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On Thursday, December 5,
in Chicago, Illinois, former president Barack Obama gave the third in an annual
series of lectures he has delivered since 2022 at his foundation’s Democracy
Forum, which gathers experts, leaders, and young people to explore ways to
safeguard democracy through community action.
Taken together, these
lectures are a historical and philosophical exploration of the weaknesses of
twenty-first century democracy as well as a road map of directions, some new
and some old, for democracy’s defense. In 2022, Obama explored ways to counteract
the flood of disinformation swamping a shared reality for decision making; in
2023 he discussed ways to address the extraordinary concentration of wealth
that has undermined support for democracy globally.
On Thursday, Obama
explored the concept of “pluralism,” a word he defined as meaning simply that
“in a democracy, we all have to find a way to live alongside individuals and
groups who are different than us.”
But rather than
advocating what he called “holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’” as we all
tolerate each other, Obama described modern pluralism as active work to form
coalitions over shared issues. His argument echoed the concepts James Madison,
a key framer of the Constitution, explained in Federalist #10 when he was
trying to convince inhabitants of a big, diverse country that they should
endorse the newly written document.
In 1787, many
inhabitants of the fledgling nation objected to the idea of the strong national
government proposed under the new constitution. They worried that such a
government could fall under the control of a majority that would exercise its
power to crush the rights of the minority. Madison agreed that such a calamity
was likely in a small country, but argued that the very size and diversity of
the people in the proposed United States would guard against such tyranny as
people formed coalitions over one issue or another, then dissolved them and
formed others. Such constantly shifting coalitions would serve the good of all
Americans without forging a permanent powerful majority.
Obama called the
Constitution “a rulebook for practicing pluralism.” The Bill of Rights gives us
a series of rights that allow us to try to convince others to form coalitions
to elect representatives who will “negotiate and compromise and hopefully advance
our interests.”
Majority rule determines
who wins, but the separation of powers and an independent judiciary are
supposed to guarantee that the winners “don’t overreach to try to permanently
entrench themselves or violate minority rights,” he said. The losers accept the
outcome so long as they know they’ll have a chance to win the next time.
Obama noted that this
system worked smoothly after World War II, largely because a booming economy
meant rising standards of living that eased friction between different groups:
management and labor, industry and agriculture. At the same time, the Cold War
helped Americans come together against an external threat, and a limited range
of popular culture reinforced a shared perspective on the world—everyone
watched the sitcom Gilligan’s
Island.
Most of all, though,
Obama noted, American pluralism worked well because it largely excluded women
and racial, gender, and religious minorities. He pointed out that as late as
2005, when he went to the Senate, he was the only African American there and only
the third since Reconstruction. There were two Latinos and fourteen women.
In the 1960s, he noted
drily, “things got more complicated.” “[H]istorically marginalized
groups—Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans; women and gays and lesbians;
and disabled Americans—demanded a seat at the table. Not only did they insist
on a fair share of government-directed resources, but they brought with them
new issues, born of their unique experiences that could not just be resolved by
just giving them a bigger slice of the pie. So racial minorities insisted that
the government intervene more deeply in the private sector and civil society to
root out long-standing, systemic discrimination.”
Women wanted control
over their own bodies, and gays and lesbians demanded equality before the law,
challenging religious and social norms. “[P]olitics,” Obama said, “wasn’t just
a fight about tax rates or roads anymore. It was about more fundamental issues
that went to the core of our being and how we expected society to structure
itself. Issues of identity and status and gender. Issues of family, values, and
faith…. [A] lot of people…began to feel that their way of life, the American
way of life, was under attack” just as increasing economic inequality made them
think that other people were benefiting at their expense.
Increasingly, that
economic inequality cloistered people in their own bubbles as unions, churches,
and civic institutions decayed. “[W]ith the Cold War over, with generations
scarred by Vietnam and Iraq and a media landscape that would shatter into a million
disparate voices,” he said, Americans lost the sense of “a common national
story or a common national purpose.” Media companies have played to extremes,
and “[e]very election becomes an act of mortal combat.”
