Americans have “lost faith” that the government can fulfill their desires, President Barack Obama told a group of wealthy donors in San Diego Thursday.
“[T]the American people are on our side on the issues; they just have lost faith that we can actually make it happen,” he said.
Obama was speaking to a $10,000-per-ticket fundraiser in the La Jolla home of his second largest 2012 re-election campaign bundler, Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs.
Obama attended the fundraiser with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and was scheduled to be accompanied by Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel (D-NY) as well. Inside, attendees were privy to a speech that heralded Obama administration policies as having led to grand economic recovery, according to the pool report.
The President contrasted his record with the “economic freefall” he inherited in 2009, which he painted as tanking faster than the 1929 economy. He also pointed to his policies’ effect on “clean energy” and carbon emissions.
Obama also blamed the troubles of “too many working families around the country” on “a party that has been captive to an ideology.”
Outside, the event drew demonstrators from across the political spectrum. Tea Party protestors gathered on a corner along the motorcade route near Jacobs’s home, while on the opposite corner were Occupy San Diego protestors. Occupy San Diego had created a Facebook event to protest from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; however, after Obama’s motorcade passed by on the way to the fundraiser, around 12:30 p.m., they abandoned their post.
Among the Tea Party protestors there was talk that the Occupy protest seemed to have been staged. The anti-Keystone protestors among the Occupy crowd, some Tea Party demonstrators speculated, had come merely to create an impression that Obama is under a great deal of pressure to reject the project.
One left-wing protestor not connected to the Occupy group, but who told Breitbart News she had voted for Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein in 2012, said Obama is not left-leaning enough for her. Visiting San Diego for a few months from her home state of New York, she conveyed her belief that Obama would approve the Keystone pipeline after the November midterm elections for reasons of political expediency.
A small group of neighbors, supporters, critics and media gathered to watch the President’s motorcade as he left the fundraiser. Obama had been scheduled to leave Marine Corps Air Station Miramar at 2:30 p.m., but did not leave the fundraiser until about 3:15 p.m.