{"id":25098,"date":"2021-06-02T01:18:30","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T01:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=25098"},"modified":"2021-06-02T17:49:07","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T17:49:07","slug":"barack-obama-ufos","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/barack-obama-ufos\/","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama Thinks American Voters Are Still Persuadable \u2014 But He\u2019s Not Sure About Those U.F.O.s"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Former
Former President Barack Obama (Photo: Joe Raedle\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A lot has changed since Barack Obama<\/a>\u2019s presidency. On today\u2019s episode of The Ezra Klein Show<\/em>, the podcast host and the former president discussed<\/a> the ways in which American politics have evolved since Obama\u2019s first presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

Klein seemed particularly interested in the work Obama did to persuade white Americans to vote for him in 2008 and 2012. Ta-Nehisi Coates<\/a> has written<\/a> extensively about the very specific type of candidate, the very specific type of Black man Obama had to be to win the White House. Implicit in his message of \u201cHope and Change\u201d was, at times, an avoidance of a lot of the hard truths with which we are currently struggling in our politics. Obama admits to Klein that what he said didn\u2019t always align with what he felt \u2014 shouting out Key and Peele\u2019s anger translator sketch <\/a>\u2014 and described weighing the political benefits of calling out racism when he saw it in Tea Party figures: \u201cIs it more important for me to tell a basic historical truth, let\u2019s say about racism in America right now, or is it more important for me to get a bill passed?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a psychic cost to not always just telling the truth,\u201d he admits.<\/p>\n

Still, Obama believes this is the way to persuade voters. He pointed to the uprisings last summer after the murder of George Floyd<\/a> by a white former Minneapolis police officer. \u201cWhat we saw after George Floyd\u2019s murder was a useful bit of truth telling that young people led,\u201d he said. \u201cBut even after I think a shift in perspective around George Floyd, we\u2019re still back into the trenches of how do we get different district attorneys elected? How do we actually reform police departments? Now we\u2019re back in the world of politics. And as soon as we get back into the world of politics, now it\u2019s a numbers game. You have to persuade and you have to create coalitions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coalition building is vital, given the structural advantages Republicans have over Democrats. On that subject, Obama agreed that \u201cthe game is tilted.\u201d Democrats, Klein points out, need to win over right-of-center voters to be elected, while Republicans don\u2019t<\/em> need to persuade left-of-center voters. The good news, according to Obama is that having to appeal to more diverse voters makes the Democratic Party more empathetic and wiser. \u201cWe have to think about a broader array of interests and people. And that\u2019s my vision for how America ultimately works best and perfects its union.\u201d<\/p>\n

But could that union account for extraterrestrials? After Obama addressed<\/a> the recent videos of U.F.O.s<\/a> that have been in the news lately on The Late Late Show with James Corden<\/em>, Klein had to ask the former president how the existence of aliens might change his politics. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t change my politics at all,\u201d Obama insisted. \u201cBecause my entire politics is premised on the fact that we are these tiny organisms on this little speck floating in the middle of space.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29097,"featured_media":25102,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38,2006,16],"yoast_head":"\nBarack Obama Talks Persuading American Voters \u2014 And U.F.O.s<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A lot has changed since Barack Obama\u2019s presidency. 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