Former President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance Thursday celebrating Election Day’s big wins for the Democrats and telling attendees that he was optimistic American voters were paying attention in Trump’s America and that divisions within the left-wing party can be overcome.
“We had a good night on Tuesday,” Obama said at a live taping event for the podcast “Pod Save America” on Thursday.
“It was a good reminder that the American people are paying attention,” he said. “They don’t want cruelty. They are not looking for people on the top trying to entrench themselves in power.”
The key wins for New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, along with Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill in Virginia and New Jersey along with Prop 50 passing in California have sparked a renewed hope for the party ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“Tuesday was nice, but we got a lot of work to do. Your task is to not to impose litmus tests. We had Abigail Spanberger win and we had Zohran Mamdani win and they are all part of a vision for the future,” the former president continued. “Our job is to say that we want everybody engaged, and we want to have a conversation about how to make sure that every person in this country is treated with dignity and respect and there are ladders of opportunity.”
As Obama concluded his impromptu speech he emphasized the importance of uniting as a party saying “there’s the possibility of community” and that “we’re getting along not in some clichéd phony way but in a genuine deep way where we recognize, yeah we have differences, and yes, there are fights that are going to have be fought but that deep down there is something core in us that we have in common that is extraordinary. […] Keep up the good work.”
You can watch Obama’s speech in the video above.
