David Axelrod said while he was in the White House, dealing with an imploding economy, international crises and countless other problems, he turned to President Obama and said, “I wonder what it would be like to be here when things good.”
Axelrod, speaking at the National Action Network in midtown this morning, said the president replied, “Don’t kid yourself; If things were good, we never would have gotten the job.”
The audience laughed and Axelrod wrapped up his speech a few minutes later.
Axelrod is one of the main message men and strategists for President Obama’s recently-announced re-election campaign and the narrative he’s weaving is a harrowing one. As Axelrod puts it, Obama was forced to make a series of choices that were “as necessary as they were unpopular.”
Axelrod said the Republican strategy in Congress was to deny President Obama any bi-partisan support, which he called “diabolical,” but “effective.”
But Axelrod maintained that the tides are turning in Obama’s favor. An obscure judicial race in Wisconsin pitting an ally of union-bashing Gov. Walker versus a little-known progressive was “a deadheat,” and is now “in a recount.”
“We have more work to do and everyone in this room knows it,” he said.
