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Obama Says He Worries About Progressives Obsessing Over ‘Purity’

Obama said infighting has created a “circular firing squad” among allies.

Former President Obama says he’s worried about progressives in the Democratic Party becoming too focused on “purity.” “One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States, maybe it's true here as well, is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, ‘Uh, I’m sorry, this is how it’s going to be,’ and then we start sometimes creating what’s called a ‘circular firing squad,’ where you start shooting at your allies because one of them is straying from purity on the issues,” Obama said at a town hall in Berlin, Germany. “You have to recognize that the way we’ve structured democracy requires you to take into account people who don’t agree with you, and that by definition means you’re not going to get 100 percent of what you want,” Obama said.

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