Former President Barack Obama said during a podcast on Saturday that Democrats have the “harder job” governing, and that Republicans have it easier because they just tear “stuff down.”
“Look, I think we have to acknowledge that we’ve got the harder job, right?” Obama said. “So we believe in government as a tool for good — for as a potential force to more jobs and as a way to make sure that the planet doesn’t roast. To make sure that as we move forward and the economy grows, that everybody, and not just some, are benefiting, and the kids are getting a good education. And what that means is that we have to think about the consequences of our actions. We have to try to figure out how do we get working majorities to actually pass laws and to implement those laws and to make things happen?”
Obama spoke to podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen and was responding to a question about whether Democratic leadership understood how to fight back against the GOP.
He added, “Tearing stuff down doesn’t require all that.”
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The former president said Republicans were unraveling a set of rules and norms that were already in place, and that it’s easy to do.
“I say that because we should accept the responsibility and the challenge that our job is going to be a little bit harder, because in order for us to get stuff done, like, let’s say the Affordable Care Act, well we’ve got to cobble together a majority, and we’ve got to persuade, and we’ve got to convince. And so, I do think that there’s been some unwillingness on the part of Democrats in the past to break down some of the institutional barriers for us getting stuff done, just because, well, it’s always been done that way,” Obama said.
Obama explained that the filibuster in the Senate frustrated him as president, and said Democrats had been trying to preserve something that in some ways blocks the government from being effective.
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“The Senate is already structurally skewed and anti-majoritarian, right? Like the – it’s hard for majorities to get stuff done, whether it’s trying to pass civil rights legislation in the ’60s or trying to get gun control legislation or what have you, because even though majority people support it, Delaware and Wyoming have the same number of senators as California, right? So that would require a constitutional amendment. You then compound that with a filibuster, and the truth is that Democrats, for some time, have been traditionalists in wanting to preserve that when it blocks us from making government effective, which in turn makes people feel like government is corrupt and not caring about them,” Obama said.
He said it gave people like President Donald Trump “an opening.”
Trump has called for ending the filibuster in the Senate, which has also gained some traction with other Republicans.
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Obama said he didn’t think Democrats should “duplicate” the behavior of Republicans but argued they shouldn’t cling to traditions either.
“I don’t want us to simply duplicate the behavior of the other side. I don’t want us to have a slash-and-burn strategy where we don’t care about rule of law. We don’t care about some of the guardrails around our democracy. We start lying and having no regard for the truth the way the other side seems to be comfortable with right now, because if that’s how we fight, then we lose what we’re fighting for. But that doesn’t mean we have to get punked or be saps. And I do, or to cling to traditions just for the sake of tradition,” he said.
Obama was also asked directly if aliens were real.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama said.
