Your presidency-- as you know better than anyone--
people thought: "Well, that is it.
"We're now in a post-racial utopia.
"Barack Obama's in the White House.
"We have half black, half white, all black, good times.
Let's have a good one." And then people saw
that there was still a lot of work to be done.
Let's talk a little bit about...
the movement as you see it.
The problem I have with headlines sometimes is, like,
people take things out of context, et cetera.
But... some activists criticize you for saying
they've got to be careful of snappy slogans.
You know, like "Defund the Police,"
because it loses people.
But I-I-I wonder, do you think that the slogan
is of... is the thing that makes people for against you,
or do you think people are just gonna be for or against you,
and then the slogan doesn't really mean as much?
And what I mean by that is,
like, Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again,"
it's not a... it's not a very divisive slogan
if you look at it on the face of it.
It's a great slogan-- why would anyone not want
to make America great again?
But the subtext said something else.
When you're thinking of that,
as someone who's great at slogans, by the way-=-
I mean, "Yes We Can." It's snappy. It worked.
Although, as I said, uh, in the book,
I actually thought it was corny.
I didn't... I didn't like it that much...
when, uh, when my team came up with it.
Um, and then they went to ask Michelle,
and Michelle said, "No, it's not corny, it's fine."
So clearly she had a better political brain
than I did on this.
Hey, I... I'm glad you actually brought this up,
because...
you know, what's been fascinating
while I've been on this book tour
is, you know, people have asked me what's my source of optimism,
and uniformly what I have said is--
nothing made me more optimistic during a very difficult year
than the activism that we saw
in the wake of George Floyd's murder,
and Black Lives Matter.
And I have consistently believed
that, uh, their courage,
uh, activism,
media savvy,
uh, strategic resolve,
uh, far exceeds
anything that I could have done at-at their age
and, I-I think, has shifted the conversation
in ways that, uh,
I-I would not even have imagined a couple of years ago.
So, throughout th-this, uh,
slew of-of compliments,
I then said,
"Well, what do you think about the particular slogan
'defund the police'?"
And I said, "Well, that particular slogan,
"I think the concern is
that there may be potential allies out there that you lose."
And the issue always is,
uh, how do you...
get, uh, enough people
to support your cause that it...
you can actually institutionalize it
and translate it into laws,
-structures and so forth? -Right, yeah.
There were two or three writers who I admire
who wrote, "Obama's making it a mission
to chastise Black Lives Matter."
And you go, "What? Hold on a second.
"I-I just spent
"the-the whole summer complimenting them.
What are you talking about?"
The reason, uh, it caught attention, I suspect,
is there were some in the Democratic party
who suggested the reason we didn't do better
in, uh, the congressional elections
-this time around was because of this phrase. -Yes. Yes.
-Right. -And I think that people assumed
that somehow I was making an argument
that that's why we didn't get,
you know, uh,
a bigger Democratic majority.
That actually was not the point I was making.
I was making a very particular point
around if we, in fact, want to translate
the-the-the...
the very legitimate belief
that how we do policing needs to change
and that if there is, for example,
uh, a homeless guy
ranting and railing in the middle of the street,
sending a-a...
a mental health worker
rather than an armed, untrained police officer
to deal with that person
might be a better outcome for all of us
-and make us safer. -Right.
Right? That if we describe that
to not just white folks
but, let's say, Michelle's mom,
that makes sense to them.
But if we say "defund the police,"
not just white folks but Michelle's mom might say,
"If I'm getting robbed, who am I gonna call,
and is somebody gonna show up?"
-Right? -Right.
So, the issue here becomes,
you know, at any given time,
how are we translating
and using language
not to make people more "comfortable," right?
Because that's always a strain and...
Historically, right?
The concern in these debates is also...
is often,
uh, oh, are we just trying to make white people comfortable
rather than speaking truth to power, right?
That's the framework we tend to think about these things.
-Right. Yeah. -The issue, to me, is not making them comfortable.
It is can we be precise with our language enough
that people who might be persuaded
around that particular issue to make a particular change
that gets a particular result that we want...
What's the best way for us to describe that?
-And... -So, what you're basically saying
is we should workshop all of our slogans with Michelle.
-(laughs) -That's what I hear you saying.
That probably would be wise.
Uh, i-it would... it would probably work.
But I want to go back to something you said earlier
which I think is-is really important.
Um, and I... and I-I said this
in the wake of-of some of this criticism.
Uh, I said, "Look,
"part of this is also
everybody has different roles to play."
An activist, a movement leader
is-is gonna provide a prophetic voice
and speak certain truths
that somebody
who is going to be elected into office
will not be able to say.
I-I reread
James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time this summer.
How is it that something written 50 years ago,
-55 years ago... -Right. Yeah. Yeah.
...applies directly today, right?
Despite everything that's happened.
To-to me,
that is as searing and as honest a-a portrayal
of the-the...
the gaping wound of race in America.
But, of course,
James Baldwin can't be elected
to the U.S. Senate
or unlikely that he would want to be the mayor of a city
who's responsible for figuring out,
"How do I deal with the police union?"
Right? That's somebody else's role.
And-and all these roles are important.
Uh, and, so, you know...
Why do you think-- if I may interrupt--
why do you think, though, that Republicans
or right-wingers now do that, though?
That's something that I-I've struggled to-to understand.
You see now, even in this election,
I mean, some of the Republicans who were running
were QAnon supporters,
and they were going, "We're running,
and this is what..." And some of them were winning.
Some of them are so extreme, and they're winning.
And, so, I sometimes wonder if there's this... there's this...
Is it just a political thing in America
where if you're... if you're in the Republican party,
you can be completely bombastic in what you believe in,
and then as a Democrat, you're trying to toe the line
between centrist and-and left-leaning?
-Or... -No. Well, because I think,
in fact, uh, the Republican party
is the minority party in this country.
The only reason
that it doesn't look like they're the minority party
is because of structures like the U.S. Senate,
uh, and the electoral college
that don't render them the majority party.
So, they have certain built-in advantages
around power given their population distribution
and how, uh, our government works.
But the truth of the matter is is that 60% of the people
are-are occupying what I would consider
a more reality-based, uh, universe,
and those are the...
those are the constituents we're speaking to.
And that is a more diverse group.
You know, I describe, uh, in the book
the first time I go to the, uh,
to the Republican House caucus to speak to them.
And I think there was
an Asian guy or gal
and maybe a couple of Hispanics,
um, and that was it.
Uh, I...
It is much more homogeneous,
which means that, yes, they have to do less work,
but it also, uh,
means that they're...
they can talk to themselves
and, as a consequence
of the way our, uh, democracy,
our republic is structured,
they don't have to appeal to as broad of a base.
Um, that's not fair.
But, you know, I, at least, would prefer
not having the progressives model ourselves out of...
uh, or-or model ourselves
on-on, uh, the current Republican party.
I... That doesn't feel like a good strategy to me,
uh, to get the outcomes that we want.