Michelle Obama predicts her husband will be 'amazing' in debate
Apparently that 2 1/2-hour anniversary dinner Barack and Michelle Obama celebrated at Spiaggia Restaurant Friday night went pretty well.
"Happy anniversary!" a supporter shouted to Michelle Obama at a fund-raiser at Newsweb President Fred Eychaner's Lakeview home Monday night.
"Thank you! We had a good date too," Obama said with a smile as the crowd began to cheer. "We did, yeah... Enough said."
Following a day of harsh attacks by both sides in the presidential campaign, Michelle Obama took refuge in speeches to loyal and generous fans at two fund-raisers in Chicago Monday night. She predicted her husband will be "amazing" in tonight's debate.
She thanked them for their donations and told them that over the next 28 days, she needed them to give their time.
"He's raised a whole lot of money thanks to you," she told 200 people at Eychaner's home -- a steel and glass marvel designed by Tadao Ando. "He has broken records with his fund-raising and that's important because he has the resources that he needs to operate the kind of ground game that will be critical."
To another 200 people at the Douglas Dawson Gallery of art on the Near West Side amid artifacts from Indonesia and music from the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band, she said, "Tell people your experience with Barack and with me. You've got to spread that word."
Donors at both places paid $1,000 or more for the privilege of mingling with the potential future first lady.
At both gatherings, she ticked off the neighboring battleground states where people could go to ring doorbells in the next four weeks: "We are surrounded by battleground states. The beauty of Chicago is that we are...close to Michigan and Wisconsin and Indiana and Iowa and Minnesota and Pennsylvania and Virginia."
But, she added, "You don't even have to leave Chicago. The campaign is so organized, they will give you names to call from the comfort of your own home."
The crowd who listened to Obama in the open-air second floor of Eychaner's home amid gas heaters and the sound of the wind blowing through the trees included many lesbians and gays and Obama was introduced as "a great friend to the LGBT [Lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender] community."
"I feel like I'm preaching to the choir because you know Barack's record," she said referring to "issues of interest to the LGBT community." She reminded them about the AIDS test she and her husband got in Kenya to encourage other Africans to do the same and Obama's opposition to the Defense of Marriage act.
"What he knows is that we have to have funding to support HIV testing," Obama said. "It is still something that doesn't happen in this country primarily because of homophobia."