Stymied by GOP, Obama tells Dems: ‘Washington doesn’t work’

President Obama told attendees at a high-dollar Manhattan fundraiser Wednesday night that the Democratic Party would be in better shape if he “could just get a million surplus votes in Brooklyn” and move them to Nebraska, where Tea Party conservatives scored a major win in Tuesday’s primary.

Complaining that he had a “drawerful” of things left to do, the president said he had been stymied because “Washington doesn’t work.”

{mosads}”We have a party on the other side that has been captured by an ideology that says no to everything,” Obama said. “There might have been a time when that was an exaggeration but now it’s not.”

Obama made the comments at the second of two New York City fundraisers Wednesday, held at the Manhattan home of investment banker Blair Effron. Supporters paid $32,400 to attend the event, which benefited the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Earlier, the president held a closed-door roundtable discussion with donors who had contributed up to $32,400 to the Democratic National Committee.

Obama’s trip to New York was part of a furious fundraising push of late, as Democrats look to stockpile cash ahead of the 2014 midterm elections. The events were Obama’s 20th and 21st of 2014, and came on the heels of a trip to California last week where Obama hosted five separate fundraising events. According to CBS News’s Mark Knoller, Obama has attended 59 events benefiting Democrats this cycle.

The president voiced many of his familiar concerns, telling supporters that lingering “anxiety” remained despite improvements in the economy. He told supporters that bolstering the middle class was “the central issue of our time.”

Obama again voiced concerns to Democrats that there’s “congenital disease” and a “structural problem” within the party because “our voters don’t show up” for midterm elections.

The president plans to stay in New York City overnight, and will attend the unveiling of the 9/11 memorial museum on the Ground Zero site in lower Manhattan on Thursday morning.