The Briefing Room
General Category => National/Breaking News => Topic started by: mystery-ak on October 20, 2014, 11:47:48 pm
-
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/221340-obama-actually-im-doing-pretty-good (http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/221340-obama-actually-im-doing-pretty-good)
Obama: 'Actually, I'm doing pretty good'
By Justin Sink - 10/20/14 07:00 PM EDT
Despite a slew of international and domestic challenges, and “a lot of just nailbiter” congressional races on the horizon, President Obama told high-dollar donors that he is actually “doing pretty good” in his sixth year as president.
"Whenever people ask me how I'm doing, I say, ‘Actually, I'm doing pretty good,’” Obama said Monday. “I love the work. It is an extraordinary privilege to every single day work on behalf of the American people.”
Obama acknowledged that there was a “sense of urgency overseas” and that in recent weeks stories such as the struggle with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, and the outbreak of Ebola were weighing heavily on the American people.
“So far, we've only got one person dying of Ebola but people are understandably concerned in part because they've seen what's happened in Africa,” Obama said. “This is a virulent disease and it is up to us to once again mobilize the world's community to do something about it, to make sure that not only we're helping on a humanitarian basis those countries but we're not seeing a continued epidemic and outbreak that can have a serious impact here."
The president also told the roughly 50 attendees at the dinner benefitting the Democratic National Committee that there was "a sense that things simply don't work in Washington and Congress in particular seems to be completely gridlocked."
Tickets to the event began at $10,000 per plate. It was held at the Chicago home of Barbara Goodman Manilow.
"And so all of this adds together to a sense on the part of folks that the institutions they rely on to apply common sense decisions and to look out for working families across the country, that those institutions aren't working the way they're supposed to,” Obama said.
But the president told donors that they could help make a difference in addressing the challenges and anxieties “by making sure that people actually vote in midterm elections.”
"Democrats do have one congenital defect and that is that we do not vote in midterms. That's what happened in 2010 and that's what could happen this year unless we're mobilized, organized and focused,” Obama said. “I have absolute confidence in our ability to tackle every single challenge that is out there, but in order for us to tackle it effectively, we've got to have a Congress that functions."
Monday’s fundraiser capped off a two-day campaign swing for Obama that included rallies for Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Illinois and Maryland. Earlier in the day, Obama cast his ballot early at his hometown polling location in a bid to encourage Democratic base voters to turn out.
The president is slated to return to Washington late Monday night, and remain in the capital through most of the week.
-
English is his second language, thus the problem with grammar.
-
Of course he is. He is causing as much destruction as he can, which is his goal.
About the only thing I don't think is intentional is Ebola; that is just abject incompetence.