On June 1, President Obama stood in a room full of people he knew didn’t vote for him.
“I know I don’t poll all that well in this county,” he said, remembering the 2008 election when he barely won Indiana and the 2012 election, where he flopped in the largely Republican state. “I’m not here looking for votes. I’m here because I care deeply as a citizen about making sure we sustain and build on all the work communities like yours have done over the past seven years.”
Obama spoke to a full audience Wednesday afternoon at Concord High School in Elkhart, Indiana, about the state of the American economy.
Elkhart was the first city he visited after being sworn in as president, and he uses the town’s progress as a model for America’s economic progress as a whole throughout his presidency.
When he first visited, businesses across the United States were losing 800,000 jobs a month, he said. The auto industry was about to go under. Families were in danger of losing their insurance, their homes.
In Elkhart, unemployment was peaking at 19.6 percent. Around one in every five citizens was out of work.
“I told you then that I was going to have your back,” he said of his first visit.
Now, seven years later, the unemployment rate in Elkhart has dropped to 4 percent, he said. While 75 percent of their children were graduating high school in 2009, 90 percent will graduate June 2.
Audience members participated in Obama’s discussion unprompted.
When he mentioned graduation, he went on a tangent about his daughter, Malia’s, high school graduation next week. He asked the parents in the audience for pointers on how to not cry too much at the ceremony, and several people threw out quick tips about tissues use.
Even with a large Republican base, the town of Elkhart was loving the president.
“By almost every economic measure, America is better off than when I came here at the beginning of my presidency,” he said, to a roomful of applause that lasted a full minute. “That’s the truth.”
He seized the opportunity to throw out some of the facts about his progress in office: 14 new private sector jobs had been created. The U.S. saw its first sustained manufacturing growth since the 1990s. Under his administration, America cut their unemployment rates in half. They cut foreign oil imports by more than half and doubled clean energy use.
The next fact gets the biggest reaction from the audience: “More than 90 percent of the country has health insurance,” Obama announced.
Obama also addressed the election — “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s an election year,” he said, and laughter followed. “It’s a more colorful season than most.”
Obama said he visited Elkhart because he knew it was mostly Republican and if the economy is what’s really driving this election, the people in that very room would be making a tough decision between two very different economic policies.
The goal is to strengthen the middle class, he reminded the crowd, and that wasn’t the general consensus among republican candidates.
“Their basic message is anti-government, anti-immigrant, anti-trade and, let’s face it, anti-change,” he said, almost issuing a warning to republican voters.
But Obama kept the ideas big and the examples small: Elkhart is still the model of a town that’s undergone an immense amount of change since Obama took office.
“Communities like Elkhart haven’t been forgotten in my White House,” Obama said.
