The biggest takeaway from President Obama’s State of the Union has been the lack of humility he displayed despite crushing losses his party suffered in November.
Despite taking a shellacking in the November primaries, the president seems more defiant than ever.
"That has strangely been the White House's attitude from the first day they walked into the office," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said. "They never--after the 2010 election, after the 2014, they never got humbled the way Bill Clinton got humbled. They never got humbled the way other presidents get humbled when they get pounded by the realities of the White House. I think this is just a president untethered. He's always thought it; now he's saying it."
Obama seems to have erased November 2014 from his memory. In his speech Tuesday, the president joked, "I won both of them," referring to his campaigns.
It was an ad-lib line that drew laughter and praise from the left, but it also indicated that Obama does not feel responsible for the huge losses in Congress his party suffered in 2010 and 2014.
"It’s not that Republicans just won, they won in historic ways," Politico's Jim Vandehei said. "You would think you would have to reckon with that reality."
With the House and Senate in Republican control, President Obama will have two years to face the reality that he is now in his lame-duck session.