Jon Ward at The Daily Caller

“There is no doubt that this is going to be a difficult election,” Obama told a crowd of roughly 8,000 enthusiastic supporters at the University of Minnesota.

At a fundraising dinner after the rally in Minneapolis, Obama was frank with the 100 attendees who paid between $2,500 and $50,000 to attend.

“I’ve got to admit, Mr. President, sometimes over the last couple of years, with all the negative ads and all the money that’s been pouring in, all the filibustering and obstruction in Congress, sometimes I just start losing altitude, start losing hope,” Obama said. “It just seems like change is so hard to bring about.”

The president went on to exhort the Democratic donors not to give up, and to keep supporting him and his agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat whose political future is in jeopardy, appeared with Obama at the rally, and blamed a good portion of her party’s woes on a wave of campaign spending being poured into races across the country by outside conservative groups.

“Everything was going great and all of a sudden secret money from God knows where – because they won’t disclose it – is pouring in,” Pelosi said.