I’m not the scapegoat you’re looking for, Obama told the press. Obama: Midterms? What midterms?

President Barack Obama arrived in the East Room of the White House Wednesday afternoon for the post-election press conference ritual trying out his best Obi-Wan Kenobi: I’m not the scapegoat you’re looking for.

Republican strength, even in blue and purple territory, wasn’t about him, he insisted, or his policies. It was about the same sense that elected him in the first place, and which his aides think explains the 2010 and 2012 electoral ping-pong — Americans don’t like their lives, and they’re going to keep firing people until they feel things getting better.


That’s the only reason he entered into the calculation at all, Obama said.

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“The American people overwhelmingly believe that this town doesn’t work well, and that it is not attentive to their needs. And as president, they rightly hold me accountable to do more to make it work properly,” Obama said. “They want me to push hard to close some of these divisions, break through some of the gridlock, and get stuff done.”

After all, control of the Senate was decided mostly in states that Obama hadn’t competed in at the height of his popularity. Pretty much no one voted, he pointed out, repeatedly. Minimum wage increases passed in the five states they were up — that had a lot to do with his talking about the issue.

The parts of the results he didn’t like — say, the eight states that flipped to Republican senators, or the fact that Republican governors were elected or re-elected in Illinois, Maryland, Michigan and Florida — he didn’t want to talk about. He wouldn’t even say the words “lame duck,” calling it “the label that you guys apply.”

Reporters pressed him for what he’s going to do differently now. Silly question, Obama said. He already wakes up every morning already thinking about what he can do differently, even after nights that don’t include so many cable news maps turning bright red.

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Everything that was, remains. Large parts of his answers could have been replaced by a tape run at any of the press conferences months ago, with the only notable exception being the kind of extended defense of economic progress that Democrats were hoping to hear more of from him before votes were cast.

Wednesday, he even started talking about how gas prices had gone down, which hadn’t entered his remarks before.

Obama is still willing to compromise and work with Republicans — but the things they want most are lines he said again Wednesday he won’t cross. The immigration reform executive actions are still happening, the Keystone XL pipeline still isn’t. There won’t be any significant changes to Obamacare.

John Boehner’s still a feckless leader who can’t control his conference (even after Obama claims he let the House speaker win at golf), and it will still be up to incoming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to actually deliver, just like every other time the past four years.

( Senate results by state)

And Obama — well, he’s just going to keep doing what he’s been doing.

“I think that every day I’m asking myself: Are there some things I can do better? And, you know, I’m going to keep on asking that every single day,” Obama said.

Asked repeatedly, he wouldn’t address what kind of differences might emerge. At one point, he said he needed to wait to meet with McConnell on Friday to find out.

“To everyone who voted, I want you to know that I hear you,” Obama said, adding that this applies to the people who didn’t vote as well. “I hear you, too.”

Listening is another story.

( House election results by state)

He said he doesn’t regret not spending more time with Republicans — “I’m certainly going to be spending a lot more time with them now.” He doesn’t think he ever had a problem with a Congress that’s come to loathe him, on both sides of the aisle — “the fact is that most of my interactions with members of Congress have been cordial and they’ve been constructive.” He made a special point of saying he’d like to have some Kentucky bourbon with McConnell, then noted that they’ve spent so little time together, he doesn’t even know what the senator’s drink is.

Obama no longer has to worry about being a factor in anyone’s election, yet he was as hard to pin down on substantive, definitive responses on Wednesday as he’s been all year. Maybe there will be an Iran deal, and maybe he can go around Congress to get it. Maybe not. Maybe there will be a trade deal like the one he already couldn’t get the Asian leaders to believe America was committed to when he met with them on his trip there in April. Maybe not.

Obamacare, immigration reform, tax reform — the president didn’t get into details except to say that he believes that now, Republicans are going to have to have a proactive agenda. “What I’m committing to is making sure that I am open to working with them on the issues where they think that there’s going to be cooperation,” Obama said.

But that barely had anything to do with the election either, he insisted.

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“Now, that isn’t a change because I’ve suggested to them before that where they think there’s areas of cooperation, I’d like to see us get some things done,” Obama said. “But the fact that they now control both chambers of Congress I think means that perhaps they have more confidence that they can pass their agenda and get a bill on my desk.”

Forget about Tuesday. Forget about the whole last six years of his presidency. Obama said at his press conference that he hasn’t changed going back to that 2004 convention speech that first made him famous, and that, more than anything, now embodies the disappointment Americans feel about his failure to deliver.

“For all the cynics who say otherwise, I continue to believe we are simply more than just a collection of red and blue states. We are the United States,” he said.

On the other hand, he’s done with caring too much about elections at all, Obama said, preparing to walk out of the room.

“Our democracy is messy and we’re diverse and we’re big, and there are times when you’re a politician and you’re disappointed with election results,” he said. “But maybe I’m just getting older. I don’t know. It doesn’t make me mopey. It energizes me because it means that this democracy is working.”