CNN
—
A few years into his political career, Barack Obama followed Bruce Springsteen on stage at a massive rally beneath the Cleveland skyline and declared, “The insurrection is coming.”
That promise, which mimicked the rock icon’s hit song, was realized days later when Obama won the 2008 presidential election.
The band reunited Thursday night in Georgia. The former president and boss, now 63 and still the most persuasive figure in the Democratic Party, was trying to push Democratic candidate Kamala Harris over the line in a critical battleground state.
Springsteen declared that Harris was “running to be the 47th President of the United States” before belting out “Land of Hope and Dreams.” Donald Trump is about to become America’s tyrant. He doesn’t understand this country, its history, or what it means to be an American. ”
President Obama cited a recent interview in which former White House chief of staff John Kelly, the Republican candidate, described the 45th president as an ambitious dictator, saying he would not serve generals like those who surrounded Adolf Hitler. He said he wanted to. President Trump denied the report Thursday. “I never said that,” he said in Las Vegas.
But Obama warned that “just because he’s acting stupid doesn’t mean his presidency isn’t dangerous.” He went on to say, “What I want to explain is that a good rule of thumb in politics is not to say you want to do something like Hitler. …But that’s not how Donald Trump thinks. It’s useful because it gives us a window into what’s going on.”
Harris recalled attending President Obama’s first presidential campaign launch in Springfield, Illinois, in 2007 to a large crowd in the Atlanta suburb of Clarkston.
“I went there to support this brilliant young senator who is running for president of the United States,” she said. “Millions of Americans were uplifted and inspired not only by Barack Obama’s message but also by his leadership style, which sought to unite us rather than divide us.”
But a sense of impending change danced in the frigid air that February morning, heading into the final vote amid Democratic fears that Obama’s nemesis Trump was attempting to regain power. Amidst the grueling work, this year is lacking.
And with Obama’s return to the spotlight, 12 years after his last election victory, there are questions about whether he has the political power to bring down the former and perhaps future president. There is.
President Obama is motivated and ready.
President Obama once again feels the “fierce sense of urgency of the moment.” The 44th president has logged more campaign miles than at any time since leaving the White House nearly eight years ago. She has implored voters from Pittsburgh to Tucson to Las Vegas to support Harris, and by the end of the week her campaign’s onslaught will reach all seven battleground states.
“We don’t need to see an older, stupider Donald Trump with no guardrails,” President Obama said in Detroit this week. “America is ready to turn the page. We’re ready to tell a better story.”
President Trump was furious at President Obama’s harsh mockery, which led him to claim that the once young prophet of hope looked “exhausted” and “a little older.” A 78-year-old man talking about his gym rat rival is quite an extravagance.
But the country’s first black president, who once hailed his contemporaries as “a people of impossible hope,” seems less optimistic as Americans prepare for their third consecutive verdict on President Trump. .
The restrained anger of Thursday night’s speech and his heated engagement this week indicate that the November election is not just a race for Harris. It’s a fight that will show if anyone is still listening to him.
It is often said that Obama’s legacy is at stake in this election, but it is true that in his new term, Trump overturned the Affordable Care Act and implemented the economic and climate change policies that Obama held as vice president. may take on a new challenge of eradicating the reform of President Joe Biden was introduced as the next step in a three-decade Democratic project.
This election may represent the final showdown between Obamaism, a racially diverse, multigenerational, grassroots movement for change, and the reactionary politics of Trumpism.
But more than that, these days Obama sounds like he’s trying desperately to convince his audience that his life’s project of political change is possible and that democracy remains the vessel for it. .
“Who you vote for matters, not because it changes all the problems we have. No president, no vice president, no senator, no governor can solve every problem.” President Obama spoke this week in Madison, Wisconsin. “We can’t eliminate poverty overnight. We’re not going to change race relations right away. We come from a place of history, and change takes time.”
The man who once told a swooning crowd, “We are the change we want,” had a much more realistic pitch: “Sometimes we expect too much.” “I think we are doing so, but I will be disappointed if everything is not resolved soon.”
Obama’s vitriolic attitude toward Trump, her knack for structuring the stakes of the election, and her ability to make a far more convincing case for Harris’ election than she has ever managed on her own are attributable to his political skill. shows that it is not declining. He’s paying it forward in the same way former President Bill Clinton did to boost Obama’s re-election bid in 2012.
