Volume 5, Issue 34: The Knight in White Satin Armor

"He's not satisfied with the current leadership."

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In August 2000, a 38-year-old man wandered around the Democratic National Convention, trying to get someone to let him on the floor of the Staples Center, or get him into a party, or just talk to him. Barack Obama had just lost a primary for Illinois’ first Congressional seat to former Black Panther Bobby Rush, and had lost it badly: Obama would later say the campaign went so poorly that, halfway through, “I knew in my bones that I was going to lose. Each morning from that point forward I awoke with a vague sense of dread, realizing that I would have to spend the day smiling and shaking hands and pretending that everything was going according to plan.” (He lost 61 percent to 30 percent.) Stinging from such a resounding loss, Obama went to Los Angeles for the DNC to “get back on the horse.” And nobody noticed him, or cared that he was there.

“I fly out there on whatever connecting flight that was the cheapest and get to the rent-a-car place and present my credit card and the credit card’s rejected. No more money,” Obama would later tell David Axelrod on his “The Axe Files” podcast. “My friend would try to get me into some of the after-parties after the convention and bouncers would be standing there saying, ‘Who’s this guy?’ And ‘He doesn’t have the right credentials.’ I felt as if I was a third wheel in this whole thing, so I ended up leaving early. That was a stage when I was really questioning whether I should continue in politics.”

(I was actually at this same DNC, covering it for my long-dead dot-com. I did not see Obama there, though he could have been standing right next to me and I would not have known.)

One of a bunch of photos I took on the trip to the 2000 DNC.

But the world shifts fast. Four years later, at the 2004 DNC, Obama would give the speech that would launch his political career. I had very much heard of Obama by that point. I was living in New York City but was following Illinois politics closely, particularly Obama’s work as a State Senator in Springfield. He was, already, the first politician I truly fell for. Maybe JFK was this for your parents (or your grandparents). I know for some people it was Ronald Reagan, or Bill Clinton, or even Donald Trump. Barack Obama was the one indie band who went big that I actually was into before it was cool to be into. (The first political campaign contribution I ever made to his 2002 Illinois Senate campaign.) What I admired most about him, what I still do, was how eager he was to reach out to people who were different than he was, how deeply invested he was in a shared humanity, regardless of where you had come from. During his 2004 US Senate campaign, he spent nearly as much time in downstate Illinois, in towns like Mattoon, as he did in more electorally beneficial Chicagoland, and after the election, he made regular stops in Charleston and Effingham. Later, when he was President, he would specifically credit those trips downstate as a constant reminder that his job was to talk to and work for all Americans, not just the ones predisposed to support him. “People need to see other people to understand them,” he said. “People might have thought I had a funny name and had certain thoughts about me, but when we met, they saw I was just another person like they were. That connection matters.” Just another person like they were. That connection matters. When you meet someone, you focus not on what is different about them, but about what is the same. It was as if he was perfectly distilling my political philosophy. Or maybe I just developed it because of him.

I was riveted by him already and watched his 2004 speech rapt, and ebullient that the rest of the world was seeing what I already knew. When I initially moved to New York, I found that most people whom I generally sided with politically were dismissive of, even downright hostile to, people who disagreed with them. Obama represented another path forward. It was widely assumed, if John Kerry lost in 2004, Obama would challenge Hillary Clinton for the 2008 nomination. I bought a lawn sign, even though I did not have a lawn. I wore his T-shirt throughout the entire God Save the Fan book tour. I would have walked through a wall for him. I’d never felt that way about a politician before. I’d never even thought to.

And when he won in 2008, it felt like a sea change, not just for the obvious reason that America had just elected its first Black president, but also for the fact that it elected someone who was relentlessly positive but also realistic about it, someone who held the fundamental belief that even when times are hard, even when we take steps back, if you stay focused on our shared humanity, on what binds us, you will ultimately make progress—slowly, but undeniably.

Obama didn’t get everything right; he’s a human being too, after all. But I felt that he was the most pivotal American figure of my lifetime, and that the changes he had helped implement would be lasting. And then 2016 happened.

****************

New York, my publication, published a piece this week mocking Obamacore, that sensation that, as (the generally excellent) Nate Jones writes, “the outburst of brightness and positivity that took over pop culture upon the election of our first Black president in 2008, and that continued until the wheels fell off eight years later. This was the age of Glee, Taylor Swift’s 1989, and Hamilton, seemingly disparate art born out of the same impulse: the feeling of a new dawn, a generational shift, a national redemption.” Essentially, what I’m talking about above: The idea that things might actually get better, and that believing so was, in fact, a good thing. The general thrust of the piece is that this is now “cringeworthy” (a once-evocative word that has become so recessive and passive at this point that it’s now completely useless, not that this has stopped the limp shrug that is its constant usage), that believing that the world was not in a place of constant turmoil, that daily life was not just a series of unending fights, that believing that you had the power to improve your own life and the lives of people around you, was foolish, deluded—that this was all something to be embarrassed of. The piece actually uses the term “a decadent interregnum” to describe the Obama era. The idea seems to be that because Obama did not in fact fix everything, that because Trump was elected, the optimism and empathy that Obama stood for was not just misguided, but actively toxic—part of the problem. (The piece oddly argues that Louis C.K. playing a police officer on “Parks & Recreation” is somehow a symptom of this.) How foolish we were to ever believe in anything! How savvy and clever we are now that we no longer!

