Obama gives Dems a reality check: ‘Talk like normal people’ 

As “The Late Show” winds down, host Stephen Colbert sat down with former president Barack Obama, and what started as a wide-ranging conversation quickly turned into something much more pointed: a reality check for Democrats.  

Obama: What I’m more interested in for Democrats is, do you know how to just talk to regular people like we’re not in a college seminar? Can you talk in plain English to folks?  

Colbert: I think that’s one of the powers that [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani has, not only does he talk like a normal person, he lives a normal life and he names what is obviously wrong.  

Obama: Yes! And not have a bunch of gobbledygook around it. 

Obama is getting at a bigger issue Democrats have struggled with for years: it’s not just about their policies, it’s about whether voters feel like Democrats actually get them, and whether they come across in a way people can relate to.  

And the numbers back that up.  

In 2024, Republicans made significant gains with working-class voters — not just white voters, but Hispanic voters and some Black voters too.   

For decades, Democrats were seen as the party........

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