Yes We (Still) Can

What does it mean to keep believing in progress when cynicism seems to rule politics? In Yes We (Still) Can, Dan Pfeiffer—longtime senior advisor to Barack Obama and cohost of Pod Save America—takes you behind the scenes of the Obama White House and the years that followed to argue that effective leadership, honest storytelling, and digital media savvy can still drive change in a divided America. Pfeiffer contends that Barack Obama’s presidency was both a product of—and an ongoing struggle against—the political, cultural, and technological forces that later enabled Donald Trump’s rise.

Through humor, candor, and deep political insight, Pfeiffer explains how Obama’s hopeful politics collided with a changing media landscape, a radicalizing Republican Party, and an emerging right-wing propaganda machine. Yet he insists that by understanding these forces—the disruption of journalism, the rise of Fox News and fake news, the power of social media, and the corruption of bipartisanship—you can still help rebuild a movement grounded in truth, compassion, and strategic thinking.

Why Understanding the Obama Years Matters

Obama’s story, as Pfeiffer frames it, is less a nostalgic political memoir and more a field manual for modern democracy. His presidency was defined by contrasts: idealism versus cynicism, collaboration versus confrontation, and aspiration versus obstruction. Through intimate stories—from helicopter conversations with Obama predicting Trump’s rise to the frustrations of trying to negotiate with Mitch McConnell—Pfeiffer demonstrates how America’s political institutions and media systems turned into battlegrounds for truth itself.

If you’ve ever wondered why politics feels louder, meaner, and less productive today than even a decade ago, Pfeiffer’s account connects the dots. The same dynamics that torpedoed Obama’s agenda—24-hour news cycles, partisan media bubbles, obstructionist Republicans, and the algorithmic incentives of Facebook and Twitter—didn’t disappear. They metastasized.

A Candid Tour Through American Power

Pfeiffer blends memoir and political analysis, walking you through his journey from a skeptical operative interviewing for Obama’s campaign in 2007 to his years as White House communications director. Along the way, he recounts absurd moments (like splitting his pants in the Oval Office or holding up the President’s birth certificate to a stunned press corps) that humanize the often surreal experience of governing in the Internet age. Each anecdote leads to a larger insight: that leadership in today’s media environment requires both authenticity and emotional resilience. Obama’s successes—his disciplined campaign culture, innovative digital strategy, refusal to compromise values—offer a template for how progressives can organize and communicate now.

But Pfeiffer doesn’t sugarcoat Obama’s presidency. He argues that Democrats misread the scope of right-wing media’s influence, underestimated the racial backlash to a Black president, and overestimated bipartisanship. More importantly, they couldn't fully adapt to a fractured digital ecosystem where falsehoods spread faster than facts. Pfeiffer’s firsthand account of the "birther" conspiracy, and how Trump exploited it with help from Fox News, reveals the early formation of post-truth politics—a phenomenon that now defines public discourse.

Why This Book Still Feels Urgent

Pfeiffer argues that while Trumpism is the symptom, the disease is older: decades of Republican radicalization, fueled by fear, racism, and the media’s failure to call it out. Obama’s presidency, he writes, illuminated both America’s progress and its backlash. The country that elected its first African American president also created the environment that could elect his polar opposite. Yet Pfeiffer insists these aren’t signs of failure—they’re reminders of how fragile democracy can be.

Ultimately, Yes We (Still) Can is a political memoir with an activist’s heart and a strategist’s brain. Pfeiffer shows how you, as a voter or citizen, can engage differently: learn how media ecosystems shape perception, how cynicism aids demagogues, and how storytelling can reclaim truth. Like Obama's message of hope, Pfeiffer’s book argues that change doesn’t come from politicians alone but from ordinary people acting with purpose. In a time when outrage seems easier than optimism, he makes a compelling case that hope—anchored in truth and strategic action—is still the most powerful political force in America.

Dan Pfeiffer describes Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign as perhaps the greatest startup in history—a mix of innovation, hustle, and risk-taking that rewrote political strategy. When Obama announced his run, his team had little institutional backing, few resources, and no corporate infrastructure. They were assembling the plane as it took off. Pfeiffer likens the campaign’s culture to a tech startup: agile, experimental, driven by purpose rather than protocol.

The Power of the “WTF” Mentality

Obama’s campaign had an unofficial motto: “WTF”—a family-friendly shorthand for doing the bold thing when faced with risk. If a strategy scared the establishment but aligned with their mission, they tried it anyway. This mindset led Obama to hold an early campaign rally in Springfield, Illinois, in 17-degree weather; to give major interviews on hostile platforms like Fox News; and to maintain direct digital contact with millions of supporters through email, video, and emerging social media. It was a reflection of the candidate himself—confident, data-driven, but unafraid of authenticity. As Pfeiffer notes, this attitude helped the team innovate while their opponents ran campaigns designed for the 1990s.

