President Barack Obama calls for an end to divisive politics

In a day trip to the state capital where he began his career and also launched his presidential bid, Obama fretted over the harsh tone and hardening partisanship he says is turning off voters.

When one of his former mentors suggested Obama’s race has hampered his ability to push his political agenda, the president noted that the issue cut both ways, drawing some voters to his side and keeping others away, The Times reported. Obama has yet to make a statement endorsing a Democratic presidential candidate. Sixteen states have new voting restrictions in place since Obama’s reelection.

Many in the room who will hear President Obama speak worked with him in the Illinois Legislature.

President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of the Illinois General Assembly on Wednesday afternoon-nine years to the day after he announced his run for the White House on the steps of the Old State Capitol. At times during his speech, Obama joked it was like looking out at a State of the Union audience – Democrats on their feet cheering, Republicans sitting on their hands. Obama was a member of the Illinois Senate, representing the 13th Senate District, from 1997 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

It’s been more than eight months since IL lawmakers failed to pass a state budget.

A budget agreement this year, hailed as an example of bipartisanship at work, was notable mostly for its avoidance of a government shutdown – a effect of fiscal battles that seemed impossible before 2013, when the government actually did shutdown for two weeks amid a budget stalemate. “When I’ve got an opportunity to find some common ground, that doesn’t make me a sellout to my own party”. This is what will be a focus of mine over the course of this year and beyond: What can we do, all of us, together, to try to make our politics better?

Obama’s comments Wednesday in an address to IL state lawmakers is sure to resonate with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and his GOP counterparts who’ve been pushing that idea.

“There’s no doubt that there are pockets of the country where some dog whistles blow and there’s underlying racial fears that may be exploited, overall, what’s more the case I think is just the straight, hardball politics of running against an incumbent and beating the heck out of them and softening them up”, he said. He repeated that lament Wednesday, calling “my inability to reduce the polarization and meanness in our politics” one of his few regrets as president. On the Republican side of the aisle is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, the nation’s first Republican president.

“President Obama does not believe race played a role in the deepening partisan divide that has marred his time in the White House”. Although most of his discussion on gridlock was aimed at Washington, the topic was salient to the state assembly, now on its eighth month without a budget.