Scout Tufankjian for Obama for America
Republican control of the House makes meaningful advancement on President Obama's agenda near-impossible. And so, to deal with this, Obama plans to make the midterm elections a priority. If Democrats can take back the House-or at least, shrink the GOP's margin-they will be in a better position to pursue their policies. Odds are good that it won't succeed-the president's party almost always loses seats in the midterm-but it makes sense.
Naturally, Republicans aren't happy about this:
In response, McConnell said Obama and Democrats have "expended enormous amounts of energy to advance that goal – rebooting his political organization, provoking manufactured crises with Congress, engineering show votes in the Senate, and traveling around the country to campaign relentlessly against his opponents. That's why the Sequester went into effect in its current form. That's why Washington continues to careen needlessly from crisis to crisis. And that's why we find ourselves in a situation where more than 1,400 days have passed since Senate Democrats last passed a budget. What a sad state of affairs for our country, and for the notion of governance in general."
Now, setting aside the fact that Mitch McConnell is blaming Obama for a situation generated by Republican intransigence, there's something hilarious about this criticism when it comes from a politician who-just a year into Obama's term-told reporters that his top priority was to make Obama a "one-term president."
If McConnell is upset that Obama also wants to win elections, he should probably find a different career.
