Barack Obama used to be the Hope and Change guy. He wrote a book called The Audacity of Hope. His campaign slogans were: “Yes we can!” and: “Change you can believe in”. He inspired people to dream big and, at his rallies, exhilarated crowds chanted: “Fired up! Ready to go!”

But that was a long time ago. Obama is older now and wiser. He realises hope can sometimes be too audacious and he appears to have adopted new slogans to reflect that. “No we can’t!” and “Don’t believe in change – it’s too hard to achieve.” Post-presidency, his rallying cry seems to be: “Simmer down, kids: you’re going way too far to the left.”

Last Friday, the former president addressed the annual meeting of the Democracy Alliance, a network of wealthy Democratic donors, and praised realism over idealism. “Even as we push the envelope … we also have to be rooted in reality,” he said. “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it … They just don’t want to see crazy stuff.” He cautioned against the Democrats adopting too progressive a platform, arguing that “voters aren’t aligned with the ambitions of certain left-leaning Twitter feeds” or “the activist wing of our party”.

Obama’s remarks to the Democracy Alliance come just weeks after he made similarly disparaging comments about the left during a conversation at the Obama Foundation summit in Chicago. “We can’t completely remake society in a minute,” he said. “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke … you should get over that quickly.”

Thanks, Obama, but these patronising lectures are getting old. Most progressives, I’d wager, are well aware change doesn’t happen overnight. But that doesn’t mean we need to compromise our values or ambitions. That doesn’t mean we should “get over” the “crazy” idea that we can build a more equal world for everyone.

While Obama’s recent denunciations of the left are disappointing, they are not exactly surprising. After all, while he may have promised hope and change, Obama was never truly progressive. He deported 1.2 million people during his first three years in office; Trump, by the way, has deported fewer than 800,000 while he has been president. Obama spearheaded a secretive drone war; he expanded the surveillance state; he attempted to cut social security benefits, even though his campaign promised he would expand them; he denounced the influence of money in politics and then gave his big-money donors plum posts in his administration. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to demonise Obama. He did a lot of good and he was a million times better than Trump – although that is, of course, an incredibly low bar. But he was always centrist. He never believed in systemic change.

Here’s the thing, though: we live in an age when wanting systemic change isn’t idealism, it’s realism. Unconscionable inequality and the climate crisis mean that we have run out of time for compromises. We have run out of time for vague promises of hope. Obama may think he is being practical, but he misunderstands the urgency of the current moment. If “liberal” leaders persist in standing in the middle of the road, we will all get run over.