I think it’s great how people can take an entire speech, and distill it down into one pithy, off-the-hand comment that probably wasn’t even meant to be taken seriously. It certainly saves them effort in having to focus on all those other words.

And he’s not whining, he’s attacking. By pointing out the negativity of the opposition, painting them (not without reason) as the “party of no”, he’s strengthening his position, not weakening it.

When it comes to just about everything we’ve done to strengthen our middle class, to rebuild our economy, almost every Republican in Congress says no. Even on things we usually agree on, they say no. If I said the sky was blue, they say no. If I said fish live in the sea, they’d say no. They just think it’s better to score political points before an election than to solve problems. So they said no to help for small businesses, even when the small businesses said we desperately need this. This used to be their key constituency, they said. They said no. No to middle-class tax cuts. They say they’re for tax cuts; I say, okay, let’s give tax cuts to the middle class. No. No to clean energy jobs. No to making college more affordable. No to reforming Wall Street. They’re saying right now, no to cutting more taxes for small business owners and helping them get financing.

You know, I heard — somebody out here was yelling “Yes we can.” Remember that was our slogan? Their slogan is “No we can’t.”

I’m not 100% sure if this is from the same speech (I stole it from Sully), but I cannot for the life of me see how it indicates whining or weakness. Of course, people will spin it like that, but they’d do that no matter what he said. If it wasn’t the dog thing, it’d be something else.