By Johnette Jernigan and Kathy Wray Coleman. Reach us by phone at 216-659-0473 and by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio-After a morning White House press conference with a group of testy reporters demanding an explanation for the national uproar over his universal health care plan, and his approval ratings below normal, Barack Obama boarded Air Force One on Thursday and flew home to Cleveland, Ohio for an afternoon speech at ArcelorMittal Steel Factory, one of the world's leading steel and manufacturing plants.
He immediately thanked Indian-born steel Baron Lakshmi Mittal for investing in Cleveland, and in America.
"I want to thank CEO Lakshmi Mittal for investing in America and the Cleveland area," said Obama during his speech to steelworkers on Thursday.
A largely Black city with Black mayor Frank G. Jackson at the helm, and with 18 Democrats and nine Blacks on the 19-member Cleveland City Council, Cleveland may have felt like home to Obama last week.
Though Cleveland is not the president's hometown, his homecoming on Thursday did not suggest otherwise, particularly since he chose it for his safe haven for a key speech away from the White House at a time when ObamaCare, his health care initiative, was clearly under attack by the Republican regime.
The local mainstream media, which can be fickle, were gracious with headlines of his arrival.
Labor unions, Black people, and Democrats, some of the same groups that help catapult him to president, were among his allies, close up, and from a distance, many waiting for the president to step foot in the city, once again.
Cleveland has a population of some 400,000 people, a largely Black major American city, and one struggling like other urban dwellings with heightened poverty, unemployment and failing public schools.
The president spoke for nearly 28 minutes at the steel plant located on Harvard Avenue on the city's largely Black east side , and he said that it felt good to be back in Cleveland since his visit late last year during a campaign stop. He said that the economy was in a free fall and on the brink of collapse when he became president and that its has improved tremendously under his leadership.
"It's a win, win," said Obama, who won a second term in 2012 against Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney with help from a cadre of greater Cleveland politicians, many Black, and a handful of them who aggressively campaigned for the president, including state Sen. Nina Turner (D-25), a Cleveland Democrat, and Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge, a Warrensville Heights Democrat and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
By Karl Kimbrough (pictured), Cleveland Urban News.Com Sportswriter (kimbrough@clevelandurbannews.com). 