No Assholes Allowed: The Obama Culture

Just as startups obsess over company culture, Obama and his core advisors treated culture as a strategic priority. The team’s golden rule was simple: “No assholes.” It didn’t matter how brilliant someone was—divisive personalities weren’t tolerated. Everyone worked long, grueling hours, but no one could survive without mutual respect and collaboration. This ethos came from the top: Obama was famously calm and loyal to his staff. He wanted unity and trust, not backstabbing and leaks (a sharp contrast to the chaos of later administrations). This created what the media called “No Drama Obama,” a culture free from the toxicity that plagued previous Democratic campaigns like John Kerry’s in 2004.

Pfeiffer argues this culture was essential. It protected the campaign’s integrity when pressure mounted, allowing creativity to flourish without fear. It also modeled a deeper civic principle: that leadership is as much about emotional discipline as political skill. The campaign became a living example of Obama’s political philosophy—unity through shared purpose.

Mastering Message, Data, and Story

At the core of Obama’s success was his ability to connect data with narrative. His message of “Hope and Change” was not a slogan—it was a story: the idea that ordinary citizens could be the protagonists of America’s next chapter. Pfeiffer describes how campaign strategist David Plouffe and speechwriter Jon Favreau used analytics to target messages that aligned with that vision. They treated the Internet not as a broadcast tool but as a conversation. This integration of story and science—emotion and analytics—was revolutionary, turning supporters into volunteers and volunteers into evangelists.

Comparing Obama’s approach to Silicon Valley’s startup ethos (think Steve Jobs’s Apple or modern-day Airbnb), Pfeiffer shows that winning political campaigns—and by extension, modern leadership—depend on authenticity, empowerment, and adaptability. The takeaway for you: when you build something new, culture and purpose are your most powerful technologies.

When Pfeiffer entered the White House as communications director, he expected to wield one of the most powerful megaphones in the world. Instead, he discovered that the presidential platform—the so-called “bully pulpit”—was dying. The old world where Ronald Reagan could address the nation on three networks at once was gone. Americans were now getting their news piecemeal: from cable, Twitter, Facebook, or meme pages. The Internet had shattered the shared reality that presidents once relied on to move opinion.

From Monologue to Multiverse

During Obama’s presidency, Pfeiffer witnessed a collapse of the traditional media ecosystem. Newspapers were losing revenue, television audiences were shrinking, and news outlets prioritized speed and clicks over accuracy and depth. In 1985, a president could speak directly to tens of millions of viewers. By 2010, most Americans were scrolling instead of watching. Obama’s challenge was unprecedented: how do you lead when every word is filtered, distorted, and taken out of context before it even reaches your audience?

Obama tried to adapt by becoming what Pfeiffer calls the first “digital president.” He embraced interviews with YouTube creators, appeared on late-night talk shows, and used Twitter to bypass traditional gatekeepers. His 2014 appearance on Zach Galifianakis’s Between Two Ferns—mocked by pundits but wildly successful online—boosted healthcare sign-ups by hundreds of thousands. The media scoffed; Obama understood that politics now required entertainment literacy as much as policy clarity.

The SportsCenter Effect

Pfeiffer identifies what he calls the “SportsCenter Effect”: the way media covers politics like highlight reels, emphasizing gaffes, zingers, and drama over substance. Just as basketball players chase viral dunks over solid defense, politicians learned to perform for the clip. This shift incentivized outrage—rewarding those who shouted loudest. Even good-faith actors like Obama were caught in a system that devoured nuance. (Barack Obama’s offhand comment about the private sector being “fine” became a weeklong scandal, stripped of its context.)

The lesson is sobering but clear: you can’t rely on position or truth to capture attention. You must understand your communication environment as it is, not as it was. Pfeiffer concludes that every leader—whether in politics, media, or business—must now become their own newsroom, storyteller, and fact-checker.

Perhaps the sharpest sections of Pfeiffer’s book target Fox News as the most corrosive force in modern American democracy. He calls it not a conservative news network, but a “Republican propaganda machine masquerading as journalism.” Fox was central to defining Barack Obama for millions of Americans, spreading racialized fear, fake scandals, and conspiracy theories that laid the groundwork for Donald Trump’s presidency.

