Daily US Times: Former President Barack Obama has underlined his belief that the Democratic Party should moderate campaign messaging in order to reach voters turned off by slogans including “Defund the Police”, telling a literary group: “If I spoke the language of James Baldwin as he speaks it on the campaign stump, I’m probably not gonna get a lot of votes in Iowa.”
Obama said in interview extracts released by PEN America, Baldwin, a leading 20th-century African American intellectual and the subject of the Oscar-nominated 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro, “didn’t have to go out and get votes”, Obama said in interview extracts released by PEN America, which will give the former president its 2020 Voice of Influence award next week.
Obama, who was President during 2009-2016, also said he thinks there is an opportunity for more expansive racial dialogue in the US. But Mr Obama’s remarks may add to controversy which welled up this week when he said candidates using “snappy” slogans such as ‘Defund the Police’ risked alienating voters otherwise broadly sympathetic to liberal aims.
Defund the Police became a rallying cry amid national protests for racial justice following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Similar incidents in Atlanta, Kenosha and elsewhere.
Some senior Democratic party leaders, including South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, have claimed the call to Defund the Police contributed to disappointing results in House, Senate and state races.
Barack Obama is promoting A Promised Land, his memoir of his rise to the US Presidency and first few years in office. This week, while speaking to Snapchat, he added his voice to the chorus.
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