Barack Obama’s DNC Speech Reminds Us Of Another Dynamite Convention Speaker

The “skinny kid with the funny name” who addressed the 2004 Democratic National Convention established himself as a national political figure and laid the groundwork for what, four years later, would be his own successful run for the presidency. But Obama’s underlying message was the very same call he issued in Boston — to find common ground with would-be adversaries, to transcend division in a time of unprecedented polarization. And if it felt somehow incompatible with the harsh realities of today’s political environment, it’s worth remembering that it seemed like a pretty audacious argument back then, too. But, Obama told the convention audience, the lines were hardening because certain leaders ― like then-Republican President George W. Bush and the powers-that-be at Fox News ― wanted to exploit hostility in order to gain and keep political power. Barack Obama, then a 42-year-old Illinois state senator, speaks at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images Drawing on his background as the son of a Black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, and as a lawmaker from Chicago’s South Side making his way through state politics by talking to rural voters, Obama insisted that Americans shared similarities that were more important than their differences, and ultimately a source of national strength. “The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into red states and blue states ― red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats,” Obama said. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.” Obama was still talking that way four years later, following Kerry’s defeat, when he ran for and won the presidency himself. Later, they vilified a health care plan rooted in many of their own conservative principles as un-American and a vehicle for “death panels.” Just beneath the surface of the policy fights, and sometimes above it, were attacks tied to Obama’s racial identity ― perhaps most memorably in the ongoing, utterly fabricated controversy over whether he was actually born in the U.S. Perhaps nobody did more to promote the birtherism lie than Donald Trump, whose win in the 2016 presidential election ― on the strength of a racially, geographically distinct backlash against the Democratic vision for America ― felt like proof that Obama’s paeans to unity were just flat-out wrong. Former U.S. President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks on the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 20, 2024. Advertisement “We chase the approval of strangers on our phones,” Obama said. And in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other.” Another force driving Americans apart, Obama said, was a quickness to attack and condemn rather than listen — a message that he’s directed at the left as well as the right, and seemed to do again on Tuesday. “If a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people,” Obama said. That’s how we can build a true Democratic majority, one that can get things done.” This has always been the core of Obama’s governing philosophy ― that the best way forward, and really the only way forward, is to change minds by meeting people where they are. That philosophy is rooted in pragmatism ― i.e., Obama’s conviction that Democrats can’t prevail without reaching well beyond their base, and that the alternative to compromised, incremental progress is frequently no progress at all. “That’s the America Kamala Harris and Tim Walz believe in: an America where ‘We, the people’ includes everyone,” Obama said, “Because that’s the only way this American experiment works. It’s the way we treat each other, including those who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do.” To some of Obama’s critics, especially those on the left, this faith is naive and all too forgiving of people who don’t deserve the “grace” he would give them. To other critics, especially on the right, it’s an inversion of the reality they perceive ― one where it’s Obama and his allies trying to tear apart America and betray its values. In their view, lofty appeals like Tuesday’s are camouflage for selfish, corrupt or sinister plans. But as Obama reminded his audience, he’s not the first American leader to perceive one nation where everybody else sees two. “As much as any policy or program,” Obama said, “I believe that’s what we yearn for: a return to an America where we work together and look out for each other. A restoration of what Lincoln called, on the eve of civil war, our ‘bonds of affection.’ An America that taps what he called the better angels of our nature.’” Obama won two presidential elections appealing to those better angels, then proceeded to govern in a way that changed America forever. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/barack-obama-dnc-speech-idealism_n_66c60a52e4b0f1ca46937a72