The reason we're governing right now is because we defeated moderate Republicans with moderate Democrats. And people need to be patient about that and realize that compromise is not evil.

People need to remember we are the governing party because we have diversity of opinion in our party. We're not pure. We have moderates and we have more progressives.

At various periods in American history, people get pretty rambunctious when it comes to our democratic debate.

I think [Obamacare] will survive. Or it may be called something else. And as I said I don't don't mind.

One of the great things about our democracy is it expresses itself in all sorts of ways. And that includes people protesting. I've been the subject of protests during the course of my eight years and I suspect that there's not a president in our history that at some point hasn't been subject to these protests.

In order to make the tough decisions we have to know what our values are and who we're fighting for and our priorities and if we are spending $300 billion on tax cuts for people who don't need them and weren't even asking for them, and we are leaving out health care which is crushing on people all across the country, then I think we have made a bad decision and I want to make sure we're not shortchanging our long term priorities.

My guiding principle as president has been to try to do the right thing even when it's not politically convenient.