President Obama took his State of the Union ideas to red-state Idaho Wednesday, insisting he would try to bridge the divide between Republicans and Democrats in his final two years.
“I still believe that as Americans we have more in common than not,” Obama said at Boise State University, pushing Congress to spend more money on high-level research. “I am not going to stop trying to make our politics better.”
The president was not so conciliatory in his State of the Union address Tuesday, pushing a slate of progressive proposals in the face of stiff conservative opposition. At one point, Obama reminded Republicans Tuesday that he had won the last two presidential elections.
The president struck a different tone in Idaho, a conservative bastion in recent years. He said he traveled to Idaho specifically because it is such a heavily Republican state.
“Of course, in the general election I got whooped [in Idaho],” Obama told the crowd. “I got whooped twice, in fact.”
The president is attempting to find bipartisan consensus on research, infrastructure, trade and cybersecurity.
“Those things shouldn’t be controversial,” he told the Idaho crowd.
But Obama at least partially blamed the media for the state of politics today.
“Our media is all segmented now,” he complained. “You have the conservative stations and the liberal stations.”
Idaho on Wednesday became the 47th state Obama has visited as president, leaving South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah as the lone places he has not traveled to while commander in chief. Perhaps not surprisingly, those are also deeply red states.
However, Obama will travel to Kansas on Thursday, continuing his trek to conservative areas.
