Convention Night 2: Barack Obama Is Still Showing Us How We Can Depolarize America

The second night of the Democratic National Convention produced a slew of memorable moments that would surely generate water cooler chatter if we still gathered around office water coolers.  

Michelle Obama’s script-flipping on Donald Trump: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?” 

Douglas Emhoff’s endearingly awkward voice mail asking Kamala Harris out on a date.  

Former Trump Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham’s revelation that the Republican nominee called his supporters “basement dwellers.”  

Lil Jon’s crowd-juicing “Turn Out for What” rap during Georgia’s turn in the 50-state roll call. 

But one section of Barack Obama’s closing speech struck me as the most meaningful moment of the night, when he advised how “mutual respect has to be part of our message.”  

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 the other side. And after a while, regular folks just tune out, or don’t bother to vote at all. 

That approach may work for the politicians who just want attention and thrive on division. But it won’t work for us. To make progress on the things we care about, the things that really affect people’s lives, we need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices; and that if we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidate, we need to listen to their concerns – and maybe learn something in the process. 

After all, if a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people. We recognize the world is moving fast, and that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us.  

That’s how we can build a true Democratic majority. 

The end of debilitating division has long been a staple of Obama’s rhetoric, ever since his 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address introduced him to much of the country and set him on a course to the presidency.  

There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America. There’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America. There’s the United States of America.  

The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too.  

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 coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

Less well remembered, but perhaps more politically consequential, was Obama’s “More Perfect Union” speech, delivered after video of anti-American sermons by his Black pastor Jeremiah Wright threatened to derail his 2008 presidential primary campaign.  

Much like what he said last night, Obama urged compassion towards those who make offensive remarks: 

I can no more disown him than I can disown the Black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her by on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. 

Obama explained how we could get past racial “resentments” and find common ground: 

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze — a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns — this too widens the racial divide and blocks the path to understanding. 

The speech was deemed a masterstroke. Instead of the Wright controversy tanking Obama’s support, many Democratic voters were awed at how Obama used the moment to turn the tables on scurrilous attacks, defuse racism, and elevate the discourse.  

The 2008 general election results validated such optimism, as Obama built a diverse coalition that secured a 7-point margin of victory in the popular vote and flipped states George W. Bush won twice, including Ohio, Indiana, and North Carolina. 

Since Obama’s coalition was never replicated at equal size and scope after 2008, we haven’t seen a Democratic Party consensus around replicating the Obama approach to coalition-building, though you can find elements of it in the successful 2018 congressional campaigns of Lauren Underwood and Antonio Delgado. 

Last night, a battle-scarred but still optimistic Obama counseled Democrats not to give up on reaching out. Less scolding. More listening. Less canceling. More understanding. Not just on the campaign trail, but in our daily lives. 

How to do it in a campaign is easier said than done. After all, Trump is a bottomless pit of racist and sexist attacks, and in a political campaign, attacks can’t go unanswered. Yet since Trump has run for office, when Democrats call him out, Republicans are quick to insist the attacks are on Trump’s supporters—also known as voters and fellow Americans. This doomed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and has since hampered Democratic efforts to build a broad base of support and robust governing mandates.  

Last night both Barack and Michelle Obama skewered Trump’s abhorrent behavior and rightly so. But Barack Obama never had to face off with Donald Trump on the ballot, to see how well such tactics would work on Election Day.  

Nevertheless, Obama is the only Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win back-to-back presidential elections with more than 50 percent of vote. If anyone deserves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to winning, it is him. 

And he is once again charting a course for victory that aims higher than the narrow electoral wins to which we have grown all too accustomed. 

Since the Obama presidency was followed by the Trump presidency, depolarizing America is often considered by political observers to be impossible. But an election pitting the joyous barrier-breaker Harris against the darkly divisive Donald Trump could upend our expectations and realign our politics.  

Democrats should not sell themselves, and their fellow Americans, too short. A rhetorical approach that takes great care to show mutual respect to voters, while pulling no punches with Trump, could break our longstanding sociopolitical stalemate.

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