Obama on the Lack of Bounce

President Obama attended a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Boston last night, and as the media (this page included) has been abuzz about the lack of any rise in support for health care reform, now that it's passed--as was, kind of, suggested would happen, both by Democratic conventional wisdom and a Gallup poll released the day after health care passed the House--the president offered one of his consistently lighthearted dismissals of the news cycle and its negative talk:

I was up in Maine and I was joking about -- only slightly joking -- about the fact that the day after we signed it, everybody started writing these stories about how the country is still divided on health care, it hasn't suddenly become universally popular.  (Laughter.)  What's going on?

It's been a week, folks.  (Laughter.)

So I said -- can you imagine if, you know, the pundits and the cable guys were covering a farm?  (Laughter.)  And, you know, you sort of till the soil and -- look, the soil is all messed up.  (Laughter.)  And then you put the seeds in and the next day they'd write a story -- nothing is growing.  (Laughter.)  We're going to starve.  There are no crops.  (Laughter.)  It's polling really badly.  (Laughter and applause.)

Here's the point -- (laughter) -- I'm starting to have fun, which I should not do -- in ways large and small, Boston, we've begun to deliver on the change you believed in.  We have done what we said we would do.

(Remarks taken from the White House transcript.)