Remarks to an Overflow Crowd at an Obama Victory Fund 2012 Fundraiser in Des Moines, Iowa

The President. Hello, Iowa! How's it going, Des Moines? Well, it is good to be back in my home away from home.

Now, I've got to give a long speech in there, so I'm not going to give a long speech here. But what I do want to just say to all of you is----

Audience member. I love you!

The President. I love you back.

You know, this journey started in Iowa, and that's why we're going to be spending a lot of time in Iowa this time round. Because when I go around the country and I talk about how decent folks are and responsible they are, and everybody wants a fair shot and everybody is willing to do their fair share and everybody is playing by the same set of rules, I'm talking about the people of Iowa as a great example of what America is all about.

So we're going to have a lot of work to do. We've gone through some tough times. The economy has been tough. We still have friends and neighbors who are out of work. We still have too many folks whose home values have dropped, small businesses that are still struggling. So we're going to have to keep on moving. We've got to push forward. We can't go backwards.

And these other folks, they want to go back to the same stuff that got us into this mess in the first place, and we're not going to do that. We want to move forward. We're not going backwards.

So how many of you are ready to work? Because it's going to take some work this time. This is going to take some work. This is going to be harder this time than it was the last time. But Iowa is full of hard-working folk. And there's something about Iowa: When I come here, I want to work even harder.

So I just want to say thank you to all the team members, team leaders, everybody who's out there knocking on doors, making phone calls, talking to your neighbors, talking to your friends, talking to your uncle or aunt who somehow still thinks the other side knows what they're talking about--[laughter]--and you've got to help them see the light. You just keep at it.

And the last thing I'll say is this. Even though all these folks are spending all this millions of dollars of money on negative ads--that's going to keep on because of these super PACs and all that stuff--nothing is more important than ordinary people standing up: standing up for our values, standing up for what America is all about. So don't think that these folks can beat us. If you're out there, you're going to beat them. And we're going to bring this country together and get things moving in the right direction.

Thank you, everybody. God bless you. God bless America.