President Obama has been railing against Republicans in Congress nearly every day this week.
"One faction of one party in one house of Congress in one branch of government shut down major parts of the government," he said in the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday. "All because they didn't like one law."
He's expected to take that message on the road on Thursday, visiting a construction company in Maryland to talk about the impact of the shutdown on the economy.
And that finger-pointing at Republicans is sure to be part of his speech again.
Obama's rhetoric in this conflict is a shift from some of his earlier complaints about Congress — and that's having a positive effect on Democrats.
Talking about his adversaries who work in the Capitol in 2011, for example, he characterized lawmakers as lazy, saying "there shouldn't be any reason for Congress to drag its feet."
In 2010, he described them as wasteful. "Congress has provided unrequested money for more C-17s that the Pentagon doesn't want or need," he said.
In those speeches, the enemy was not specifically the House or the Senate, not Republicans or Democrats. Often it was just "Congress."
"There's a long and honorable tradition going back to Harry Truman of running against the Congress," says former Democratic Sen. Ted Kaufman of Delaware.
That tactic worked for Obama — he was running for re-election at the time. But it rankled congressional Democrats.
"Obviously, if you're part of the criticism, you don't feel good about it," Kaufman says. "I mean, one of the things that really bothers Democrats in the Senate is ... when people say, 'Well, it's the Republicans and the Democrats — it's all of you.' "
Back then, Obama was also trying to reach a grand bargain with Republicans. Singling them out as the enemy wouldn't have done much good. So he lumped in his own party as part of the problem.
Now the situation has changed dramatically, and so has Obama's rhetoric. The president does not pass up any chance to single out his adversaries as a minority within the GOP.
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