• 3 days ago
"Hope is not blind optimism."

Barack Obama says he has remained hopeful over the past four years. Here's why.
Transcript
00:00Hope is not blind optimism. Hope is not ignoring problems. Hope is
00:10believing in the face of difficulty that we can overcome and get a
00:15better world.
00:16Hope is looking squarely at our challenges and our shortcomings and
00:21saying,
00:24despite that, I
00:26think through effort and will and community we can make things better.
00:33And
00:35so I've never lost hope over these last four years. I've been mad,
00:42I've been frustrated,
00:45but I haven't lost hope and the reason is is because I never expected
00:51progress to move directly in a straight line.
00:56If you look at the history of this country,
00:58you make progress and then there's some
01:04backpedaling and
01:06backlash and
01:11you know you
01:13consolidate some victories, and then there's some slippage, and then you get a renewed surge of energy, and then you
01:19make some more progress, and then there's a little bit of
01:22backstepping, and then you push again.
01:26And I think what we've seen over the last four years was a
01:34in
01:35with with my election, I think we had
01:39probably gotten over optimistic about how much change had happened in the country,
01:45but that change was real.
01:48There was some pushback, and
01:51that was real too,
01:54but when we started seeing all these young people from across the country demonstrating this summer, it reminded you that
02:03they
02:05internalized that sense of optimism and change and possibility.
02:09So what gives me optimism is when I see them, I say, okay, here we are,
02:14back to make another push.
02:17People like you,
02:19people like the councilmen, you guys are out there, and you're gonna push it to the next phase, and then
02:24you're not gonna get a hundred percent of what we need, and
02:28there will be some disappointments and
02:31areas where you fall short, and then it'll go back a little bit, and then you push forward again.
02:36So I
02:41but the benefits of age is realizing that
02:48in any endeavor, there are gonna be setbacks, they're gonna be
02:54times where you fall short, they're gonna be people who are opposed to trying to do the right thing, and
03:03the test of
03:07our strength as a people is our ability to push through that on through to the next stage, and
03:14I have never given up that sense of
03:19we are resilient and strong enough to push through what we've seen in these last four years.
03:25Now, the question is
03:30making sure that
03:32we understand we can't afford
03:35another four years of this, because what happens is you do get to a point where you go so far backwards
03:43that it becomes really hard then to dig yourself out of that hole.