The President's Post-election Press Conference (VIDEO)

After spending all day at the Pasadena Democratic Office's, and all day in meetings today, I haven't blogged much on the obvious news of the day. So let me start with the President's Press Conference this morning, post-election:



BTW, there's a somewhat-too-subtle Veto threat Obama issues over Health Care Reform at the 17:00 minute mark.

The not-too-subtle threat came after the Presser:

It would be a mistake to spend the next two years re-fighting the political battles of the last two years. The President is proud of the progress we have made for average Americans - from health care reform, to financial reform and reforms to our education system. While he has always made it clear that he is open to ideas from both sides of the aisle to improve these important new laws, he will not accept attempts to repeal or weaken them.

Steve Benen has more:

A couple of angles to keep an eye on here. The first is that the president clearly doesn't seem inclined to budge on this. If Boehner & Co. think Obama will be pushed around on health care, and that with the right leverage, repeal is an option, they're mistaken.

The second is this general framework: re-fighting the battles of the past is a mistake. I get the sense the White House is working on a larger message here -- all Republicans want to do is fight over things that happened in the past, instead of focusing on the future -- which may come up quite a bit in the coming months.

This isn't to say health care tweaks are out of the question, and the president brought up "the 1099 provision" today as "something that we should take a look at." But the underlying message to Republicans intending to push for some wholesale overhaul seemed to be pretty straightforward: don't bother.