Obama: Just Vote For a Democrat, Any Damn Democrat

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Barack Obama was in office for eight years and never managed to convince all his fellow Democrats of this, but now he’s giving it another try:

You cannot sit back and wait for a savior. You can’t opt out because you don’t feel sufficiently inspired by this or that particular candidate. This is not a rock concert. This is not Coachella. We don’t need a messiah. All we need are decent, honest, hard-working people who are accountable and who have America’s best interests at heart. And they’ll step up and they’ll join our government, and they will make things better if they have support.

Say what you will about Republicans all voting for Donald Trump even though he’s obviously a grandstanding moron, but when it finally came down to Election Day they put him in office anyway. Obama is telling Democrats to be more like that: when the opposition party has become what the GOP has become, your job is to vote for the party, not the candidate. After all, at this point if you still think there’s something more important than putting the party of Donald Trump solidly out of business, there’s really not much more to say to you. What more could it take to convince you?

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate