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The two events Obama headlined in predominantly Black cities -- first in Flint, Michigan, and later in Detroit -- looked to drive home the point that Democrats can't take this election for granted after depressed turnout four years earlier doomed Hillary Clinton in the state. Obama used both events, the first time the duo has been on stage together with either one of them on a presidential ticket since 2012, to focus on Biden's character, using it to draw a stark contrast to Trump.

Obama's remarks included blistering rebukes of Trump -- including mocking his focus on crowd sizes and belittling his economic achievements -- but the events stood out from earlier Obama appearances because of the way the former President touted Biden's character.

"Joe Biden is my brother. I love Joe Biden. And he will be a great president," Obama said in Flint, noting that while he didn't know Biden well when he selected him to be his running mate, he learned quickly that Biden treated everyone with "dignity and with respect."

"That sense of decency and empathy, the belief in hard work and family and faith, the belief that everyone counts, that is who Joe is and that is who he will be as president," Obama said, adding that Biden "made me a better president."

"He has got the character and the experience to make us a better country," Obama added. "And he and Kamala (Harris) are going to be in the fight, not for themselves, but for every single one of us. And we sure can't say that about the President we have got right now."

"Now he is accusing doctors of profiting off this pandemic. Think about that," Obama said incredulously. "He cannot fathom, he does not understand the notion that somebody would risk his life to save others without trying to make a buck."

In Detroit, Obama even provided a call back to his reelection bid, citing his oft used talking point that Republicans wanted to let "Detroit go bankrupt" during the economic downturn in 2009.

"You remember when Republicans were saying, 'Let Detroit go bankrupt?' You remember that," Obama asked. "Now they might as well just be saying, 'Let America get Covid. It is not our problem. You are exaggerating it.' That is what they are literally saying every day."

Obama also got personal when questioning why Trump was so fixated on the size of the crowds at his events.

"Does he have nothing better to worry about? Did no one come to his birthday party when he was a kid? Was he traumatized," Obama asked. "What is with crowds?"

Those mocking lines were central to Obama's argument against Trump and for Biden.

"You know when a country is going through a pandemic that's not what you're supposed to be worrying about," Obama said in Flint. "And that's the difference between Joe Biden and Trump right there. Trump cares about feeding his ego. Joe cares about keeping you and your family safe. And he's less interested in feeding his ego with having big crowds than he is making sure he's not going around making more and more people sick. That's what you should expect from a president."

The location of their first joint appearance underscored the central question looming for Democrats: Will the voters who did not turn out for Hillary Clinton cast a ballot for Biden?

Crowds of people waved signs and cheered along the roadside on a sunny Saturday afternoon as Obama and Biden arrived at their drive-in rally in Flint, which is in Genesee County. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton received 26,000 fewer votes there than Obama and Biden did in 2012.

The second rally on Saturday for Obama and Biden in Detroit is part of Wayne County, where the falloff among voters was even more dramatic. Clinton received 75,000 fewer votes there than the Democratic ticket did in 2012.

Taken together, the two counties alone represented 100,000 fewer votes in 2016 for Democrats. Trump carried Michigan by 10,704 votes.

"We can't afford to be complacent," Obama said. "Not this time. Not in this election. We got a little complacent in the last election."

Horns honked loudly in the parking lot as Obama implored Michigan voters to "turn out here like never before." He asked people to "imagine if 60% of us voted, if 70% of us voted?"

The coronavirus pandemic has dramatically upended the presidential race, with Democrats turning their campaign into a virtual one. Democratic officials don't question the decision, but say they do worry whether the lack of a traditional field program could fail to turn out Biden votes in the margins that they may need.

When Biden took the stage, he nodded to the fact that just hearing the former president speak could be cathartic for Democrats.

"Kind of reminds you how good it can be listening to him, doesn't it," Biden quipped.

The former vice president went on to echo Obama's remarks, especially when he slammed Trump in stark terms for falsely suggesting doctors make more money when coronavirus numbers are higher.

"He suggested falsely that they're inflating the number of Covid deaths to make more money," Biden said. "What in the hell is wrong with this man? Excuse my language, but think about it. It's perverted."

Biden added, "He may believe it because he doesn't do anything other than for money. The people of this nation have suffered and sacrificed for nine months, none more so than the doctors on the front lines and health care workers, and this president is questioning their character? Their integrity? Their commitment to their fellow Americans? It's more than offensive, it's a disgrace."

Obama's most pointed critiques of Trump this month have focused on the coronavirus and that continued on Saturday in Michigan.

"What's his closing argument? That people are too focused on Covid. He said this at one of his rallies. Covid, Covid, Covid, he's complaining," Obama said in Florida this week. "He's jealous of Covid's media coverage. If he had been focused on Covid from the beginning, cases wouldn't be reaching new record highs across the country this week."

