Obama Clarifies: 'I Didn't Say Change We Can Believe in TOMORROW'

You had to see this coming.

After Obama quipped earlier this summer that shovel-ready jobs weren't as shovel-ready as "we expected," it seemed that a central tenet of the 2012 campaign was probably going to be something along the lines of, we just haven't had enough time. At his Chicago fundraiser last night, that's exactly the stance he took, even going back to blaming George W. Bush:

Real Clear Politics has the transcript:

"It's been a long, tough journey. But we have made some incredible strides together. Yes, we have. But the thing that we all ought to remember is that as much as good as we have done, precisely because the challenges were so daunting, precisely because we we were inheriting so many challenges, that we're not even halfway there yet. When I said 'change we can believe in' I didn't say 'change we can believe in tomorrow.' Not change we can believe in next week. We knew this was going to take time because we've got this big, messy, tough democracy," President Obama said at a campaign fundraiser in Chicago on Wednesday night."