Obama: Dems Have a ‘Congenital Defect’ Where They Don’t Vote in Midterm Elections

Obama completes first day of Silicon Valley visit with fundraising blitz (Contra Costa Times)

SAN JOSE -- He had stood in rooms like this one in front of Democratic Party donors five times in the space of 24 hours. So when President Barack Obama concluded his California fundraising blitzkrieg at the San Jose Fairmont Hotel Thursday night, he looked squarely ahead to the coming midterm elections and declared, "The future is there for us to seize."

At that point, someone in the crowd began shouting something unintelligible about freedom, adding: "We love you!"

"You kind of screwed up my ending," said the president, who clearly had been about to close with a rousing, wallet-cleansing pitch for the assembled fat cats to spend terabytes of cash in the name of party unity. (The man later handed out copies of a letter he'd written to the president about freedom in Ethiopia, identifying himself as an "exiled journalist and freedom activist trying to raise the voices of the oppressed people of Ethiopia.")