of them, but there's nothing you can count on right now."

The event raked in about $1 million.

At an earlier event in the Silicon Valley community of Atherton, Biden noted that Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry were also well ahead in polls just weeks before Election Day in 2000 and 2004, but both lost their presidential contests to President Bush.

"We've been here before. We've been poised to win the presidential election," Biden said at the home of former state controller and California gubernatorial candidate Steve Westly. "The last two times we underestimated how successful virulent attacks are." The event netted $500,000 for the campaign.

At a third event in the East Bay community of Piedmont he picked up another $700,000 at a fundraiser attended by 400 people that was $1,000-a-plate or $28,500 for a "co-host."

Biden also warned supporters that the campaign will get "ugly" over the next 17 days, noting that Republican John McCain's campaign has started making automated telephone calls attacking Obama.

He also sharpened his criticism of McCain, and said he was disappointed that the Arizona senator had resorted to the same negative campaign tactics that were used against him by Bush during the 2000 election.

"(McCain) literally hired the same people that organized those scurrilous attacks against him," Biden said.

In recent days, senators from both parties have asked McCain to stop using "robo-calls" that link Obama to former 1960s radical William Ayers.

The McCain campaign says the calls are warranted because Obama's connection to Ayers- the two met many years after Ayers' anti-Vietnam War activities had ended- raises questions about the Democrat's judgment and record.

Obama has condemned Ayers' radical activities, which took place when Obama was a child. In the debate Wednesday with McCain, Obama said Ayers played no role in his presidential campaign.

Biden told supporters he believes he and Obama will ultimately prevail, but the new administration will be "left with the greatest amount of challenge that any president has had since Franklin Roosevelt was elected president."

"Anybody who thinks we're going to be elected and all of a sudden the birds are going to start chirping ... is wrong," he said.

Biden said if they're elected, he and Obama would assemble "one of the finest economic teams in the history of this country" to ensure that the United States remains a leader in the 21st century. He said "the underlying elements of this economy are in real trouble."

Biden also said they would work hard to unite the country and change the partisan politics of Washington.

"It's equally important that we get our policies right internationally and domestically as it is that we get our politics right," he said. "We really do have to unite this country."

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)