Obama blames Fox News and party failures for Democrats' losses

According to President Barack Obama, Fox News played a significant role in Democrats’ election losses.

During an interview with Rolling Stone posted Tuesday, Obama said the Democratic Party faces a “challenge” because many of the same white working-class voters who supported him in 2008 and 2012 did not vote for Democrats during midterm elections and supported President-elect Donald Trump in 2016.

“And I think that part of it has to do with our inability, our failure, to reach those voters effectively,” Obama said. “Part of it is Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country, but part of it is also Democrats not working at a grassroots level, being in there, showing up, making arguments.”

“That part of the critique of the Democratic Party is accurate,” he added. “We spend a lot of time focused on international policy and national policy and less time being on the ground. And when we're on the ground, we do well. This is why I won Iowa.”

Obama said another component of the “challenge” is that “people are getting a hundred different visions of the world from a hundred different outlets or a thousand different outlets, and that is ramping up divisions,” adding:

It's making people exaggerate or say what's most controversial or peddling in the most vicious of insults or lies, because that attracts eyeballs. And if we are gonna solve that, it's not going to be simply an issue of subsidizing or propping up traditional media; it's going to be figuring out how do we organize in a virtual world the same way we organize in the physical world. We have to come up with new models.

Asked by Rolling Stone if he believes the United States is a “progressive country,” Obama replied, “I think that nothing is determined.”

“But that the number of people who have a strong belief in a fair, just, equal, inclusive America is the majority and is growing,” he added.