'That's how America changes': Obama says young people should be 'disdainful' of centrist politics and calls on the next generation to 'push harder'

• Former President Barack Obama in a new interview with New York Magazine said young people should be "disdainful" of pragmatism, stating that's how "America changes."
• The former president said that his "general attitude is that I want the next generation to push harder."
• Obama also expressed concern that there's too much emphasis on disagreements between the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic party.

Former President Barack Obama in a new interview with New York Magazine encouraged young people to keep pushing against centrism or the politics of compromise, contending it helps move the country forward.

Obama was asked by interviewer Jonathan Chait whether he still believed that "the liberal racial attitudes of young people would transform the country over time" despite President Donald Trump's gains with Black and Latino voters in the 2020 election.

"One of the things that we saw during Black Lives Matter protests, or in debates around economics, is that young people are going to want to reach for what's best and are less likely to want to compromise or shade how they present things," Obama said. "They're going to be more disdainful of pragmatism and half-a-loaf. And that's how it should be. That's how America changes."

"And there are going to be times when young people are impatient or consider themselves obligated to speak truth to power even if it might offend some swing voters somewhere," Obama added. "That kind of messiness is okay. Because what they're doing is stretching the boundaries over time of what's possible."

Obama during the interview also expressed concern about the "tendency to play up this divide" between progressives and the more moderate wing of the Democratic party, which has become a major part of the 2020 election post-mortem for Democrats after losing some House seats. He said that Democrats are "unified" aspirationally in terms of where they think the country should head from a policy standpoint.

"I worry about this obsession with the center left versus the hard-core left or picking up on every possible disagreement between [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and Nancy Pelosi, or this debate about how much of the results of the congressional elections were because they were playing up Black Lives Matter protests - my general attitude is that I want the next generation to push harder," Obama said. "There's a different role for activists as opposed to people once they're actually elected in Congress trying to get a bill passed."

Obama recently ruffled feathers among progressives and activists after criticizing the "defund the police" slogan pushed by anti-racism protesters and embraced by some Democratic politicians. The former president argued that the "snappy" slogans like that could turn certain voters away.

But in the same interview, Obama underscored the importance of "new blood" in the Democratic party such as Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive lawmaker who has fervently championed defunding law enforcement.

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Throughout his political career and during his post-presidency, Obama has consistently expressed belief in young people being the key to progress.

Over the summer, Obama praised young people of color for taking to the streets in protest of racism and police brutality following the brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, which sparked global demonstrations.

"You have helped to make the entire country feel as if this is something that's got to change," Obama said during an event in June hosted by My Brother's Keeper, an organization the former president started in 2014, during his second term. "You've communicated a sense of urgency. That is as powerful and as transformative as anything that I've seen in recent years."