Obama: Dems are in trouble because Americans aren't thinking clearly

I'm alright, it's everone else who's insane.

At a Saturday-evening fundraiser held in the home of a wealthy Massachusetts hospital executive, President Obama suggested Democrats are having difficulties in midterm campaigning because Americans simply aren't thinking clearly. Seeking to explain his party's troubles, the president focused not on controversial legislation like national health care and the stimulus but on evolutionary psychology. "Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument do not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared," Obama told the assembled Democrats, who had paid $15,200 a person to attend. "And the country is scared."

To "break through the fear and the frustration that people are feeling right now," Obama told the crowd, will require high-end donors not just to "write checks" but also to "lift up people's spirits and make sure that they're not reacting just to fear."

It's not the first time Obama has ventured into psychology to explain the public's resistance to Democratic policies. In a now-infamous April 2008 speech to a similarly posh fundraiser in San Francisco, Obama discussed Pennsylvanians who had seen their standard of living decline in recent years by saying: "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." In the ensuing controversy over his remarks, Obama did not apologize or back down from his position but conceded he had made "poor word choices."