Even before the debacle of the healthcare rollout, Democratic senators felt Obama did not call them enough and sometimes had a tenuous grasp of political realities in Congress.

The president nearly suffered a humiliating defeat on the use-of-force resolution he asked the Senate to pass in September before Russian President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly brokered a deal to neutralize Syria’s chemical weapon’s stockpile. The president appeared out of step with the Senate Democratic caucus during the episode.

“It was long overdue,” Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said of recent staff changes at the White House.

Rockefeller said that Democratic senators did not explicitly call for staff changes during a heated meeting with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, but made it clear they wanted him to shake things up.

“We said everything but that,” he said.