Jonathan Chait, also in New York, described this Trump-era shift smartly and derisively: “Obama was elected and reelected as president by decisive margins. He enacted sweeping economic and social reforms that have withstood Republican attacks. And then the most remarkable turn of events happened: Democrats talked themselves into believing the whole experience had been a disappointment and set out to ensure they didn’t repeat it.” People convinced themselves that Obama’s fundamental, obvious observation, that there’s “not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America,” the simple construction that reminded people what they truly loved about this country and, in spite of all its problems, how much it really meant, and thus changed the world, was somehow naive and passe. The awfulness of the Trump years turned the zeitgeist away from the way Obama saw the world and toward, ultimately, the way Trump did: Us vs. Them.

Which is why, in the wake of a truly breathtaking two months, it has been so revelatory to see people that realizing returning to that fundamental observation may just be what saves us.

The Democratic National Convention of the last week was remarkable for how much it rejected not the Trump way of seeing the world, but also the burn-it-all-down zero-sum cynicism that Obama was fighting against from the beginning. The thesis of the Harris-Walz campaign is essentially Obama’s: We’re one America. There were many incredible speeches during the week, from Michelle Obama’s (who effortlessly, like it was nothing, handed a “Do Something” slogan to push everyone through the next two months) to Wes Moore’s to Tim Walz’s to even Hillary Clinton’s, and there was no moment more moving than the one with Walz’s family, and I’m still a little blown away by just how forceful and confident (and well-written) Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech was, but I’ll confess, I still found myself most moved, in the end, by Obama’s own.

In the wake of all the divisiveness of last decade, with the tumult and pain we’ve all been through, with the sense that everything may be cracking apart, Obama returned to that 2004 message again: We’re all in this together.

We start thinking that the only way to win is to scold and shame and outyell the other side. And after a while, regular folks just tune out or they don’t bother to vote. … To make progress on the things we care about, the things that really affect people’s lives, we need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices. And that if we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidates, we need to listen to their concerns and maybe learn something in the process. 

After all, if a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people. We recognize that the world is moving fast, that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us. …

Because the vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided. We want something better. We want to be better. And the joy and the excitement that we’re seeing around this campaign tells us we’re not alone … Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or somewhere in between, we have all had people like that in our lives. People like Kamala’s parents, who crossed oceans because they believed in the promise of America. People like Tim’s parents, who taught him about the importance of service. Good, hardworking people who weren’t famous or powerful but who managed in countless ways to leave this country just a little bit better than they found it.

There are many reasons the Harris-Walz campaign has caught fire, that it has conjured up those 2008 feelings, that there is a sense that, if we can follow this through, we can finally slam the door on this last decade of callousness and cruelty and downright foolishness and, at last, move forward. There’s Trump disdain. There’s Biden exhaustion. There’s Harris’ maturation as a candidate, her unique ability to be a better messenger, her disciplined, creative political mind. But in the end, I do think it comes back to that initial Obama message: That fundamental belief - I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper - that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. You leave the world a little bit better than how you found it. You believe this country can be better. And you love it enough to try. You won’t get it perfect; you won’t even be close. But you’ve got to try. And you’ve got to believe.

I believe that Kamala Harris believes this. The convention was a clear sign that she is rejecting the dead-end-ism of that “decadent interregnum” cynicism. Obama was right then, and he is right now. That she understands that, and may in fact be the ideal person for this particular moment, is the most encouraging thing I saw this week. And it’s why I think she’s going to win.

Maybe I’ll be wrong. Trump could still very well eke out this election. Maybe it will all go to shit. But that’ll just be another reason to keep fighting then too. Losing the hope that things can get better, and that desire to push to make them so, isn’t clever or wise. It’s just self-destructive. I need this world to be better than it was when I found it. So do my kids. So do you. Believing it can be so isn’t foolish or cringeworthy. One might even call it audacious.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. Your Guide to College Football’s Dramatic Changes, New York. Everything’s different, now and forever.

2. Which Teams May Soon Face a Reckoning? MLB.com. Cardinals definitely on this list.

3. This Week’s Five Fascinations, MLB.com. On Joey Votto, Triple Crown winners, 40-40 seasons, streaks of losing seasons and the suddenly exciting division races.

4. I Contributed to This Discussion of Joey Votto’s Hall of Fame Chances, MLB.com. OK, that’s not the actual headline, but it should be!

5. This Week’s Power Rankings, MLB.com. I don’t remember the Cardinals ever being good.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we discussed “Alien: Romulus” and previewed the fall movie slate.

Seeing Red, Bernie and I think the Cardinals are in a very dark place.

Waitin’ Since Last Saturday, we preview the Georgia season with The Athletic’s Seth Emerson.

Morning Lineup, I did Monday’s and Thursday’s shows.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“Kamala Harris is not going back to the failed politics of 2016,” Nate Silver, Silver Bulletin. I’m a longtime Nate Silver defender—and his new book is the most I will ever enjoy reading about gambling—but this piece was particularly well-argued and incredibly convincing. This is my kind of optimism: Reasoned, fair and well-earned.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers! (I’m sorry I’m so behind on these. But I am starting to catch up!)

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“All I Do,” Bully. This is a song, and an artist, who makes me want to drive really fast with the window down.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

Going through those old photos from the God Save the Fan book tour, I found this hilarious photo shoot shot from a feature in Newsday at the time.

I do not think it was actually raining.

I will be back in Mattoon this week for the first time in nearly two years. I’ll be honest: I absolutely cannot wait. And then on Thursday, this:

Go Illini.

Have a great weekend, all.

Best,
Will