COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Obama family road show rolled into Cleveland on Sunday – raising Democrats’ hopes that President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle might help stop the dizzying decline of their local supporters two weeks before the midterms.
The first lady, introducing her husband at a private fundraiser for embattled Gov. Ted Strickland, described the president as “the love of my life, though he doesn’t always think it” – and the president responded by saying “it’s fun having her along on this road trip.”
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He added: “You know, usually I am all by myself, and I listen to my iPod. We had a wonderful conversation on the way here… and she’s telling me what I should do. It’s true.”
“You think I’m joking. I’m not. I have witnesses.”
The light mood cloaked a growing anxiety in a state that has lost 400,000 jobs in the Great Recession. And Democrats – from Strickland, to underdog Senate candidate Lee Fisher, to a quartet of embattled House members – are scrambling to energize the party base, especially African-Americans, women and students.
“When times are that difficult, elections are going to be difficult and understandably so," Obama told a crowd of about 300 who paid from $500 to $5,000 to attend the event, held in a tent on the lawn of local business owner.
Obama, accompanied by the first lady, is expected to make an even more impassioned plea to young voters tonight when he heads south to the campus of Ohio State in Columbus on Sunday night, where thousands of students began gathering in the expansive campus oval early Sunday afternoon.
“I’m sick of hearing from people around here how little time it’s taken one black man to screw the country up,” said Columbus firefighter Adrian Lee, 52, who stood a few feet from the stage on campus. “I don’t think he’s been given a real chance… My parents are deceased and they never got to see him elected. That’s why I came.”
Others – even those who plan to vote straight Democratic on Nov. 2 – were less enthusiastic. Retired schoolteacher Jane Boyer, 61, said she likes, but doesn’t love Obama, and only came when she heard that musician John Legend would be performing.
“I supported Hillary, so I’m still a little resentful, and I think she would be doing a better job,” Boyer said. “I’ll vote for him again, but I’m disappointed. What happened with Guantanamo, Iraq, Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell? We didn’t get what we were promised.”
The Ohio State event is one of five pep rallies Obama has scheduled during the final weeks of the campaign. All are in states with competitive midterms where Obama’s popularity has nosedived — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, California and Nevada.
Obama flies out to Seattle on Thursday to support Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) – a day that will focus on women and the economic crisis.
"There's an excitement about what this president is trying to do. There's an energy around it," Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Among those on the tarmac to greet the Obama were Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, Reps. Dennis Kucinich, Marcia Fudge, and the endangered freshman Rep. John Boccieri (D-Ohio).
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