Obama is right about giving 'woke' culture a rest. Will progressives listen?
Obama's message offers sound advice for pragmatic souls who see politics as what Otto von Bismarck called "the art of the possible."
Progressive Democrats should pay attention, in my view, if they want to avoid the debacle of 1972, when the party's left, full of post-1960s exuberance, nominated Sen. George McGovern against President Richard Nixon and lost every state but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
Yet navigating such turbulent waters is what leadership is all about. Obama, too, was criticized by moderates for being too far left as an early opponent of the Iraq War -- and later by progressives for giving up too much in negotiations with a ferocious Republican opposition.
Obama managed to hold on to his base while attracting enough moderate swing voters to be elected and reelected. But, as Clinton's loss showed, that doesn't work for everybody, especially when you run against a candidate as unpredictable and audacious -- to be kind -- as Trump.
Now as party activists have swung even more toward the further-left wing of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, they can't afford to get too far ahead of regular rank-and-file voters who tend to prefer change to come in smaller increments, if at all.
As Obama suggests, they can win a lot more support by trying to persuade those of differing views in the party rather than trying to intimidate them for insufficient woke-ness.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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