Pat Dollard

Tweet

Politico:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — President Barack Obama has a new campaign slogan.

“Yes, we did.”

And it doesn’t stop there. Republicans, an animated Obama argued Thursday, wouldn’t have.

They wouldn’t have set the economy back on track, he said during a fundraiser for Senate candidate Robin Carnahan, or passed a health care overhaul or financial regulatory reform. Giving the GOP control of Congress again — a possibility that Obama acknowledged — would usher in another era of a “you’re on your own philosophy,” he said.

“You’re going to face a choice in November. This is a choice between the policies that got us into this mess in the first place and the policies that got us out of this mess, and what the other side is counting on is people not having a good memory,” Obama said in a fiery 30-minute speech at the Folly Theater in downtown Kansas City. “They are peddling that same snake oil that they’ve been peddling now for years.”

“Kick ‘em out,” a donor yelled.

“Well, we did kick ‘em out,” Obama replied, “because it wasn’t working.”

With less than four months before voters deliver a verdict on his first two years in office, Obama is adding more muscle to his fight against Republicans and for Democrats. Much of Democrats’ trouble this cycle stems from their votes for unpopular initiatives on Obama’s agenda, including the economic stimulus bill and the health care overhaul. But the president is trying his best to turn that equation around.

“We don’t have to guess how the other party will govern because we’re still living with results from the last time,” Obama said, insisting the GOP’s political approach will fail.

Obama is an imperfect messenger, particularly in a battleground state like Missouri, which he very narrowly lost in 2008 but has visited repeatedly since taking office. His approval rating here is below 50 percent. And earlier this year, Carnahan was seen as distancing herself from Obama by being out of town while he was in her state.

In a sign of the double edge that Obama brings in this election, Carnahan criticized her opponent, Rep. Roy Blunt, for voting for the $700 billion TARP legislation in 2008, calling him “Mr. Bailout” during her introduction of Obama.

Obama voted for the bank bailout bill as a senator.

The president didn’t seem fazed by the ding. Carnahan, the Missouri secretary of state who is running against Blunt for the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Kit Bond, also promised to “call bull” on Obama if she makes it to Washington.

Obama was at his best. He was in a good mood. He laughed at his own jokes and found the right pitch that connected with the crowd. He was also as partisan as he gets, calling out Republicans by name and having fun at their expense.

“They say no to everything,” Obama said, feigning indignant. “I go and I talk to them, and I say, ‘C’mon we can get something going here.’ No! Don’t want to.”

He again took on House Republican leader John Boehner for comparing Democrats’ financial regulatory reform legislation to killing an ant with a nuclear weapon — “You’ve gotta make a movie: The Ant that Ate the Economy,” he joked. He again knocked Rep. Joe Barton, the Texas Republican who apologized to BP for the administration’s actions during the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — “When I heard that, I said, ‘Naw, he didn’t say that,’” Obama said playfully.

The audience laughed. So did he.

“The Bartons and the Boehners and the Blunts. They’ve got that ‘No’ philosophy,” Obama said. “That’s the choice in this election: moving backward or moving forward.”

Voters have seen this movie before, he said, “So we know how this movie ends. Right?”

In a statement, Boehner replied: “On President Obama’s watch, more than 3 million Americans have lost their jobs, and unemployment is near 10 percent. The American people continue to ask, ‘where are the jobs?’ But the president keeps whining and indulging in childish partisan attacks. How out of touch can he get?”

Obama made the case that despite having no help from Republicans, Democrats have gotten an historic amount of work done in the past 18 months.

In terms of “Yes, we did,” he was putting a fine point on an argument he first made in Toronto when asked about his plans to bring down the deficit. “One of the interesting things that’s happened over the past 18 months as president is, for some reason, people keep on being surprised when I do what I said I was going to do,” Obama said at the time. Vice President Joe Biden repeated the line last weekend in an interview with POLITICO, saying when U.S. troops end their combat mission in Iraq next month, the White House can “point to it and say, ‘We told you what we were going to do, and we did it.’”

On Thursday, Obama said his policies, however unpopular, reflect “what we talked about during the campaign.”

“Folks don’t mean what they say, and they don’t do what they say,” Obama said. “People get surprised when we follow through and keep our campaign promises.”

“Yes we can,” someone yelled.

“Yes we did,” Obama said before jetting off to Las Vegas to headline a trio of events for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “And we’re still doing it.”