'This is not normal': Obama says 2020 election results reveal US is 'deeply divided'

Former US President Barack Obama said that the election result this year has revealed how divisive the United States has become. Both President-elect Joe Biden and incumbent Donald Trump reportedly received more than 70 million votes and according to Obama the “alternative worldview” that is showcased by the media “carries a lot of weight”. In an interview with CBS News, when the 44th US President was asked if the current situation in America worries him, Obama said “Yes” and acknowledged that it makes “hard for democracy to function.”

“What it says is that we are still deeply divided. The power of that alternative worldview that's presented in the media that those voters consume -- it carries a lot of weight,” Obama said in the televised interview.

“Yes. It's very hard for our democracy to function if we are operating on just completely different sets of facts,” he added.

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Barack Obama has done a series of interviews ahead of the release of the first volume of his memoir ‘A Promised Land’ scheduled on November 17. The book will elaborate on 44th US President’s personal life and the political career before participating in the historic campaign of 2008 followed by the first four years in the White House. As the first black president of the United States, Obama confronted the wave of divisive turmoil that fueled Republicans’ obstructionism that ultimately led to shift of the party. 

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Obama on Biden’s active campaigning

In the interview with CBS News, Obama backed his active campaigning of Democrat Joe Biden, his former US vice president. He also said that the circumstances in the nation warranted his public criticism of his successor, something that former US presidents usually refrain from doing. 

“It is not my preference to be out there," Obama said. “I think we were in a circumstance in this election in which certain norms, certain institutional values that are so extraordinarily important, had been breached. That it was important for me, as somebody who had served in that office, to simply let people know, ‘This is not normal.’”

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