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At a gathering of “wealthy liberal donors,” former President Barack Obama told the wealthy to not worry their wealthy little heads — and it’s so entirely annoying. “Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision we also have to be rooted in reality,” Obama told the annual Democracy Alliance meeting, a club of wealthy liberal donors who give “hundred of thousands of dollars a year to recommended political organizations,” according to The New York Times.


Obama continued: “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.”

Says the man who can afford his and his family’s health care and mortgage and rent and retirement and doesn’t have to worry about making a living for the rest of his life because ex-presidents will always get paid to give speeches. Plus, Obama (and Michelle Obama) write excellent books that will sell.


Obama said that candidates should “push past” his achievements, but not push too far. “I don’ t think we should be deluded into thinking that the resistance to certain approaches to things is simply because voters haven’t heard a bold enough proposal and if they hear something as bold as possible then immediately that’s going to activate them,” Obama said, according to the Times.

It’s frustrating to hear that the man who popularized the English version of the phrase “yes we can” not push, or even just dream, for something greater. At the very least.... I was going to list one or two things the greatest country in the world should be able to provide its inhabitants like health care or free/affordable insulin or affordable college costs or elementary school textbooks or lead-free water systems, but how do you choose just one? How do you not see politics as the way to vastly improve lives? How, after watching Mitch McConnell stonewall you for years, do you still believe in incremental advancement?

How do you pick any way forward except for bold?