Obama offers a wise and weary voice of sanity in Pod Save America

Barack Obama sounds old: tired and distracted but serious. You feel the turmoil in America since he left the presidency has aged him almost as much as his time in office.

Former US President Barack Obama campaigns for Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer during a "Get Out the Vote Rally" ahead of the midterm elections in Detroit, Michigan.

With just weeks until the US midterms the world’s richest and possibly most nuts democracy is heaving itself into another of its increasingly alarming fits of angst, speculation and surreal punditry. This all used to happen on telly. Pundits ranted and raved under blazing studio lights, urgent chyrons charged across screens, and a toothy telegenic grin matched with a suave way of making love to the camera was a passport to political stardom. However, traditional TV is dying and much of this bonkers energy is spilling into podcasts. Anyone listening will have noticed an especially insane mood. The pollster Nate Silver is releasing feverish hour-long statistics-laden podcasts called things such as There’s a 6-in-10 Chance One Party Will Control Both Chambers of Congress. The right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro is producing shows titled The West Literally Goes Suicidal and Are We on the Precipice of Global Collapse?

Now, Barack Obama has been coaxed out of retirement for an hour-long interview on the podcast Pod Save America. It’s a good one. He sounds old: tired and distracted but serious. You feel the turmoil in America since he left the presidency has aged him almost as much as his time in office. He has two themes. The first is that American democracy is in dire shape. Republicans, he warns, are “willing to subvert basic democratic procedures”. Most interesting, he makes his sharpest criticisms of identity politics yet. The way it is being articulated, he seems to imply, might be the biggest threat to the Democratic Party’s success with voters. He warns that Republicans are pushing the message that “people don’t want to be lectured to” by “effete coastal liberals” and that people don’t want to feel like “they’re walking on eggshells” about saying the right thing. All of us “can say the wrong thing”. He points out that trying to teach woke lingo to Michelle’s 86-year-old mother would be like trying to make her learn Spanish: “it doesn’t mean she shouldn’t try and learn Spanish, but sometimes she is not going to get the words right and that is OK” and people need to be more understanding of that. Go Obama! Amid all the chaos and statistics, a wise and weary voice of sanity.

Listen to Pod Save America on your favourite podcast app.