Obama: ‘Republicans in Power Want You to Feel Cynical, They Want You Not to Vote’

‘We have seen that playbook before’

EXCERPT:

OBAMA: "And so, with all of these challenges, a lot of folks started feeling, you know what, change does not happen fast enough. People felt maybe nobody was looking out for them. There was all of this money being pumped into campaigns. By these big billionaire PACs who were trying to say, the Democrats, they do not think like you or look like you. Or believe the same things you do. We have seen that playbook before. People got cynical and Republicans in power want you to feel cynical. They want you not to vote. Instead of addressing the challenges that exist, they exploit some of the history we have in this country, of racial and ethnic and malicious divisions — religious divisions , and they try to get people angry. They appeal to fear and try to pit one group against another. They tell us that order and security will be restored as long as we do not let those people take over, people who do not look like us or sound like us or pray like we do. They start talking about real Americans as if some of us aren’t real Americans. It is an old playbook. The closer we get to election day, the more we see folks resort to that. In a healthy democracy, that kind of stuff does not work because people of good will in both parties start calling out bigots and fear mongers, they work for compromise and work to get things done, practical solutions, caucus starts kicking in. But when there is a vacuum in our democracy, when we do not vote, when we take our rights for granted, when we turn the other way to politics because we think it's ugly and messy and we do not want to hear it, that is when the voices fill in the void."

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