President Barack Obama is complaining about aspects of the country’s electoral system that he says favored Republicans in 2016.
“As long as Wyoming gets the same number of senators as California, there’s going to be some tilt towards Republicans when it comes to congressional races,” he explained, pointing out that most Democratic voters were “bunched up in big cities.”
During a press conference in Peru, Obama grumbled that Republicans took advantage of “political gerrymandering” after winning wide majorities in that helped them lock in a majority in Congress.
“More votes have been cast for Democratic congressional candidates than Republican,” Obama said. “And yet you end up having large Republican majorities.”
He cited “bad luck” as the reason Republicans swept back into power in 2010, blaming the economic downturn he inherited from former president Bush and not having enough time for his policies to take root.
Obama appeared to realize that he was complaining about the rules, admitting that the electoral system has “structural problems” that the Democratic party has to accept.
“But, look, you can’t make excuses about the rules,” he said. “That’s the deal, and we got to do better.”
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