Obama: Hey, We've Been Through This

President Obama recognizes that things are looking tough for his agenda and his party right now, but at a DNC fundraiser last night at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, he compared all that difficulty to being written off during the 2008 campaign, telling the crowd, basically, that they've been through this before. From the White House transcript:

But don't you guys -- you remember this.  Nobody gave us a chance.  This campaign was declared dead -- what -- 10 times.  (Laughter.)  You know, the same folks who are now writing about what next, and what's happened to the Obama -- these are the same folks who were writing about how he doesn't stand a chance; how after New Hampshire, that was it.  After Pennsylvania, that was it.  Right?  We went through this.  And they were saying your faith was misplaced and you set your sights to high, and your hope is naïve, and Washington won't change.  And now all of them are feeling like, see, we told you, Washington doesn't change.  And they're feeling kind of self-satisfied about the fact that we haven't yet gotten health care done.

Well, let me tell you something.  You didn't listen to those voices then.  Your voice proved them wrong.  You proved that nothing can stop the power of millions of people who want to see an America that's living up to its values and its ideals.  That's what you did.  And that's what I'm asking you to do again.  (Applause.)

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/02/obama-hey-weve-been-through-this/35471/