Politics
Obama: Republicans would ‘cripple’ US
But Obama said blacks know all too well from the civil rights struggle that the fight for what is right is never easy.
“Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,” he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. “Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’. We are going to press on. We have work to do.”
Obama and the Republican presidential candidates are working overtime to raise campaign cash ahead of an important Sept. 30 reporting deadline that will give a snapshot of their financial strength. Obama’s West Coast visit was heavy on fundraisers: two each in Seattle and the San Francisco area Sunday, followed by one in San Diego on Monday and two in Los Angeles.
He’s meeting with the Silicon Valley and Hollywood elite, including an event Sunday night in Atherton, California, at the home of Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
The expected haul from all seven events: US$4 million or more.
In addition to the fundraising, Obama scheduled a town hall-style event Monday in California’s Silicon Valley, hosted by the social networking company LinkedIn. The trip ends Tuesday with a speech to supporters in Denver, where he accepted the Democratic nomination three years ago.
Obama was pushing throughout for his job proposal, which combines tax cuts, unemployment benefits and public works spending. The bill faces a hostile reception on Capitol Hill, particularly because Obama wants to pay for it with tax increases on wealthy Americans and corporations opposed by Republicans.
A top aide, David Plouffe, said the White House expects a vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate in October. “I think it’s got a very good chance” of passing, despite reservations even from some in the president’s own party, he told ABC television’s “This Week.”
If he can’t persuade Congress to pass the bill, Obama has said he wants to make sure the public knows who’s standing in the way.
Jobs are a major concern in California, where unemployment stands at 12.1 percent, highest of any state except Nevada.
Mark DiCamillo, director of California’s Field Poll, said that’s contributed to a softening of support for Obama among Democratic and independent voters. Obama’s job approval rating dropped to 46 percent among Californians in a Field Poll this month. Among Democrats it was 69 percent, but that was down 10 percentage points from June.
“Californians voted for him by 24 points in 2008 and the Democrats and nonpartisans were the backbone of his support and he’s losing some of that now,” DiCamillo said. “I think there’s a lot of frustration in California about Washington. They’re looking for Obama to do something.”
The summer’s nasty debate over raising the government’s borrowing limit turned off voters. Many liberals bemoaned the deal that cleared the way for a higher debt ceiling, with Obama agreeing to Republican demands for steep budget cuts without new taxes.
But Democratic supporters are heartened by the jobs plan and Obama’s insistence that Congress must raise taxes to pay for it. Now they’re hoping that the confrontational Obama they’re seeing now is the same one they’ll see through the 2012 campaign.
“We wish that his fighting spirit had been there a few months ago, but it’s here now,” said Rick Jacobs, head of the Courage Campaign, a progressive online organizing network in California.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
