The crowd was pumped for President Barack Obama Friday during a campaign stop at Phoebus High School in Hampton.
Over a thousand people stood outside in blazing heat for several hours before being admitted into the high school’s gymnasium, but that didn’t dampen their enthusiasm for their candidate. When he entered, a roar went up from the crowd, and his initial greeting, “Hello, Hampton!” was followed by shouts and cheers.
The president recognized two former governors who had just spoken on his behalf—Tim Kaine, now running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, and Mark Warner, now a U.S. Senator from Virginia.
During his address, Obama asked his followers not to become cynical in the face of “more money and negative ads” because the stakes are great and their support is needed.
“The reason I’m here and you’re here is that we still believe in America,” he said. “We still believe in hope and we still believe in change.”
He painted a picture of himself as a man much like his constituents, with a grandfather who served in World War II, a grandmother who worked on an assembly line to support the war effort, and a single mother who raised him but managed to give her children “the best education this country had to offer.” He talked about Michelle Obama’s family—a father who had multiple sclerosis but managed to hold down his blue collar job in spite of his illness, and a mother who worked as a secretary in a bank.
“They didn’t have a lot,” he said, “but they had a lot of love, strong values and discipline.”
“We want to be part of a community and a nation that looks after its own,” he said. “That basic bargain is what made us a superpower—the envy of the world.”
When that basic bargain started to fray in 2008, said Obama, “we knew it would take more than one year, one term, maybe even one president” to restore it.
“My mission is to put people back to work,” he said to rising response from the audience, “to restore that basic bargain that if you work hard you get ahead … That’s why I’m running for a second term.”
The president said he’d kept his 2008 campaign promises to end the war in Iraq, to go after al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and to start bringing troops home. He said he would spend half the money saved on those war efforts to pay down the deficit and half to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
He touted the Affordable Care Act, pointing out provisions that there’s no longer a lifetime limit on benefits and that young people can stay on their parents’ insurance to the age of 26.
“We’re not going to spend the next four years refighting the battles of last year,” he said. “In America, nobody should go broke because they got sick.”
Obama said he wanted to reduce the debt in a balanced way, since “not every program is good” and programs that aren’t helping the economy grow should be eliminated, but he said he didn’t want to sacrifice education or research and he wanted to “ask the wealthy to do a little bit more.”
“When the folks at the bottom do well, the folks at the top do well,” he said, “because that’s how they get customers.”
Obama ended by saying that in 2008 he had promised to “wake up every day fighting” for his constituents and that he’s kept that promise.
“When I see your kids, I see my kids,” he said. “I see myself in you. If you still believe in me and are willing to stand up, I promise I will finish what I started.”