From Madrassas to Megyn Kelly

Pfeiffer recalls Fox & Friends falsely claiming in 2007 that Hillary Clinton’s team had discovered Obama was educated in an Indonesian madrassa. Even when the claim was debunked, its damage lingered online. Fox executives told Obama’s campaign staff that the show was considered “entertainment,” so journalistic standards didn’t apply—a defense that feels eerily familiar in today’s disinformation age. Over the years, this pattern repeated: a baseless story was planted, amplified by pundits like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, and then laundered into mainstream discourse by other outlets chasing ratings.

At the height of the Tea Party movement, Fox wasn’t just covering the protests—it was organizing them. Pfeiffer calls this the moment Fox crossed from bias into activism. The network stoked paranoia about Barack Obama as a tyrant and socialist, helping to create the grievances that Donald Trump later exploited. Even Obama’s dog was dragged into the partisan culture war when Fox figures mocked moments of normality as un-American “celebrity behavior.”

Lessons from the War on Fox

The Obama White House once formally declared war on Fox News—refusing to appear on the network and urging other journalists to recognize its political nature. Pfeiffer confesses this was a strategic mistake. The fight gave Fox attention and credibility as the victim of elitist attack. He learned that energy spent battling bad-faith actors is energy surrendered from governing. Obama ultimately reset relations, recognizing that ignoring Fox while redirecting to local media or direct channels—social, digital, and niche outlets—was more effective than confrontation.

Still, Pfeiffer’s warning is clear: every autocrat needs a propaganda arm, and in America, Fox filled that role. He argues that our democracy cannot thrive with only one fact-based party. Until conservatives have a media ecosystem that values truth over tribal loyalty, polarization and disinformation will remain defining features of U.S. politics.

Years before “fake news” became a mainstream term, Pfeiffer was literally handing reporters Barack Obama’s birth certificate to debunk conspiracy theories. In one surreal 2011 briefing, he distributed 50 copies of the document to prove the sitting president was actually born in the United States. For Pfeiffer, this moment marked the dawn of America’s post-truth era—where facts no longer persuaded and lies spread faster than corrections.

The Birth of Birtherism

The “birther” myth—pushed by Donald Trump on television—illustrated how conspiracy theories could thrive when weaponized by partisan media. Even after evidence disproved them, large segments of the public continued to believe Obama was illegitimate. Pfeiffer describes how the White House agonized over whether to release the birth certificate, fearing it would demean the presidency. But Obama decided to confront it directly, holding a press conference and calling out the “carnival barkers” peddling racism for profit. The decision embarrassed Trump temporarily but foreshadowed the disinformation playbook he would later use to win the 2016 election.

“Death Panels” and the Politics of Fear

Pfeiffer recounts another episode: Sarah Palin’s false claim that Obamacare would create “death panels” to kill the elderly. The lie—boosted by talk radio, Fox News, and social media—spread like wildfire. Even after exhaustive fact-checking, many Americans continued to believe it. Pfeiffer’s takeaway is chilling: once propaganda finds emotional traction, facts alone can’t kill it. Only trusted messengers inside the same communities can. This insight foreshadowed modern research on misinformation (similar to findings by cognitive scientists like George Lakoff regarding narratives overpowering facts).

Becoming a Citizen Fact-Checker

To combat the pandemic of lies, Pfeiffer offers practical lessons. “Nothing is too crazy not to believe,” he warns. In an algorithmic media environment where Facebook rewards anger over accuracy, truth must be actively defended. He calls for Democrats and citizens to treat social channels as battlegrounds—debunking falsehoods, building systems to promote verified information, and avoiding cynicism. Hope, he argues, is not naïveté; it’s strategy. Lies spread when people give up on truth itself.

For you, the reader, Pfeiffer’s message is clear: don’t outsource truth. Learn how news is made, question your feeds, and engage offline with empathy. In an era of manipulated outrage, the quiet act of verification is rebellion.

Before Twitter dominated politics, Dan Pfeiffer nearly ended his career with a tweet. While under anesthesia for a medical procedure, he mistyped the word “bigger,” accidentally posting a racial slur—then deleted it seconds before blacking out. This embarrassing episode opens his meditation on how social media has transformed political communication: amplifying authenticity, accelerating mistakes, and turning every user into both pundit and participant.

From Innovation to Addiction

When Pfeiffer joined the Obama White House, Twitter seemed like a harmless tech novelty. By 2012, it had rewritten politics. Reporters live-tweeted press briefings; strategies were measured in retweets. Obama’s staff hoped it would democratize voices—but it also compressed complex realities into short bursts of emotion. As Pfeiffer writes, “Twitter is a performance-enhancing drug for politics—it makes the good a little better and the bad much worse.”

Obama eventually embraced Twitter’s promise, launching the @POTUS handle and using humor and direct engagement to humanize leadership. Meanwhile, Donald Trump weaponized the platform, transforming it into what Pfeiffer calls “the world’s largest propaganda machine.” Trump’s commands, insults, and lies set daily media agendas. Television news followed his feed like a teleprompter. In short, the medium became the message.