On Saturday, Obama cast the election as critical for the future of the country. The former President noted that his speech was happening during the Michigan-Michigan State Football game, a heated rivalry where the Paul Bunyan Trophy was "on the line."

"But this Tuesday," Obama said. "Everything is on the line."

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

Excerpt from:
Obama: Trump cares about his ego, Biden cares about 'keeping your family safe' - CNN

Former President Barack ObamaBarack Hussein ObamaBerlin's Madame Tussauds places wax Trump in a dumpster ahead of election New poll shows Biden leading Trump by 6 points in North Carolina Who is 'Anonymous' author Miles Taylor? MORE went viral on Saturday after shooting a three-pointer while on the campaign trail for Democratic presidential nominee Joe BidenJoe BidenBiden leads Trump by 8 points nationally: poll Ivanka Trump raises million in a week for father's campaign On The Money: McConnell says Congress will take up stimulus package at start of 2021 | Lawmakers see better prospects for COVID deal after election MORE.

Obama made the shot just before leaving a gymnasium in Flint, Mich. While he walks out the door, he appears to tell campaign staff Thats what I do!

Shoot your shot. https://t.co/XdZz4dh82T pic.twitter.com/elpBmzu6hV

so this was absolutely insane pic.twitter.com/W4JL6LQZxq

Celebrities and social media users quickly shared the clip, with some hoping that the shot it a "good omen" for the former vice president ahead of the Tuesday election.

NBA star Lebron James, who has previously partnered with Obama and former first lady Michelle ObamaMichelle LeVaughn Robinson ObamaMichelle Obama releases her voting playlist Obama to young voters: Create 'a new normal in America' by voting for Biden Obama hits trail to help Biden, protect legacy MORE on voter initiatives, tweeted Now you just showing out now my friend!! Thats what you do huh??

Now you just showing out now my friend!! Thats what you do huh?? Ok ok I see. All cash! https://t.co/8pZzXLJIJj

My. Forever. President. https://t.co/F4hyPNthZx

A real president. https://t.co/Iq2Ct64UC9

Now let's make this Tuesday a #SwishNoBackboard!#VOTE https://t.co/HZl7JQyT65

SIR YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO GO THIS HARD https://t.co/NKUwm5sl7M

The clip was taken in the gymnasium of Flints Northwestern High School, Yahoo! Sports reported. Obama and Biden campaign together in Flint on Saturday at a drive-in rally, where the former president blasted President TrumpDonald John TrumpStephen Miller: Trump to further crackdown on illegal immigration if he wins US records 97,000 new COVID-19 cases, shattering daily record Biden leads Trump by 8 points nationally: poll MOREs reality show style of politics.

He hasnt shown any interest in doing the work or helping anybody but himself or his friends or treating the presidency as anything more than a reality show to give him the attention that he craves, Obama said. But unfortunately, the rest of us have to live with the consequences.

Continued here:
Obama shooting three pointer while campaigning for Biden goes viral | TheHill - The Hill

In the preface to the 2004 edition of Barack Obamas best-selling memoir, Dreams from My Father, the future President wrote that every Americaninner-city mothers and corn and bean farmers, immigrant day laborers alongside suburban investment bankershas a longing for her own story to be told. This week, The New Yorker published an exclusive excerpt from Obamas new memoir, A Promised Land, which will be released on November 17th. In the piece, Obama writes about the arduous legislative campaign to pass the Affordable Care Act, which has provided health care to tens of millions of Americans. Its a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the heavy lifting required to bring about health-care reform. (The excerpt is especially timely now, as deaths from the coronavirus surge again.) Part of what makes the piece so captivating is Obamas intimate and clear-eyed assessment of the ever-shifting obstacles to progress. His facility for granular but illuminating storytelling is a quality that hes carried with him since his early days as a community organizer in Chicago.

The New Yorker has published countless stories about Obama over the years, beginning even before he gained widespread national attention. The first major piece was a profile, written by William Finnegan, in 2004, and it ran two months before its subject, then a state senator in Illinois, delivered his electrifying keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. As Finnegan accompanies Obama on his daily routine, he notices the diversity of those eager to share their stories with the young politician. (The people who stopped to shake his hand were black and white, old and young, professors and car mechanics.) Obama, Finnegan observes, still has his hair cut at the same Black barbershop in Hyde Park that he wandered into upon first arriving in the city, twenty years earlier.

In The Conciliator, published three years later, Larissa MacFarquhar profiles Obama during his first Presidential campaign. Now a U.S. senator, Obama has staked his candidacy, she writes, on a concept that, in our current political climate, seems antiquatedthe prospect of national unity and bringing together the two halves of America that are profoundly divided. Many people, MacFarquhar notes, have described Obamas political style as professorial, yet she finds his manner less professorial than medicallike that of a doctor, who, by listening to a patients story without emotional reaction, reassures the patient that the symptoms are familiar to him.

