Oddly, no reports of audience members bursting into laughter.

BALTIMORE — President Barack Obama pleaded with supporters at a fundraiser here Tuesday afternoon to resurrect the spirit of his 2008 campaign.

“If people ask you, ‘What’s this campaign?’ you tell them, it’s still about hope. You tell them it’s still about change,” Obama told a few hundred supporters in a downtown hotel ballroom. “You tell them it’s still about ordinary people who believe that in the face of great odds we can make a difference in the life of this country. I still believe that.”

One of the major questions facing Obama’s reelection effort is whether the massive voter turnout machine being constructed by his campaign can deliver grassroots energy that comes close to what drove him to victory in 2008.

The president made his comments on the heels of some of his most difficult days as a candidate for reelection, following a dismal jobs May jobs report, the Democrats’ failure to prevail in the Gov. Scott Walker recall election in Wisconsin, a fresh spate of off-script comments by former President Bill Clinton, and Obama’s “the private sector is doing fine” remark on Friday