on november 2nd? joining me now, white house press secretary, robert gibbs. welcome back to "meet the press." >> thank you. >> we are just 16 days away. something in "the washington post" caught my eye that summed up the difficulty for the president and the democrats. i'll put it up on the screen. it's about the west virginia senate race and hopeful joe manchin. he was one problem, the pesky d after his name. that's one problem he can't fix. quote, there's not much wrong with him, said john jenks, attending an event for republican john raese on wednesday. it's just that he's a drtemocra. why is that such a problem? >> there's different political environments in different states. the over jowl environment is driven by our overall economic picture. it took us years to get into the mess we got ourselves in at the end of 2008. it will take us a while to get out. we saw a financial system near collapse. we have a continuing housing crisis that we're making progress on dealing with. we have positive economic growth and we have nine straight months of private sector job growth.