In 2008, one week after the Presidential election, David Remnick published The Joshua Generation, a sweeping report on race and Obama's campaign. Obama hadnt predicated his bid for the White House on identity, Remnick writes, but he was able to make his ancestry a metaphor for his ambition to create a broad coalition of support, to rally Americans behind a narrative of moral and political progress. Obama understood the profound significance (and political potency) of his backgroundand he recognized the meaningful impact that earlier generations sacrifices had made on his own life. A couple of months later, in 2009, Mariana Cook published A Couple in Chicago, an interview with the Obamas about their relationship that she had conducted in the mid-nineties, accompanied by a photo portfolio. In a candid moment, Barack Obama divulges that it is the tension between familiarity and mysterythe ability to retain some sense of surprise or wonder about the other personthat makes their marriage work.

In 2016, shortly after Hillary Clintons surprise defeat, Remnick published a piece about how Obama was reconciling his legacy with the ascendency of Donald Trump. The 2016 Presidential campaign was personal for Obama, Remnick observed. The day after the election, Obama told staffers in the Oval Office, For some of you, all youve ever known is winning. But the older people here, we have known loss. And this stings. This hurts. Remnick offers a compelling look at Obamas appraisal of his successor and his thoughts on what the election means for the country.

In addition to our coverage of Obama and his Administration, the magazine has also published multiple pieces on the origins of the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) and the long road to health-care reform. Were bringing you several of these stories today, including Ezra Kleins piece on shifting political positions on individual mandates and Malcolm Gladwells review of a comprehensive history of the A.C.A. We hope that you enjoy the excerpt from Obamas memoir in this weeks issue, and that youll take some time to delve into our additional coverage of his groundbreaking Presidency and its impact.

The story behind the Obama Administrations most enduringand most contestedlegacy: reforming American health care.

Speaking at a church in Selma, Obama was not a patriarch and not a prophet but the prophesied. Im here because you all sacrificed for me, he said.

In 1996, Barack and Michelle Obama took part in a photography project on couples in America.

How the son of a Kenyan economist became an Illinois everyman.

Obama calls Americas founding a grand compromise: compromise, for him, is not an eroding of principle for the sake of getting something done but a principle in itselfthe certainty of uncertainty, the fundament of union.

Inside a stunned White House, the President considers his legacy and Americas future.

How Republicans turned against the individual mandate after supporting it for two decades.

The battle over whether to repeal, replace, or repair the Affordable Care Act continues to rage on.

How health-care reform went wrong.

Read more from the original source:
Barack Obama in The New Yorker - The New Yorker

Obama is poised to return to the campaign trail here on Wednesday, making his first in-person appearance in his effort to help Joe Biden in the waning days of his bid for the White House. If the election of Trump was a reaction to the Obama presidency, the November race offers another opportunity to take the country's measure of the men.

"Former presidents tend not to delve too deeply into politics and certainly not the politics of their successors," David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to Obama, said in an interview. "I think that was his plan, but Trump changed that plan."

The campaign stop by Obama is the first in a handful of visits to battleground states where voting is already underway, where Obama will try and rally support for Biden, particularly trying to boost enthusiasm among Black men, Latinos and younger voters.

"He doesn't view it as a personal grudge match with Trump," said Axelrod, a CNN contributor. "He views it as an existential matter for the country and for democracy."

It's been 20 years since Obama lost an election -- at least one with his name on the ballot.

Yet his record is far less successful when he is not a candidate himself, a point illustrated most recently in 2016, when he campaigned aggressively for Hillary Clinton and in 2010 and 2014, when he suffered the same fate most sitting presidents do when their party endures a midterm-election drubbing.

Obama's appearance here in Philadelphia, following a series of virtual campaign events for Biden throughout the summer, will once again test the power of his appeal and reveal whether his popularity is transferable -- even to his friend and former partner in the White House.

"I trust him to be a great president," Obama said in a video message Tuesday night on Twitter. "He's different. He's on the right side of the issues. He'll get the job done."

Questions over whether a Biden presidency would effectively be a third Obama term have long ago been overtaken by a broad desire to defeat Trump from all wings of the Democratic Party. The policy differences aired during the primary fight -- from which Obama intentionally worked to keep his distance -- have been set aside, for now at least.

Two weeks before Election Day, Obama is injecting himself squarely into not only the presidential campaign, but also key contests that could help Democrats win control of the Senate. He's appearing in four separate television ads for candidates in Maine and Michigan, South Carolina and Georgia, with other contests likely to be added.

"Make sure if Joe Biden wins," Obama said in one spot, "he'll have a Senate ready to work with them to move our country forward."

