In his first speech since the presidential election in November, Barack Obama urged Americans who want democracy to survive to look for ways to compromise, engage with the other side, turn away from identity politics and build relationships with unlikely potential allies.
“Pluralism is not about holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya,’” Mr. Obama said in Chicago on Thursday. “It is not about abandoning your convictions and folding when things get tough. It is about recognizing that, in a democracy, power comes from forging alliances and building coalitions, and making room in those coalitions not only for the woke, but the waking.”
He added: “Purity tests are not a recipe for long-term success.”
Billed as an address on “the power of pluralism,” the speech — a road map of sorts for political survival for liberals in a second term for Donald J. Trump — was delivered before hundreds of people as part of an annual Democracy Forum put on by the Obama Foundation, a private nonprofit entity that is led by Mr. Obama.
Mr. Obama opened the speech with an acknowledgment that when he told friends of the focus of this year’s forum, the topic drew groans and eye rolls.
“We’ve just been through a fierce, hard-fought election, and it’s fair to say that it did not turn out as they had hoped,” said Mr. Obama, who had, along with his wife, Michelle, campaigned intensely for Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, in the final weeks.
For Mr. Obama’s friends, he said, talk of bridging differences in a bitterly divided country seemed like an academic exercise.
“It felt far-fetched, even naïve, especially since, as far as they were concerned, the election proved that democracy’s down pretty far on people’s priority lists,” he said.
But, he said, “it’s easy to give democracy lip service when it delivers the outcomes we want,” adding, “it’s when we don’t get what we want that our commitment to democracy is tested.”
It is not just leaders who need to build relationships with opponents, Mr. Obama said, urging the young people in the audience to make that their mission.
“Advocates and rank and file in any group have to be down for compromise as well,” he said.
The Democracy Forum, a daylong conference that draws students and nonprofit professionals with sessions on leadership, political organizing and polarization, was held at the Marriott Marquis on the South Side of Chicago. The Obama Presidential Center, which is several miles away, is still under construction and is expected to open to the public in 2026.
The Obama Presidential Center will not be an official presidential library. Mr. Obama chose a privately operated facility that will receive some artifacts on loan from the National Archives and Records Administration., but will not be operated by the agency.
Berto Aguayo, a native of the South Side and a lawyer who founded a violence prevention organization, introduced Mr. Obama, and Mr. Obama’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, watched his speech from the front row.
The speech veered away from the blunt partisan politics that had dominated Mr. Obama’s most recent public appearances.
At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, Mr. Obama cast Ms. Harris’s bid for the presidency as an extension of his own, saying that “the torch has been passed” to her.
At the time, he emphasized that Ms. Harris’s campaign was an uphill one, and that a large number of voters felt disenfranchised. The United States was still closely divided, Mr. Obama said, “a country where too many Americans are still struggling and don’t believe government can help.”
On the campaign trail this fall, Mr. Obama spoke in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, appealing to Black men in particular as their support for Ms. Harris was seen as wavering.
“You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses,” Mr. Obama said in Pittsburgh. “I’ve got a problem with that.
“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” Mr. Obama continued, adding that the “women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time.”
In his speech on Thursday, Mr. Obama returned briefly to the subject of his own family, reminding the audience that identities are not singular and static. Sometimes there is a false perception, he said, that “because you’re a male, you automatically have certain attitudes and, let’s face it, you’re part of the patriarchy.
“I have two daughters and a wife, and sometimes I’m sitting at the dinner table, and I’m like, ‘What? What did I do?’” he said, drawing laughs.
“They pick on me all the time,” he said.
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