That helped his fans accept Harris, who is just three years younger than the 60-year-old Obama, as the next recipient of the torch.
Kristen Rowland, a high school teacher in Oakland County, Michigan, was filled with nostalgia as she waited to meet President Obama in Detroit, wearing a black 2008 campaign shirt to commemorate the moment.
“He instilled a hope in America that perhaps didn’t exist before,” Roland said. “I think he set the stage for someone like Kamala to come in and maybe fulfill some of the promises that he made,” Rowland said, adding that Harris was in the battleground state of Michigan. He said he doesn’t know if Trump will beat him, but watching thousands of people line up to see Obama made him more hopeful than at any point this election season.
“If he trusts her, other people will trust her too,” Roland said.
At his rallies, President Obama makes positive claims about Harris, whom he first met 20 years ago, but spends much of his time making negative claims about Trump.
He tries to make sense of this moment, repeating one of his classic lines over and over: “Don’t boo, vote.”
“I understand why people want to shake things up. I understand that, but what I don’t understand is why anyone would think Donald Trump would shake things up in their favor. Because there is absolutely no evidence that this man cares about anyone but himself,” President Obama said Thursday. As with all of Harris’ rallies, it’s Georgia night.
Mr. Obama’s words had a familiar preaching tone, which suited Janabas Davis, a Detroit barber who came to see Mr. Obama to reminisce about a bygone political era.
Davis has heard a lot of skepticism about Harris, but believes Obama’s message will allay fears and concerns about electing the first woman president.
“We still listen to him. That’s why we have people like this here,” Davis said. “When he was president, I felt like he was calming the nation down. With Kamala coming out, it’s now the turn of black women. I think it can happen. I think it should happen. I think so.”
But despite his political savvy, Mr. Obama was at times unable to convey his unique charm to other leaders. Despite campaigning for Hillary Clinton in the final stages of the 2016 campaign, he was unable to elect her to the presidency. And the fact that, 16 years after his first election as president and eight years after handing over the White House to Trump, he remains a prominent political rock star for the Democratic Party speaks volumes about Obama’s aura. That says a lot about the Democratic Party.
Harris faces a far more difficult environment than then-Sen. Obama encountered it in 2008. He was a rebel after eight years of a Republican presidency were marred by George W. Bush’s failures in Iraq and New Orleans, leaving the country desperate for change. This year’s Democratic candidate is an incumbent from an unpopular administration. President Obama’s young voters who were intoxicated with hope in 2008 are entering middle age struggling with the same high food prices and mortgage rates that President Trump’s voters are experiencing. And while Springsteen is a working-class American poet, many blue-collar voters have left the Democratic Party in recent elections in favor of President Trump’s populist Republican Party.
There’s also the question of whether big-name endorsements from celebrities like the former president, Springsteen, and Beyoncé, who will join Harris at the end, will really make a difference. Springsteen is no novice in politics. In 2004, he headlined a large rally for John Kerry in Madison, Wisconsin, before the Democratic candidate lost to Bush. So while big events like Thursday’s flashbacks to old rock and political anthems, there’s no guarantee they’ll work politically.
Bruce Springsteen slams Trump while urging Americans to vote for Harris
CNN political commentator and Republican operative David Urban, who orchestrated President Trump’s momentous victory in Pennsylvania in 2016, attended a rally in Philadelphia on the eve of that year’s election in which Obama, Springsteen, and It reminded me of a star-studded rally supporting Clinton, including Jon Bon Jovi.
“Guess what happened the next day? We taunted Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania. …If I were (in Georgia), I might go listen to Bruce Springsteen tonight. But I don’t think November 5th has anything to do with it,” Urban told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
Still, the fact that this election could be decided by a few thousand votes in several states means that even if Obama and Springsteen draw a small number of people to the polls, the outcome could change. It means having sex. And the former president is about to be lifted by the family’s biggest political star. Former first lady Michelle Obama, who has become an icon for women, will be campaigning with Harris in Michigan on Saturday.
At the moment, high-profile events are more focused on getting voters to the polls than on changing the mindset of party voters. That’s the message President Obama learned 16 years ago. And he confirmed it the first time he took the stage Thursday.
“Go vote and return your absentee ballot,” he yelled.
