In First Post-Election Speech, Obama Calls for ‘Forging Alliances and Building Coalitions’

U.S.|In First Post-Election Speech, Obama Calls for ‘Forging Alliances and Building Coalitions’

In his first speech since the presidential election in November, Barack Obama urged Americans who want democracy to survive to look for ways to compromise, engage with the other side, turn away from identity politics and build relationships with unlikely potential allies.

“Pluralism is not about holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya,’” Mr. Obama said in Chicago on Thursday. “It is not about abandoning your convictions and folding when things get tough. It is about recognizing that, in a democracy, power comes from forging alliances and building coalitions, and making room in those coalitions not only for the woke, but the waking.”

He added: “Purity tests are not a recipe for long-term success.”

Billed as an address on “the power of pluralism,” the speech — a road map of sorts for political survival for liberals in a second term for Donald J. Trump — was delivered before hundreds of people as part of an annual Democracy Forum put on by the Obama Foundation, a private nonprofit entity that is led by Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama opened the speech with an acknowledgment that when he told friends of the focus of this year’s forum, the topic drew groans and eye rolls.

“We’ve just been through a fierce, hard-fought election, and it’s fair to say that it did not turn out as they had hoped,” said Mr. Obama, who had, along with his wife, Michelle, campaigned intensely for Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, in the final weeks.

For Mr. Obama’s friends, he said, talk of bridging differences in a bitterly divided country seemed like an academic exercise.