President Barack Obama spoke rather bluntly about his frustrations with Congress at a private fundraising event for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Monday night, bemoaning the fact that his decisions are not merely red-stamped by the legislative branch.
Sounding like a disappointed schoolmarm and a broken record, Obama lamented that Congress isn’t helping his plans to reshape the country.
“I think it’s fair to say that the one area where we haven’t seen as much improvement as I would have liked is getting a Congress that is focused not on the next election, but on the next generation,” Obama said. He listed a number of issues he wanted to work on, but where he felt that his efforts were being stymied by Congress, such as economic growth, jobs, small businesses and climate change.
While another man might have spoken of the need for compromise and bipartisan action in Congress to address the issues of the day, to Obama, that’s so 2008.
“In each of these instances, we’ve got, unfortunately, a Congress that’s not working,” Obama said. “And I know it’s fashionable to say, well, it’s sort of a plague on both your houses, there’s too much partisanship, there’s too much ranker.”
Obama disagreed with this characterization of the situation, placing the blame squarely on Republicans. He also repeated his line about the Democrat’s “common sense.”
“The truth of the matter is, is that there’s no equivalence between what’s going on,” he said. “Democrats, I always say, we have our flaws. And there are times where Democrats drive me nuts. But if you look at the leadership of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, they’re not ideological, they’re not proposing radical solutions. They are common sense. They are pragmatic. And more often than not, they’re willing to do things that are hard, even when it’s not politically convenient. That’s how we got health care passed. That’s why we’ve been able to make progress on an issue like climate change. That’s why we’ve been able to grow the economy and bring down the deficit.”
Obama accused “a faction within the Republican Party” of thinking “solely in terms of their own ideological purposes” and how they can best maintain power. It seems that when they do so, it stymies his efforts to do the same. But Obama doesn’t see himself as properly equipped to combat such Machiavellianism.
Characterizing the supposed Republican faction as “a problem,” Obama explained, “that’s why I need a Democratic Senate. Not to mention the fact that we’re going to have Supreme Court appointments, and there are going to be a whole host of issues that many people here care about that are going to be determined by whether or not Democrats retain the Senate.”
If that doesn’t explain the importance of the midterm elections–to both parties–than little will.
