The president called out Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey in front of the entire Democratic Caucus yesterday, and Menendez didn’t like it.
Their face-off occurred behind closed doors at the Hilton in Baltimore, where the two-day Senate Democratic Issues Conference was taking place. The president spoke to the senators for nearly two hours, and several people said he was well received by members of his party as he vowed to remain on the political offensive during the final two years of his presidency.
His exchange with Mr. Menendez occurred near the end of a question-and-answer session after Senator Angus King of Maine — an independent who caucuses with the Democrats — asked for an update to the [Iranian] nuclear talks.
According to one of the senators and another person who was present, the president urged lawmakers to stop pursuing sanctions, saying such a move would undermine his authority and could derail the talks. Mr. Obama also said that such a provocative action could lead international observers to blame the Americans, rather than the Iranians, if the talks collapsed before the June 30 deadline.
The president said he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and others, but he urged the lawmakers to take the long view rather than make a move for short-term political gain, according to the senator. Mr. Menendez, who was seated at a table in front of the podium, stood up and said he took “personal offense.”
Yes, Senator Menendez took personal offense that the president would suggest that he was taking a short-term view because of the pressure he was feeling from donors or that he was putting his own personal political gain in front of the administration’s strategy and the best interests of the country. He was offended that the president would point out that pursuing increased sanctions at this time could lead to a collapse of the talks for which the United States rather than Iran would be correctly blamed. So, Senator Menendez huffed and he puffed and said a number of self-serving, self-important and impertinent things. But none of those things changed the reality.
Senator Menendez is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and he’s not on board with the opening to Cuba and he’s not on board with the administration and the State Department on Iran.
What good is he?
Indeed… Mr. Menendez is of no use to any of us who desire peace.
Oh, this is sad. Did he demand an apology?
I hate to read about the people we’re supposed to depend on for our government acting like they’re on some kind of “reality show.”
If I ever gave that Senator any money I deeply regret it.
from what I’ve heard Menendez’s unstatesmanlike behavior towards Obama goes back at least to 2007. I think Menendez wanted to be the breakthrough non white president …
If the US blows another opportunity for less war because of Democrats like Menenedez, it will be the Democratic Party and not just Menendez who will be useless. This is an occasion in which there needs to be some serious party discipline because it is clear that Menendez held a whine and cheese party to let the media and the GOP know his unhappiness.
Would somebody exorcise the ghost of Neville Chamberlain from American foreign policy discourse. The drive for bravado is getting downright dangerous.
We so need a different, better Democrat as Senator from NJ. have not heard of any primarying in the wings, alas.
Bob Menendez can get royally bent. What a useless sack of venality. It’s senators like him and Schumer that suck life from the party like grotesque swollen ticks. You want war with Iran, get in the fucking Republican party.
big difference between Menendez and Schumer. Schumer actually has a constituency and answers to them. Menendez, well, I won’t go on and on, it’s still early in the day
Bob Menendez can go blow a goat for all i care. It’s enough to make you wish the prostitute scandal was real, and he’d resign and shut up.
They’re trying to position the Party for 2016, on the assumption, following the old playbook, that the candidate will want to run away from Obama’s record.
They’re playing to donors, not voters, though they’ll claim it’s the voters. And of course they’re assuming Hillary is the candidate.
Maybe you could call this a battle for the mind and soul of Hillary. She’s already with them of course. The only question is whether the Eliz Warren wing can derail this strategy. I think it can, actually, regardless of who the candidate turns out to be.
Schumer got slapped down pretty bad for his dismissive comments about Obamacare last month, didn’t he? The whole campaign strategy for 2014 was about avoiding Obama, see how that worked out. I think these guys are living in the past. They’ve got this down to a science, so they’re not going to change. However, the times have changed and I think the electorate along with it.
It was the electoral strategy that most of the 2014 loser Democratic Senate candidates used. Apparently many those Democrats that are still around remain faith and not fact based.
Yes, let’s defeat the Republicans by being just like them, only a little less so.
The Democrats’ strategy at this point seems blindingly obvious to me. First of all, Menendez should keep in mind that this Congress is going to accomplish nothing anyway, so it’s all about campaigning for 2016. For the Democrats, that should mean presenting an agenda that is as starkly different from the Republicans as possible–you can see what they’re trying to do, and here’s what we would do instead. The last thing we need is more GOP Lite.
I totally agree. Let’s hope it’s as blindingly obvious to Democratic voters to exert pressure in the runup to the campaign, because it sure isn’t obvious to people like Menendez. But that’s hardly surprising.
It’s the Diet Republican strategy.