You've read that right. Barack Obama, who did everything in his power to "fundamentally transform" the United States, who spent eight years trying to drag America kicking and screaming as far left as possible, is seeing the death spiral that the left has entered and is advising them to take a step back and moderate themselves.
This is why Obama won in 2008 and again in 2012. He is very smart, and knows exactly what he is doing. Now, I happen to think he's a reptile, but he's a very smart reptile who knows how to read the pulse of the people and to manipulate them, just like Donald Trump.
In America the Democrat Party has taken a very, very hard left turn since losing bigly in 2016. They have embraced full socialism and speak proudly about wanting to import the entire third world and promptly putting them on welfare, a plan that will require more money than the entire world's economy. They are crucifying one another in a never ending purity spiral and alienating the people whom they must court to win the election. The Democrat candidates are doing nothing short of seeing who can lose the 2020 election the fastest.
Obama is trying, desperately, to "educate" the Democrats and the "full communism now" people, that what they are doing fundamentally cannot and will not work, and if they want to win elections in the future they have to make compromises with reality. He literally says that the Democrats "Have to be rooted in reality." They have gone off the deep end and have lost their minds. They need to take the advice of someone who has won two presidential elections and stop trying to burn America to the ground.