Obama: Democrats are ‘right to be concerned’ about Trump

 Barack Obama

Former President Barack Obama on Thursday told Democrats that their fears over President Donald Trump aren’t misplaced as he drummed up the need to get out and vote.

“You are right to be concerned,” Obama said in his first public comments in months at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Beverly Hills, according to Politico.

“Do not wait for the perfect message, don’t wait to feel a tingle in your spine because you’re expecting politicians to be so inspiring and poetic and moving that somehow, ‘OK, I’ll get off my couch after all and go spend the 15-20 minutes it takes for me to vote,’” he added. “Because that’s part of what happened in the last election. I heard that too much.

“Boil it down. If we don’t vote, then this democracy doesn’t work.”

In keeping with his tradition of never mentioning Trump by name, the 44th president noted that “fear is powerful.”

“Telling people that somebody’s out to get you, or somebody took your job, or somebody has it out for you, or is going to change you, or your community, or your way of life — that’s an old story and it has shown itself to be powerful in societies all around the world,” Obama said. “It is a deliberate, systematic effort to tap into that part of our brain that carries fear in it.”

He copped some of the blame for the current state of the Democratic Party.

“I’ll be honest with you, if I have a regret during my presidency, it is that people were so focused on me and the battles we were having, particularly after we lost the House, that folks stopped paying attention up and down the ballot,” he said.

The fundraiser was one of three Obama is attending in California. Two more are scheduled Friday in San Francisco for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Politico said.

He also said Democrats and Republicans tell “different stories” and are driven by different things.

“They don’t worry about inspiration,” Obama said. “They worry about winning the seat and they are very systematic about work not just at the presidential level but at the congressional and state legislative levels.”

The former president said he’s not shocked by Republicans’ current agenda.

“I am not surprised that instead of replacing what we had done with something better, they just have done their best to undermine and erode what’s already in place,” he said. “Of course people are going to be angry about that, because if you had health care and suddenly somebody who says they’re going to make it better comes in and makes it worse, you’ll be pissed. You should go out and vote.”

But his speech also included messages of hope.

“Reality has an interesting way of coming up and biting you, and the other side has been peddling a lot of stuff that is so patently untrue that you can get away with it for a while, but at a certain point, you confront reality,” Obama said. “The Democrats’ job is not to exaggerate; the Democrats’ job is not to simply mimic the tactics of the other side. All we have to do is work hard on behalf of that truth. And if we do, we’ll get better outcomes.