Speaker 1: All right, so I know that by doing this story, I'm going to get a whole rash
of trolls from the left saying, Oh my god, David, how can you praise Barack Obama?
He's a centrist, neo liberal.
He's terrible, his drone policy, his deportations.
And of course, I've criticized all of those things.
But that doesn't mean that we can't look at Barack Obama speaking at a rally and realize,
wow, the political discourse has really collapsed over the last five years, in particular as
the virus of Trumpism has degraded and of and political dialog.
We can't say, Wow, that's actually a uniquely talented political speaker.
Barack Obama doesn't mean we liked what he did with drones or surveillance.
So let's get to it, and please don't read into this segment more than what I'm actually
saying.
There's a bunch of important elections next Tuesday, November 2nd.
I'm going to be covering results live with you on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook, starting
around 8:00 PM Eastern on Tuesday next Tuesday night.
One of those races is the Virginia gubernatorial election.
Now in this race, incumbent Democratic Governor Ralph Northam is term limited out, so it's
a race between two challengers.
It's Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe and absolutely dangerous right wing Republican
Glenn Youngkin.
Youngkin is a real lunatic.
I mean, a true political and cultural extremist young man has made clear his allegiance to
Donald Trump and Trumpism initially, although he's since kind of backed away because it
seems like maybe it's not going to help him that much.
Young in four months didn't even acknowledge that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.
It's that crazy of a guy.
He's against abortion and he's against gun safety measures.
He's really, really horrible.
The race is tight.
It's within the margin of error.
I could show you polls or one point two points doesn't matter.
It's within the margin of error.
It could go either way.
So former President Barack Obama has been out campaigning with Terry McAuliffe, and
in a very specific sense, it was really refreshing.
Not because I like Barack Obama's drone policy or whatever, but because Barack Obama was
able to do something that often gets lost when we're in the day to day of the current
right wing insanity and extremism.
And it's one crazy thing after another, which is Barack Obama distilled just how absurd
the modern Republican Party and American right wing has gotten.
So let's look at some clips in this first one.
This is like a classic Obama thing where he hits a bunch of issues about the hypocrisy
of Glenn Youngkin, and he touches on opportunism and other things.
He starts with some jokes and builds into, Hey guys, this is really serious.
This is this is like a textbook, two minute political speech excerpt and you really it
really it's interesting to look at it and see
Speaker 3: how young the guy, but the guy can hope.
That's great.
I'm less convinced that the co-CEO and largest private equity firms in the world spends his
time washing dishes and going grocery shopping.
But who knows?
Maybe.
But yeah, I mean, you do notice Mitt, like whenever a wealthy person runs for office,
they always want to show you what a regular guy they are.
Speaker 1: So he starts with the jokes, and I know people are saying, Well, Obama's rich
too.
Yeah, right.
This is political speech.
This is about what are the policies and making a connection to that.
Yes, Obama is also incredibly wealthy, Speaker 3: but that's OK.
But when your supporters hold a rally?
Where did pledge allegiance to a flag that was flown at the insurrection at the Capitol
on January 6th?
Speaker 1: So he's doing two things here.
He's starting to shift from the jokes to the serious, and he's slowing down the speed and
then at the end, he'll build back up.
But instead of with jokes with anger that he wants the crowd to feel with them, it's
really textbook Speaker 3: that the biggest threat to our
democracy in my lifetime, when you don't separate yourselves from them, when you when you don't
think that's a problem.
Well, you know what?
That's a problem.
You can't run ads telling me you're a regular old who's playing dishwashing police wearing
guy, but quietly cultivate support from those who seek to tear down our democracy.
Either he actually believes in the same conspiracy theories that resulted in a mob or he doesn't
believe it, but he's willing to go along with it to say or do anything to get elected.
And maybe that's worse.
Because because.
Because that's says something about character.
Speaker 1: And then now here's the final word Speaker 3: there will end up showing when
you actually are in office.
What are you willing to stand up for?
When are you willing to say no to your own supporters?
What are you willing to say?
There are some things that are more important than getting elected, and maybe American democracy
is one of those things Speaker 1: so that that is really well done.
Political speech.
You don't have to love Barack Obama's politics or whatever.
This is a really great technique of starting with jokes and chuckles.
And then you slow down and you start to get serious.
And then once you have the audience with you, you then build up to exactly how Barack Obama
finishes that into getting people to feel about Glenn Youngkin the way they should.
I mean, we should be outraged about this disgusting guy.
This is a really notable skill that Barack Obama has.
And whatever your thoughts are about him, we have to recognize being really good at
something.
And that two minute clip is such an example of someone that is really at the top of their
field and being able to deliver this kind of speech in this.
I'm going to do one more clip here in this clip, very concisely characterizing the right
wing called culture war as a phony, trumped up culture war designed to create outrage.
I like this just because it's a great assessment of what we've been saying for a long time.
They just they're not doing policy.
They're just trying to get people fired up with these cultural issues.
Speaker 3: We don't have time to be wasting on these phony, trumped up culture wars.
This fake outrage.
They the right wing media, has pedals to juice their ratings and the fact that he's willing
to go along with it instead of talking about serious problems that actually affect serious
people.
That's a shame.
That's not what this election's about.
That's not what you need, Virginia.
Instead of forcing our communities to cut back at a time when we're just starting to
recover, we should be doing more to support people who are educating our kids and keeping
our neighborhood safe.
Speaker 1: So you guys get it very, very highly skilled political order.
His drone program was horrible.
The surveillance was horrible.
I'm with you.
But glad to see him out campaigning for Terry McAuliffe that this I would say this is the
biggest race on the ballot next Tuesday.
If you live in Virginia, make sure you're getting out and voting the difference between
Terry McAuliffe and admittedly establishment Democrat.
No doubt about it.
Versus Glenn Youngkin.
I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
Could not be more different, and we're going to have live results for you eight days from
today, I hope you'll join me 8:00 PM Eastern, eight days from today with results.