The “No more f$*ks to give” Obama delves way into GOP obstruction in an Interview with Jon Chait in NY Magazine. Here’s the context of the quote in the title of this diary:
there were times that I would meet with Mitch McConnell and he would say to me very bluntly, “Look, I’m doing you a favor if I do any deal with you, so it should be entirely on my terms because it hurts me just being seen photographed with you.”
The President outlines how difficult it was to pass the ACA and the Stimulus:
When I hear people say, for example, that the stimulus should have been bigger, I constantly have to remind people that I had to give Susan Collins; Arlen Specter, who was then a Republican; Ben Nelson; and Joe Lieberman — I had to get those votes to get any stimulus, which meant that the fact that we ended up getting the largest stimulus program in American history was no mean feat
Yup. Susan Collins’ essential vote cost $100 billion off the stimulus — thousands of jobs.
He sees a straight line:
from the announcement of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential nominee to what we see today in Donald Trump, the emergence of the Freedom Caucus, the tea party, and the shift in the center of gravity for the Republican Party.
President Obama comments on the knee jerk attitude that he didn’t do anything on Syria:
You take the case of Syria, which has been chewed over a lot. But it continues to puzzle me, the degree to which people seem to forget that we actually got the chemical weapons out of Syria.
He also discusses the BP spill, passage of the ACA and drones.
We have been incredibly fortunate to have this brilliant, thoughtful, resourceful, compassionate man for eight years.