Great speeches need good ideas

Plus LeBron James, the pundit’s fallacy, and alternate Robert E. Lee

Barack Obama delivers his 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Staff via Getty Images)

I wrote about Troy Jackson for the New York Times.

He is not totally my cup of tea as a politician and he has some weak spots, but he was a consistent electoral overperformer in his State Senate district, and while that diminished somewhat as he became an orthodox progressive on abortion and L.G.B.T. issues, he still ran very strong in 2022. Past performance is no guarantee of future political success, but it’s a decent indicator. And I’m happy progressives found someone like that to be happy with. We’re like a million light-years from this being the case, but if the default strategy for selecting House candidates (and downballot statewide offices) was “find a state legislator who overperforms” and the default strategy for selecting Senate and gubernatorial candidates was “find a House member or downballot statewide officeholder who overperforms,” we’d be in a much better place.

One reason this would be good is it would encourage ambitious backbench politicians in safe seats to actually care about electoral performance. I don’t totally know why Rashida Tlaib’s electoral performance (about neutral in 2020, bad in 2022, actually a small overperformance in 2024) is so much better than Ilhan Omar’s (downright terrible in all four of her races, with her best one being far worse than Tlaib’s worst), but I wish this was something Tlaib got credit for and Omar faced pressure to work on because the gap is genuinely enormous.

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Matt Bruzunski: Who do you think is the best speaker in Dem politics right now and do you agree with my assessments here: Jon Ossoff gives excellent prepared speeches, but I’ve found him a little dull in informal interviews, though not awkward in the way Kamala Harris sometimes was, despite also being a strong stump speaker. AOC is almost the reverse she’s great in interviews and off the cuff settings, but less impressive in formal speeches. Among the likely 2028 contenders, Josh Shapiro might have the best overall combo? I also think aside from the occasional strange phrase like “the warmth of collectivism,” I think Zohran Mamdani may be the most naturally talented at both speeches and interviews. Buttigieg is obviously articulate, but he can also come across as stiff and more broadly, how does a rising Dem develop a distinctive speaking style without sounding like an Obama imitation?

My main thought on this is that as Democrats have increasingly become the educated people’s party, they’ve come to really overrate the literary quality of speeches relative to their content. Conversely, I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world that guys like Shapiro and Ossoff seem like they want to sound like Obama — Obama was great at speeches.

But — and I think this is the important part — Obama’s best speeches actually said something distinctive.

This is from Obama’s 2004 convention speech:

Don’t get me wrong. The people I meet in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks, they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead and they want to. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or the Pentagon. Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. No, people don’t expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want that choice.

I don’t think anyone in contemporary Democratic Party politics would say that today.