Michelle Obama to University of Iowa students: Step it up

IOWA CITY - This time, she got the name right.

First Lady Michelle Obama apologized for mispronouncing U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Braley's name when she campaigned for him last week in Des Moines. She called him 'Bruce Bailey” seven times before the crowd corrected her.

But her message was right, Obama said at Iowa Votes rally at the University of Iowa Tuesday afternoon.

'Bruce Braley. Let me say that one more time,” she joked with the crowd. 'I may have slipped up Bruce's name a couple of times. What I know I got right were Bruce's values.”

In her second visit to Iowa this month on Braley's behalf, Obama fired up a crowd of about 800 - according to the campaign - mostly college students. She called Braley a 'man of character … committed to the people of this state every single day.”

'That's why I'm back,” said Obama, who was visiting battleground states for candidates who, like Braley, are in tight races. In Iowa, most polls show Braley tied or trailing Republican Joni Ernst by a percentage point or two.

Ernst represents 'radical and extreme ideas” and will represent outside interests 'not like Iowans like you and me,” UI alum Zach Wahls told the crowd before Obama arrived.

Noting how close the race is, he encouraged the students and others in the audience to get involved in the final two weeks of the campaign.

'The most powerful thing you bring to the campaign is your voice,” he said.

However, it was Obama's voice they came to hear.

And she told them: 'You need to step up.”

Obama made repeated appeals for young voters to get involved because without their efforts and without a Braley victory, Obama said the progress made in the past six years could be lost.

Iowa Republicans agreed with Obama that the election is a referendum on the past six years, but don't think Iowans are going to judge the Obama administration's 'progress” as generously as the first lady.''

Braley and the Obamas 'are all singing the same tune,” Republican Party of Iowa spokesman Jahan Wilcox said. 'If you support Obamacare, amnesty for illegal immigrants or EPA regulations against farmers, then the best way to thank President Obama is to support his hand-picked candidate Congressman Braley.”

However, the first lady recalled that things were a mess” when her husband took office, but after six years of work 'by nearly every economic measure, we're better off today than when Barack took office.”

'Think about all the change we've made in last six years under Obama,” she said. If anyone says elections don't matter, 'tell them to look at the last six years.”

'Elections matter. They matter. They matter,” Obama said.

Electing Braley won't be easy because the opposition has too much money and special interests have too much influence, she said.

Then she reminded her audience that the special interests had money and influence in 2008 and 2012 'and we won.”

Democrats won, because women, minorities and young people voted in larger than anticipated number, Obama said.

'When we stay home, they win,” she said. 'They're hoping, praying that we just sit back. Only we can prove them wrong.”

UI College Democrats President Carter Bell shared a similar message, reminding her fellow students that their generation, along with Braley, has spent years fighting for change.

'This year, this election, all that progress is at stake,” she said. 'So for the next 14 days, fight for him.”