Obama seeks new Democrats to define new politics
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President Obama on Wednesday morning outlined for fellow Democrats his vision of a new type of politics that would push Washington past its tired partisan battles.
“Good policy is good politics,” Obama told Democratic senators, noting that he hoped he wasn’t being naive.
Last week, Obama met with House Republicans in a session that was a polite version of Daniel in the lions’ den. It was pointed, but never rude.
His meeting with Democrats was far less fiery, as the president adopted the conciliatory tone that one uses with allies facing an uphill fight.
“I know these are tough times to hold public office,” Obama said in a nod to voter anger with incumbents running in this, a midterm election year. “I’m there in the arena with you.”
He tried to reassure his party that despite the GOP victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, Democrats were still in charge and have a responsibility to act on issues including healthcare, financial regulations and climate change.
“All that’s happened” since the Massachusetts election, Obama said, “is that we’ve gone from the largest Senate majority in a generation to the second-largest Senate majority in a generation.”
For Obama, Washington’s political problems are part personal and part structural. The solution is to start over and to get in touch with the desire to help people that led politicians to become Democrats in the first place.
“As we think of moving forward, I hope we don’t lose sight of why we are here,” Obama said. “We have to finish the job.”
But that will mean redefining Democrats and what they have come to stand for in the popular mind.
‘We can’t go back to the New Deal,’ Obama said, urging that pragmatism replace ideology and that experimentation come to fore to deal with 21st-century problems like alternative energy and deficit reduction.
He said Democrats had to be honest and transparent with voters about the tough times that still lie ahead and criticized again how the healthcare overhaul has become stalled after what he said was a messy legislative period that is still unresolved.
If there is a vision for Democrats, Obama also has a vision for Republicans, which he again explained by offering the carrot of bipartisanship with the threat that if the GOP failed to act, it would be branded as an obstacle.
‘The GOP can’t just say no,” Obama said. “You can’t gum up the works.”
-- Michael Muskal
