He says 'the American people overwhelmingly believe this town doesn’t work very well.' Obama defiant after GOP wave

President Barack Obama sounded a defiant tone on Wednesday, arguing that Democrats’ big losses in the midterm elections were more about dysfunction in Washington than about his policies and leadership.

“It doesn’t make me mopey. It energizes me,” he said at the end of his post-election press conference in the East Room of the White House.


Obama repeatedly resisted reporters’ efforts to extract political analysis from him during his 74-minute appearance before reporters, other than to say that “obviously Republicans had a good night” as they took the majority in the Senate, expanded their advantage in the House, and won several governor’s mansions that had been in Democratic hands.

“I don’t want to try and read the tea leaves on election results,” he said at one point.

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Still, the president offered a broader political takeaway: that Americans are still hungry for the change he promised as a candidate six years ago.

“To everyone who voted, I want you to know that I hear you,” he said. And, in a nod to the vast majority of voters who didn’t go to the polls on Tuesday, he added: “to the two-thirds of voters who chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you, too.”

With their actions or inaction on Election Day, “the American people sent a message, one that they’ve sent for several elections now,” he said. “They expect the people they elect to work as hard as they do. They expect us to focus on their ambitions and not ours. They want us to get the job done. All of us in both parties have a responsibility to address that sentiment.”

“The American people overwhelmingly believe this town doesn’t work very well,” he said.

( Also on POLITICO: How the Democrats lost the Senate)

But he wouldn’t commit to any changes in his White House. “If you’re asking about personnel or if you’re asking about a position on issues or what have you, then it’s probably premature because I want to hear what … I’d like to do is to hear from the Republicans to find out what it is that they would like to see happen,” he said.

Though Obama conceded that he is technically a lame duck, with no more elections ahead of him, he said hasn’t given up on his presidency.

“I’m going to squeeze every last bit of opportunity to help make this world a better place over the next two years,” he said. He’ll do whatever it takes, he said, to make progress, from drinking bourbon with likely Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to golfing with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to potentially holding weekly press conferences.

He hinted at a longer-term agenda that includes some of the areas of one-time bipartisan compromise on which he’s been unable to get Republicans to agree over the past few years.

“We can surely find ways to work together on issues where there’s broad agreement among the American people,” he said. “So I look forward to Republicans putting forward their governing agenda. I will offer my ideas on areas where I think we can move together to respond to people’s economic needs. So just take one example. We all agree on the need to create more jobs that pay well. Traditionally, both parties have been for creating jobs rebuilding our infrastructure — our roads, bridges, ports, waterways.”

One difference, he said, and one reason why he’s hopeful that Boehner and McConnell will cooperate is because they have more at stake as the single party leading both houses of Congress.

“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,” he said. “It means that negotiations end up perhaps being a little more real because, you know, they have larger majorities, for example, in the House, and they may be able to get some things through their caucuses that they couldn’t before.”

The president’s goals for the lame duck session of the current Congress are to approve more than $6 billion in new funding for the domestic and international Ebola response, a new authorization for the use of military force against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and to pass a budget.

Obama said he plans to follow through on his promise to take executive action on immigration reform before the end of the year. “What I’m not gonna do is wait,” he said. “I’ve shown a lot of patience” in giving Boehner more than a year to take up the reform bill that passed the Senate in June 2013. “What we can’t do is keep waiting,” he added.

If Republicans have concerns about the executive actions he takes on immigration, they can pass their own legislation, which would ultimately “supersede” his unilateral moves.

Despite the ups and downs of the past decade, Obama said he still stands by the argument he made when he broke onto the national stage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. “I continue to believe we are more than just a collection of red and blue states. We are the United States,” he said.