Obama, the ‘hopey-changey guy,’ tries to close the deal for Harris

Elbahrain.net Exactly 16 years ago, an impossibly young-looking Barack Obama was barnstorming through Ohio on a bus tour, electrifying huge crowds and emphatically closing the deal on his thumping 2008 election victory.

On another October night on Thursday, the 63-year-old ex-president was back on stage, with a vast American flag for a backdrop, trying to do for Kamala Harris what she’s so far struggled to do herself — put away the 2024 election.

The snowy haired Obama had swapped Ohio, which ceased to be a closely contested presidential state as soon as he left the White House, for this year’s potentially decisive state, Pennsylvania. That the hope and change prophet of 2008 is still his party’s most effective political orator four presidential elections later is an indictment of Democrats. But the urgency of his message in Pittsburgh told a more immediate story — his nemesis Donald Trump may be poised for an Oval Office return.

when Bill Clinton took Obama’s woolly reelection pitch and created a rationale for voters weary of economic pain to send him back to the White House.

Obama on Thursday painted a searing picture of Trump as a malicious, ridiculous and incompetent menace, while trying to weave a rhetorical case for voters who are feeling economically insecure to vote for Harris, who is part of an incumbent administration, nonetheless.

“I am the hopey changey guy so I understand people feeling frustrated, feeling we can do better,” Obama said. “What I cannot understand is why anybody would think that Donald Trump will shake things up in a way that is good for you, Pennsylvania. I don’t understand that.”

Democrats are beginning to worry about Harris’ prospects
Obama’s impassioned appeal for Harris in a state that could doom her presidential hopes comes at a moment when Democrats are fretting that her early momentum after taking over the campaign from President Joe Biden has ebbed, leaving potentially the most critical general election in decades at best a toss-up with less than a month to go.

“He’s clear-eyed about how close this race is,” a source familiar with Obama’s remarks told CNN’s Kayla Tausche. The ex-president savagely mocked Trump, asking whether his successor had ever changed a tire or a diaper and condemning his single term and “mean and ugly” border policies.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris walks to board Air Force Two as she departs for New York, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on October 7, 2024.

Obama slams Trump over false hurricane conspiracy theories
The former president on Thursday accused Trump of violating basic American values. “Those didn’t used to be Republican and Democratic values. It used to be we’d have arguments about tax policy and foreign policy, but we didn’t have arguments about whether you should tell the truth or not,” he said.

He slammed Trump over his false claims that the Biden administration denied hurricane aid to Republicans. “You are going to have leaders who try to help and then you have a guy who will just lie about it to score political points and this has consequences,” Obama said. “When did that become OK?”

But the Trump campaign is not letting go of claims that were debunked even by many Republican state and local officials. “You’ve got a lot of people who could have been helped, a lot of lives that could have been saved, that weren’t, and there’s a lot of details to figure out,” Sen. JD Vance, the GOP vice presidential nominee, said Thursday.

An emerging strategy for Harris in the election endgame
Obama’s remarks were directed especially at traditional Republicans who may abhor Trump’s conduct and the male voters who form his power base.

Earlier, Obama had sought to shore up another traditionally Democratic constituency — Black men, CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere reported. At a Harris campaign office, Obama wondered whether the reticence of some “brothers” to support the Democratic nominee came down to sexism. “You’re thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is? Putting women down?” Obama said. “That’s not acceptable.”

Yet the former president can only do so much. He’s not on the ballot and for all his undimmed appeal to Democrats, he’s yesterday’s man. And in the past, his quintessential appeal has not always been transferable to other Democrats. He worked hard to elect Hillary Clinton, who was defeated in 2016. One big question now is whether Harris, who has been basing her campaign on generational change and her biography, can build on Obama’s critiques of Trump to make her own sharpened closing argument.