The demand for Obama is remarkably high, with some Democrats quietly wondering why he hasn't been even more visible during this high-stakes campaign season, especially after he traveled extensively for Clinton in the closing months of the 2016 election.

"In terms of his value, it's been smart not to overuse him," Axelrod said. "They've been using him in targeted digital appeals to constituencies that Democrats need to arouse in this election: young people and people of color, who did not come out in the numbers that Hillary Clinton had hoped four years ago."

Biden, who speaks regularly with Obama, dismissed questions about whether the former President has been sufficiently active in this race.

"He's doing enough for our campaign," Biden told reporters last week. "He'll be out on the trail and he's doing well."

To be sure, Obama has picked his spots during the general election, but has steadily ramped up his efforts and his anti-Trump rhetoric. His comments about his successor may stand out, at least in the recent history of presidents, but Trump has targeted Obama like few others, including falsely questioning his American citizenship for years.

"George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators," he said, referring to the racist Alabama governor who ran for president in 1968.

A few weeks later, in his primetime address to the Democratic National Convention, Obama said he had hoped Trump "might show some interest in taking the job seriously" and "discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care."

"Donald Trump hasn't grown into the job because he can't," Obama said. "And the consequences of that failure are severe."

For the last four years, aides said, Obama has seen a large part of his role as being a unifying figure for the Democratic Party.

Yet there is no escaping the animosity and tension between Trump and Obama.

At his rallies, Trump continues to vilify Obama and his administration, offering no evidence to back up the unfounded accusations about spying on his campaign four years ago. Trump has repeatedly called for Obama to be indicted, which has fallen flat even to the Justice Department and Attorney General Bill Barr.

As popular as Obama is among Democrats and many independent voters across the country, he also remains a motivating force for Trump's base. Given that history, the final two weeks of the campaign are poised to be highly combustible between the 44th and 45th presidents of the United States.

"He's always understood if he was out there constantly, people would want to turn this into a Trump-Obama race," Axelrod said. "It wouldn't be fair to Biden and it wouldn't be helpful to Biden."

But in the final stretch of the race, Biden aides say, Obama could be the most helpful closer of all.

Follow this link:
Obama returns to the campaign trail, rallying support for Biden in hopes of ending Trump's presidency - CNN

Speaking for the first time in person on the 2020 campaign trail in Philadelphia, former President Barack Obama did not hold back.

In a 36-minute speech delivered Wednesday to an audience seated in or standing by their cars, Obama slammed President Donald Trump as incapable of taking the job seriously. In between plugs for his former Vice President Joe Biden and Bidens running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, Obama repeatedly attacked Trumps record, starting with his handling of Covid-19.

At least 220,000 Americans have died. More than 100,000 small businesses have closed. Millions of jobs are gone. Our proud reputation around the world is in tatters, Obama said. Presidents up for reelection usually ask if the country is better off than it was four years ago. Ill tell you one thing, four years ago youd be tailgating here at the Lincoln instead of watching a speech from your cars.

Obama also pointed to statistics indicating that despite the US having its first identified cases around the same day, South Koreas per capita death toll is just 1.3 percent of what ours is.

Obamas visit to Pennsylvania underscored the importance the Biden campaign is placing on the state, and in mobilizing Black voters in the Philadelphia area particularly. Obamas approach: focus more on personality than policy.

While Obamas remarks also lauded Bidens health care plan and his foreign policy experience, the bulk of the speech focused on questions of character both Bidens and Trumps. Throughout the speech, Obama returned to that familiar theme, including his oft-used maxim: The presidency doesnt change who you are, it reveals who you are.

When he discussed his view of Trumps fitness for office, Obamas incredulity was palpable. As he recounted Trump retweeting conspiracy theories about whether SEAL Team Six actually killed Osama Bin Laden, he spoke to voters exhausted by the news cycle: You might be able to have a Thanksgiving dinner without having an argument if Trump loses this November.

And, look, this notion of truthfulness and democracy and citizenship, and being responsible, these arent Republican or Democratic principles, theyre American principles. Theyre what most of us grew up learning from our parents and our grandparents. Theyre not White or Black or Latino or Asian values, theyre American values, human values, and we need to reclaim them. We have to get those values back at the center of our public life.

At one point, he leveled his ire at those who have made excuses for what he views as intolerable behavior from the president. Obama also lamented that Trumps abnormal behavior distracts all of us from the policy ramifications of this administration. Ironically, in this speech, the former president seemed to be caught in that trap as well.

The Atlantic has reported that while Obama is alarmed about Trumps presidency, like many he has struggled with how to campaign during a pandemic. Wednesday nights speech and an accompanying stop to meet with community organizers seems to indicate hes found his answer. It will be one event in a two-week blitz where Obama will hit the trail, potentially adding joint appearances with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

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Obama rebukes Trump in his first stump speech of the 2020 election cycle - Vox.com