With that sense, there
is “an increasing willingness on the part of politicians and their followers to
violate democratic norms, to do anything they can to get their way, to use the
power of the state to target critics and journalists and political rivals, and
to even resort to violence in order to gain and hold on to power.”
For all that he was
speaking in 2024, Obama could have been describing the realization of the fears
of those opposed to the Constitution in 1787.
But he did not agree
that those anti-Federalists had won the debate. Instead, he adapted Madison’s
theory of pluralism to the modern era. Obama stood firm on the idea that the
way to reclaim democracy is to build coalitions around taking action on issues
that matter to the American people without regard to personal identities or
political affiliations. Pluralism, Obama said, “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 also for the waking.”
And that, in many ways,
identified the elephant—or rather the donkey—in the room. In the 2024 election,
the Democratic Party under Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota governor
Tim Walz very deliberately moved away from so-called identity politics: the
idea that a person builds their political orientation around their pre-existing
social identity. During the campaign, Harris rarely referred to the fact that
if elected, she would be the first woman, as well as the first woman of color,
to hold the presidency: when attendees at the Democratic National Convention
wore white in honor of the suffragists, Harris wore black.
Instead, Harris and Walz
embraced investing in the middle class and supporting small businesses. But
that shift to the center did not translate into a presidential victory in 2024,
and those on the political left, as well as progressive Democrats, are not
convinced it was a good move.
Since the rise of Donald
Trump, the MAGA party has been the one championing identity politics, rejecting
American pluralism in favor of centering whiteness, a certain kind of
individualist masculinity, Christianity, and misogyny. Making common cause with
Republicans, even non-MAGA Republicans, in the face of such politics seems to
the left and progressive Democrats self-defeating.
Obama disagrees. “[I]t’s
understandable that people who have been oppressed or marginalized want to tell
their stories and give voice fully to their experiences—to not have to hold
back and censor themselves, especially because so many of them have been silenced
in the past,” he said, “But too often, focusing on our differences leads to
this notion of fixed victims and fixed villains.”
He stood firm against
compromising core principles but said: “In order to build lasting majorities
that support justice—not just for feeling good, not just for getting along, to
deliver the goods—we have to be open to framing our issues, our causes, what we
believe in in terms of ‘we’ and not just ‘us’ and ‘them.’”
And he emphasized that
such cooperation works best when it’s about action, rather than just words,
because action requires that people invest themselves in a common project. “It
won't eradicate people's prejudices, but it will remind people that they don't
have to agree on everything to at least agree on some things. And that there
are some things we cannot do alone.” “It’s about agency and relationships.”
Then Obama addressed the
political crisis of this moment, the one the anti-Federalists feared: “What
happens when the other side has repeatedly and abundantly made clear they’re
not interested in playing by the rules?” When that happens, he said, “pluralism
does not call for us” to accept it. “[W]e have to stand firm and speak out and
organize and mobilize as forcefully as we can.” Even then, though, “it’s
important to look for allies in unlikely places,” he said, noting that “people
on the other side…may share our beliefs in sticking to the rules, observing
norms,” and that supporting them might help them “to exert influence on people
they’ve got relationships with within the other party.”
The power of pluralism,
he said, is that it can make people recognize their common experiences and
common values. That, he said, is how we break the cycle of cynicism in our
politics.
Obama’s argument has
already drawn criticism. At MSNBC, Ben Burgis condemned Obama’s “centrist
liberalism” as inadequate to address the real problems of inequality and warned
that his political approach is outdated.
But it is striking how
much Obama’s embrace of pluralism echoes that of James Madison, who had in his
lifetime witnessed a group of wildly diverse colonists talk, write letters,
argue, and organize to forge themselves into a movement that could throw off
the age-old system of monarchy in favor of creating something altogether new.
