Barack Obama’s Warning to Democrats

Listening to Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention last night was like stumbling upon a man from another time. His evocation of the importance, the centrality even, of searching for humanity in our fellow Americans, particularly those on the far side of our partisan divide, was moving because it felt so foreign.

“Mutual respect has to be part of our message,” he said. “Our politics has become so polarized these days that all of us, across the political spectrum, seem quick to assume the worst in others unless they agree with us on every single issue. We start thinking that the only way to win is to scold and shame and out-yell.”

He continued, “We don’t trust each other as much, because we don’t take the time to know each other. And in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other.”

Obama, of course, is not a monk walking down from a hilltop to share timeless truths. He is a former president and a progressive Democrat, a wealthy man who spent much of his summer on his estate in Martha’s Vineyard. He has a steely quality and is often not particularly sentimental, and, in the back-and-forth of partisan politics, he can thrust as readily as he parries. The first section of his speech last night was more or less standard partisan fare, including a juvenile joke about Donald Trump and his obsession with crowd sizes.

[Read: The Democrats Aren’t on the High Road Anymore]

But despite all of that, Obama’s core message resonated. He was not lecturing Republicans and admonishing them to change their Trump-loving ways. He was in his hometown of Chicago, speaking to fellow Democrats, to 20,000 activists and politicians in the United Center, people who have learned to speak angrily of Republicans lies, threats to democracy, and the MAGA-many who back them. The acronym itself, MAGA, is distancing.  

Obama, in offering caution to his fellow Democrats and perhaps to himself, remained informed by his own progressive beliefs. So he mentioned adult children who must learn to tolerate the “parent or grandparent [who] occasionally says something that makes us cringe.” He said, “We don’t automatically assume they’re bad people.” As I spent quality time on Monday in a Chicago park with many young and passionate pro-Palestinian protesters who repeatedly denounced “Genocide Joe” and “Killer Kamala” and “war criminal” Democrats, the thought occurred to me that learning to look past cringe-worthy rhetoric is not a one-way generational street.

More to the point, however, as I listened to Obama last night, I thought back to 2017, when I spent six months living on the high desert Navajo Reservation, a land the size of West Virginia. I was researching a book on a high-school basketball team in Chinle, and met a white man who had cornered the business of broadcasting hundreds of games over the radio to the hoop-crazed Navajos. He evinced a deep respect for the Navajos, who treated him as a friend and deserving of their trust. We came to know each other, and I appeared on several of his halftime broadcasts. I liked him.

Soon after I returned to Brooklyn, we friended each other on Facebook. I quickly came to realize that this man was a passionate Trumper and MAGA-proud, and he no doubt objected to some of my beliefs. Soon enough, we let our social-media friendship lapse, as our political chasm felt too great to bridge.

I regret that now. He is complicated and contradictory, passionate about his basketball and his politics, and in this he is perhaps not entirely different from myself. Why should a tentative friendship end up impaled on a point of politics, even one that now feels so urgent?

Obama reminded his party that “democracy isn’t just a bunch of abstract principles and dusty laws. It’s the values we live by, and 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.”

That’s a message that all Americans could take to heart.