A lone heckler didn’t stand a chance at a House of Blues fundraising event for President Barack Obama in West Hollywood. Shortly after Obama thanked actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson of the television series, “Modern Family,” who introduced him, and recognized the presence of Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and West Hollywood Mayor John Duran, the heckler shouted something about “The Christian God is the one and only true living God, the creator of heaven and the universe.”
That was about all that could be heard before the boos washed over him and slowly morphed into a chant of “four more years, four more years, four more years.” The joviality continued as security took the man out. As he was leaving he could be heard to say, “I love Jesus, Jesus Christ the son ….”
Still, nothing would dull the mood of this group of mostly White loyalists. Inside, it was clearly Obama’s crowd, a group that had been standing three hours or more, buoyed by the fact that while waiting they could hear the recorded music of some of the world’s great musicians.
Outside, there were protesters against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and immigration policies.
The president began by reminding the group that back in Chicago’s Grant Park on the night that he won the highest office in the land, he had told supporters, “‘This is not the end. This is just the beginning.’ I said we’re going to have some steep hills to climb.”
The president was right. Harder times are here, and there are steep hills are on the horizon. With the American economy circling the drain, his popularity at its lowest point ever and his image battered after a bruising budget fight that many believe he lost (or forfeited), harder times are definitely here.
Worse, there are forces chipping away at his solid base in the Black community, where he is perceived by some to have done precious little to help African Americans who are suffering the highest level of unemployment of any ethnic group. (It didn’t help his image among many Black leaders that he told the Congressional Black Caucus that they should “stop complaining.”)
All those troubles seemed far from anyone’s mind Monday as President Obama spoke to the group of about a thousand at the House of Blues.
Always a facile speaker, he reminded the audience of the American dream.
That “. . . for ordinary people all across America, for working families all across America, for middle class (people) all across America, we have grown up with the belief that if you worked hard, if you met your responsibilities, if you looked after your family, if you were a responsible member of your community then you could get ahead ….
But Obama said that “for the last decade it felt like that contract, that bond … had been broken, and that too many people were not being treated fairly, that the rules had been changed, that the deck had been stacked against ordinary Americans ….
“So, yes, we’re going through tough times, but the question is where we’re going to go next. We can go back to the other worn-out ideas that the other side’s been talking about, or where we say let corporations write their own rules, and we dismantle environmental regulations and we dismantle labor regulations. Where we say to you, ‘You know what? You’re on your own. Good luck, because you’re not going to get any help.’
“That’s one vision of America, but that’s not the vision we fought for in 2008. That’s not the vision you believe in; it’s not the vision I believe in, and I am confident that is not the vision America believes in.
“What this election’s about is whether everybody gets a fair shake and everybody does their fair share, and that’s what I’ve been fighting for since I got to Washington,” Obama said. “By the way, we have not been getting any help from the other side. When we wanted to save the U.S. auto industry from collapse and millions of jobs might have been lost, iconic companies gone, our manufacturing base eroded, you had a whole bunch of other folks who said that was going to be a waste of time and a waste of money.
“Well, you know what we did? We did it anyway. We fixed it any way. We saved those jobs. We made sure taxpayers got their money back, and today the American auto industry is stronger than ever and turning a profit and fuel-efficient cars …. That is a fight that is worth it.”
The president also reminded the group of such administration successes as the passage of Wall Street reform, equal pay for equal work, the defeat of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the triumph of healthcare reform.
The crowd cheered every one.