Rules for the Modern Information War

Pfeiffer lays out survival guidelines for those navigating social media politics: tweet like a human, not a brand; break real news rather than commentary; don’t mistake virality for persuasion; and remember that authenticity outperforms outrage. He also warns media professionals that Twitter’s speed undermines accuracy—errors on the platform carry farther, faster, and longer than print corrections ever did. (He calls this “the infinite echo.”)

But Pfeiffer ends on hope. The same technology that spreads falsehoods can also mobilize resistance—as seen in the online organizing that fueled protests against Trump’s Muslim ban. In this way, social platforms are neither heroes nor villains—they reflect our collective intent. Pfeiffer’s challenge to you is to use them consciously, to build rather than destroy civic trust.

One of the most reflective parts of Pfeiffer’s book revisits the sobering truth that Barack Obama’s presidency unleashed both progress and backlash. Sitting with Obama aboard Marine One in 2014, Pfeiffer recalls the president saying quietly, “I was elected about a decade too soon.” Obama believed America’s racial and cultural transformation was inevitable—but his face became its lightning rod. His election awakened a sleeping faction of white grievance that the Republican Party cynically nurtured into Trumpism.

The Party of No

Pfeiffer details how, from 2008 onward, GOP leaders like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner resolved to block everything Obama proposed—not because of policy disagreements, but to delegitimize his presidency. Even bipartisan gestures (like appointing Republican officials to his cabinet) were rebuffed. Republicans realized their base loathed Obama more than they loved governance. Policy ceased to be the party’s motivator; outrage became its organizing principle. “American democracy depends on two functioning parties,” Pfeiffer writes. “We only have one.”

The Fever That Wouldn’t Break

After Obama’s 2012 reelection, he hoped Republicans’ “fever” would cool. Instead, their rage deepened. Pfeiffer chronicles debt-ceiling standoffs, government shutdowns, and racialized conspiracies from Tea Party radicals. Faced with paralysis, Obama adopted what Pfeiffer calls the “Pen and Phone” strategy—using executive orders to advance progress without Congress. The Republicans labeled this tyranny, even as they had abdicated governing altogether. This obstruction normalized chaos as politics.

Hope Is a Strategy

Amid the vitriol, Obama held fast to a belief in ethical leadership. Pfeiffer contrasts this with Trump’s ethos of cynicism—where lying is both tactic and worldview. He reminds readers that “going low” may feel tempting when the other side abandons decency, but Democrats succeed only when they “go high.” Moral clarity, not imitation, wins history’s verdict. As Michelle Obama said, “When they go low, we go high.” Pfeiffer extends that into a political methodology: doing the right thing is not weakness—it’s the long game of legitimacy.

“Go high” is not naïve optimism; it’s discipline. Like the Obama campaign’s culture, it’s a commitment to sanity in a world of circus politics. It’s what Pfeiffer means by the title Yes We (Still) Can: that progress requires both persistence and faith, even when hope feels like the hardest choice.

After charting how America descended into disinformation and division, Pfeiffer ends with a call to rebuild—not by mimicking Trumpism, but by reimagining how truth, media, and participation work in the twenty-first century. The future, he argues, belongs to citizens and storytellers who can wield technology ethically and rekindle civic engagement among younger generations.

Reclaiming the Message

Pfeiffer insists Democrats must retake ownership of the “working-class story”—of all races. The winning message, he argues, is rooted in fairness: government should reward work, not wealth, and fight corruption wherever it appears. This echoes Obama’s 2008 theme of empowering ordinary people against entrenched power, reframed for a generation grappling with debt, inequality, and climate crisis. He calls for moral populism over demagoguery—a vision where progressives inspire participation rather than weaponize resentment.

The New Progressive Media

Out of his podcast Pod Save America and the Crooked Media network, Pfeiffer sees a blueprint: build platforms where civic engagement meets entertainment. Unlike Fox News, which manipulates outrage for ratings, these outlets mix humor, honesty, and activism. They show that progressivism can be loud and fun without becoming cruel or fake. Media, Pfeiffer concludes, is no longer about informing; it’s about mobilizing.

Hope as the Operating System

Pfeiffer ends as he began—with Obama’s belief that hope is not a mood but a discipline. His closing chapters remind you that cynicism is a luxury democracy can’t afford. In times of crisis—whether in politics, media, or your personal life—the most radical thing you can do is still believe change is possible and act accordingly. That’s the final lesson of Obama’s era, and the message Pfeiffer carries forward: you can’t fact-check your way out of despair, but you can organize your way into hope.