Featured Image Credit: @podsaveamerica/Twitter
Topics: Barack Obama, Politics, US News
Anna Verdon
Barack Obama has spoken out about cancel culture and has warned the Democrats of becoming 'buzzkills'.
In a new interview with the Pod Save America podcast on Friday, the former US president, said that it’s important not to get caught up in political 'gobbledygook' and instead think about how politics impacts on people’s everyday life.
Have a listen below:
He said it’s something the party can often get bogged down with, and is something he’s done too, saying: “I think we do get into trouble… I used to get into trouble… whenever I got a little too professorial… there were times when I sounded like I was giving a bunch of policy gobbledygook.
"And that’s not how people think about these issues.”
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He added: “They think about them in terms of the life I’m leading day-to-day. How is politics even relevant to the things that I care most deeply about – my family, my kids, work that gives me satisfaction, having fun.
"Not being a buzzkill. And sometimes Democrats are.”
Ahead of the US’s November midterm elections, Obama has been campaigning for the Democrats in key states.
He also told the podcast that it’s important not to make people feel as if they are 'walking on eggshells'.
“They want some acknowledgement that life is messy and that all of us, at any given moment, can say things the wrong way, make mistakes,” he added.
Delving further into cancel culture, he said it can be extremely difficult for people to get the 'certain phraseology' right when talking about certain issues.
He even likened it to his 86-year-old mother-in-law trying to learn Spanish, highlighting that it doesn’t mean she shouldn’t try to learn Spanish but it does mean that sometimes she’s not going to get the words right.
Many people loved what he had to say in the interview, with one person on Twitter saying: “This is so wise. @BarackObama once again showing us why he is such a master of politics."
Another added: “The goal is not to never make a mistake. The goal is to learn, grow and accept people for who they are. This is what’s resisted, not the words themselves.”
And a user sympathised with what Obama was saying about his mother-in-law: “Yes, for us older folks who’ve spent a lifetime with the plural “they/them” struggling to make those a singular pronoun. They went to the store. Who’s they? Them! Who’s them? They!”
While someone else wrote: “It still blows my mind we went from Barack to Individual 1. Obama, an incredibly thoughtful, passionate, classy, beautiful, charismatic, man. Trump, a fat orange racist, who thinks windmills cause cancer and couldn't spell hamburgers correctly. America, man. [Pace palm].”
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