Obama sat down this morning (“there weren’t refreshments”) with some left-leaning pundits (or lefter-leaning-than-last night), reports Michael Calderone.

The group included the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne and Eugene Robinson, the Wall Street Journal’s Gerry Seib, National Journal’s Ron Brownstein, the New York Times’s Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan, and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, among others.