Obama in June: 'I don't really care to be president without the Senate'

Obama in June: &#039;I don&#039;t really care to be president without the Senate&#039;

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

Since Tuesday saw the Republicans claim majority power in both houses of Congress, President Obama has generally sounded a conciliatory note, saying that the takeaway from the election is that Americans want their politicians to "work as hard as they do." But five months ago, Obama had a different tone:

[In June, several Democratic senators] demanded to know how committed Obama was to fighting for the Senate majority. Obama was known as a fierce competitor when his name was on the ballot, not so much when it was not.

"I don't really care to be president without the Senate," Obama said, according to attendees, signaling that he knew the health care debacle created resentment among Democrats and that he wanted to make amends. [Politico]

The senator who led that questioning of Obama, Mark Begich of Alaska, has since likely lost his re-election campaign, though he refuses to concede.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.