What Today's Dems Can Still Learn from Obama
Why the most successful Democrat of his generation is worth studying again
Today, I am in Chicago for the opening of the Obama Presidential Center. This is an emotional homecoming of sorts. I had worked on a number of campaigns (mostly losing) before, but when I packed up my life and moved to Chicago to work for an upstart long-shot candidate, it changed everything. My near-decade working for Barack Obama is the signature professional experience of my life.
It’s where I learned the most important and hardest lessons in politics. I met my wife (and my podcast co-hosts) there. And I made some of the most important friendships that endure to this day.
As you can imagine, I have spent a lot of time in recent days thinking about those years working for Obama. It’s not just nostalgia, although there’s plenty of that too. I have been thinking about how his style of politics and communication fits the current political moment. So much has changed since Obama stood in Grant Park on that surprisingly — but fittingly — warm November night in 2008. Some of the rhetoric about hope, change, and bipartisanship may sound naive now that Trump and the GOP are trying to seize power through every anti-democratic means possible.
But Obama is the most successful Democrat of his generation and remains the most popular political figure in America — including with voters too young to really remember his presidency.
So there is much for today’s Democrats to learn from him. That’s why I wanted to reshare this piece I wrote a few years ago about how Barack Obama communicates.
The closing weeks of the Midterm campaign have felt dreary at times. Exciting, qualified candidates are clinging to narrow leads against the worst characters in the MAGAverse as the political bottom threatens to fall out. Inspiration and excitement are in short supply.
Enter Barack Obama.
This past weekend, the former President hit the trail and blew everyone’s proverbial socks off with a combination of hope, inspiration, humor, and brutally effective political attacks delivered with a winning smile. The clips of Obama’s rally went immediately viral. A slew of adulatory press coverage quickly followed. Representative Ro Khanna put it best in an interview with the New York Times:
‘If he were running in every state, we’d win every Senate race, but he’s a once-of-a-generation talent,” said Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, adding that watching the former president’s remarks should be required “homework” for the party.
As a former Obama staffer who still gets irrationally annoyed at the slightest criticism of my former boss, I have very much enjoyed this focus on 44’s immense political skills. Even those against Obama’s policies or politics cannot argue with his communications chops. He is clearly one of the best orators in American political history. I mean — he went from State Senator to the White House in four years in large part because of a singular speech that captured the nation’s attention. Obama has a powerful stage presence, a persuasive speaking style, and a gift for comedic timing. It’s easy to watch these clips and simply be in awe of his preternatural talent:
For other Democrats, “be more like Obama” is unhelpful advice. The political equivalent of “Be Like Mike.” This advice misses the point. It’s worthwhile to separate the orator from the oratory. There are lessons to learn from Obama’s speechmaking success. Compelling political communications is equal parts message and messenger. From the perspective of someone who spent more than a decade watching Obama communicate up close, I would like to share some lessons that Democrats up and down the ballot can replicate next week and into the future.
1. Speak Like A Human
Barack Obama is a policy wonk, Nobel Prize winner, award-winning author, student of history, and constitutional scholar. There are few rooms he has entered where he did not immediately become the smartest person in that room. As he readily admits, he has a fondness for details and a penchant for being professorial. The defining characteristic of his speechmaking is simple. He talks like a human trying to communicate with other humans. It sounds easy, but few politicians in either party do it. Too many use political jargon, rely on cheesy lines written by mediocre speechwriters, and do poor impressions of past presidents, real (JFK) and fictional (Bartlett).
For example, watch Obama lay out the consequences of electing a historic dunderhead like Herschel Walker in the simplest, clearest, most devastating way:
People hate politicians. Talking like one is a surefire way to lose support. This isn’t an argument for oversimplification or avoiding nuance. You have to talk like a human, but you shouldn’t talk down to your people. Treat the voters with respect by making a sophisticated argument. Just do it conversationally.
2. Humor Works
Barack Obama is good at telling jokes. In fact, he likes telling jokes so much that he actually enjoyed attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — an event that required him to spend a Saturday night mixing and mingling with reporters and taking selfies with their celebrity crushes. On paper, that dinner would be slightly less preferable to a root canal without anesthesia. But comedy isn’t just a pastime; it’s a political weapon for the former President.
Over the years, Obama often asked us to find jokes or funny ways to make a point about one of his opponents. He understood that laughter leavened the political attack. A smile achieves more than an angry grimace. You can see this strategy in action during Obama’s speech in Michigan over the weekend:
The former President made waves on a recent appearance on Pod Save America when he said that Democrats could be “buzzkills.” He was making a broader point about the party, but he also believes that the best politics are fun politics. People don’t want to join an angry, self-loathing movement. Taking back our country should be a righteous and joyous fight, so let’s have a little fun along the way.
3. The Economy is About Advocacy More than Policy
The following paradox often flummoxes Democrats: voters like our economic policies — often by very wide margins — but they trust Republicans more on the economy. Obama always understood that economic debates are really about advocacy. Who are you going to fight for and against to give people better lives? Voters are understandably cynical about politicians’ ability to deliver real progress — particularly on an economy that hasn’t worked for the vast majority of Americans for a very long time. But given a choice — voters will choose the candidate they think will fight for them. Obama was that candidate in 2008 and 2012; Trump was that candidate in 2016; and 2020 is complicated.
Democrats usually close their campaigns with attacks on Republican proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare. I think this is a good strategy. I have argued for it in multiple newsletters, but how the argument is made matters. Watch this clip from Obama’s rally in Wisconsin:
Obama uses Republican Ron Johnson’s support for cutting Social Security to demonstrate Johnson’s values. It’s evidence that Johnson cares more about rich people like himself than hardworking Wisconsinites. Using policy to make an argument about values tells you not just what Johnson stands for but who he stands with. And values-based arguments are always more powerful.
4. Reclaiming Patriotism
At its core, our politics is a battle over the story America tells itself. Who are we? What do we stand for? And what does it mean to be an American?
Nobody understands these questions better than Barack Hussein Obama, the son of an absent Kenyan father from Hawaii via Indonesia. From suggesting that his sympathies lay with foreign terrorists to falsely claiming he wasn’t born here, Republicans spent more than a decade calling him un-American. Still, Obama refused to concede the issue of patriotism to Republicans. I would argue that no politician has talked more about American exceptionalism. This line from President Obama’s speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention is the Rosetta Stone to understand all of the speeches that would follow:
I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible. Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation, not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
He introduced himself to the nation by centering his unique story as a proof point of America’s greatness. In Wisconsin, Obama did the same for Senate candidate Mandela Barnes who has faced attacks very similar to ones Obama faced in his career:
I suspect I will have more to say on this issue after the election, but the party that wants to destroy democracy, overturn elections, do favors for the rich, and take away people’s retirement doesn’t get to own patriotism. But they will if we let them.
Obama will be back on the trail this week in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. It will be fun to watch, but let’s also make it a blueprint for our messaging going forward.
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When Obama ran in 2008, someone at my job said to me, "Oh you're the one with three Obama stickers on your car" in an accusatory tone. At the time, my mom who lived in northern Minnesota was worried that I'd have trouble if I stopped for gas on my way to her house because of that. But that did not deter me. Obama was the only politician in my lifetime who knew that it's hard "to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don't have any boots." That line, one that I had muttered to myself before he said it, captured my vote. Everything else was a bonus.
Nice. And great to have warm fuzzies too, Dan. Any chance video links could be YouTube, not Twitter? As I’m not on X, audio won’t play.