The Washington post has an interesting article which makes the claim that relationships between Obama and senate Democratic leaders have long been rocky and that a public statement made by Harry Reid's chief of staff David Krone on Tuesday exposes the conflict to public view.
Midterm disaster rips apart awkward ties between Obama and Senate Democrats
The story begins at the end of 2012 where following an electoral success in the general election congress had to deal with the "fiscal cliff" negotiations dealing with expiring tax cuts and automatic spending cuts. Reid and the senate Democratic leaders were prepared to go to the mat with the Republicans and felt that Obama pulled the rug out from beneath them.
The final vote on the package seemed like a bipartisan triumph: 89 senators supported the deal, which included the permanent extension of the Bush-era tax breaks for most workers. But the vote masked a vast underlying tension among some of the players.
The episode left a particularly bitter taste for Reid’s chief of staff, David Krone, who had been privately assuring people that there would be no deal and that Congress would go “over the cliff” — as taxes soared for every American, giving the Democrats great political leverage when Congress returned for a period of more intense negotiations in January 2013.
Technically, the president’s first term wasn’t even complete, and he had just been reelected, but the fault lines within his own party were already sharply drawn. That tension blew up Tuesday when Krone’s comments about Democrats’ dismal showing in the 2014 midterms went public. He accused Obama of paying “lip service” to concerns about helping finance the midterm elections and said the president was an anchor that took down Democrats across the country, costing them the Senate majority.
“The president’s approval rating is barely 40 percent,” Krone said. “What else more is there to say?”
It was an unusual breach of Washington decorum that stunned a political community used to the shadowy “background” comments from “senior administration officials” or “senior Senate aides.” In general, staffers do not say such things on the record about a sitting president, especially from the same party.
The article goes on to describe an accumulation of resentments on the part of Democratic senators over a lack of support and engagement from the president. As a former senator, they seem to have expected a more friendly and hands on approach from him.
It would appear that many of the Democrats who remain in the Senate feel that they no longer have much to gain by keeping up appearances between them of the occupant of the oval office. This story of senators who felt betrayed by Obama's willingness to capitulate to Republicans reflects the feelings of a lot of Democrats who aren't elected officials. Now that the Democrats are the minority party in both houses of congress the prospects for the next two years do not look cheerful.
Reid has announced his intention to seek reelection as Democratic leader in the Senate. Turning his chief of staff loose on the president would seem to be part of his campaign strategy.