How dare they question Dear Leader’s meaningless talking points!
Via WaPo:
In the days leading up to his State of the Union address, President Obama hosted the Senate Democrats for some anxious talk about their prospects in the 2014 midterm elections.
There was worry among the lawmakers that the theme of “income inequality” was becoming defined solely by calls for raising the minimum wage and extending unemployment insurance benefits that would come off as light and unambitious. So some Democrats pushed him to do more.
“That’s a great start, but you ought to challenge us to go beyond that to pass bipartisan bills that will strengthen manufacturing, that will invest in skills in American workers,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told Obama, according to the senator’s account. “Please challenge us to do more.” At the heart of the concern was whether the income-inequality message would resonate sufficiently with middle-class voters, so critical to the outcome of the midterms.
Some Democratic leaders worried that all the talk about income inequality and the focus on the minimum wage would not connect to the more than 90 percent of voters who have jobs and are not earning less than $10 an hour.
“Unemployment and minimum wages are simply floors, not objectives,” House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday after Obama delivered a speech that many Democrats found reassuring.
HT: Gabriel Malor