Er smiles. He waves. He claps. Barack Obama left his tie and jacket at home and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. “Hello Philadelphia,” Obama calls out to his fans in Philadelphia on Saturday night. The 44th US President intervened once again in the election campaign, three days before the midterm elections. Pennsylvania is one of the key states here.
“Make sure you vote, because in this election each and every one of us has to do our part. It’s very important,” Obama begins his speech. He sets the bar extremely high, morally charges the midterm elections on Tuesday, in which Biden’s Democrats are threatened with heavy losses.
“Fundamental rights are on the ballot. Truth and facts and logic and reason. Basic decency. Democracy itself is on the ballot,” Obama shouts.
Obama’s expectation management
During his nearly 40-minute speech, Obama repeatedly stressed how important the midterm elections are. He gives a short “history lesson” by recalling the (lossy) midterm elections during his presidency. Is this expectation management for Tuesday? Obama emphasizes that the Democrats in particular are working on the Midterms always difficult.
“I’m here to tell you that our democracy works like a team sport,” Obama shouts. A president can’t do much on his own, “our system isn’t built that way.” House and Senate are important. “The good news is that you have an excellent President in the White House at the moment,” Obama said in recognition of his successor. For Biden, that should be balm for the battered soul, possibly a consolation for a gloomy Tuesday.
Obama may be 61 now, but he’s still one of America’s great campaign rock stars. He is agile, although he often emphasizes his age. Obama likes to communicate, to interact with his audience. If, for example, the audience booed (e.g. after Obama said the name Trump), Obama shouted urgently at the crowd with a bit of mock anger: “Don’t boo! Go vote!”
Obama emphasizes Biden’s achievements for jobs, social systems and highly indebted former students, for climate protection. Yes, inflation is real. But what did the Republicans want to do about it? Tax cuts for the wealthy? social cuts? Obama inspires his several thousand listeners.
He cleverly picks up on the disappointment of many Biden voters in 2020. “The Democrats may not be perfect. I’m the first to admit that. I wasn’t perfect,” Obama exclaims. “We are all human. We all have weaknesses.” Most Republican politicians, on the other hand, no longer even pretend the rules apply to them. Obama invokes values like honesty, fairness, opportunity, hard work. “Go vote!” he demands.
It is Biden’s first joint campaign appearance as president with his pre-predecessor. Side by side they build up on the stage, hug each other.
The discrepancy between Obama and Biden could hardly be greater
But the discrepancy between the still very agile, rhetorically gallant Obama and the rather poor speaker Biden could hardly be greater. Sometimes one has the feeling that Obama is holding himself back in order not to let this gap appear so wide. Nevertheless, the moat is wide and deep.
Biden delivers his standard political speech to Obama, like the one with all sorts of nice words for the candidates in Pennsylvania. The President holds the microphone in his right hand and walks up and down the stage. “We all love Barack Obama,” Biden begins his 25-minute speech. He praises him as a “great president”, “historic”, as a “good friend”. Biden was Obama’s Vice President from 2009 to 2017. He is 19 years older than Obama.
The midterm elections on Tuesday are the “most important elections” in recent times. They would shape the “decades to come”. Isn’t that said before every election? Does Biden mean these Midterms are more important than the 2020 presidential election? Or 2024?
Unusually triumphant, Biden says that in 2020 voters not only ensured that Donald Trump (he now names his name) is now a former president, he was also “defeated” as president. In this election, not only social security would be up for vote, but also the right to vote. “There’s something else on the ballot,” says Biden: “the character.” According to Biden, Americans have “a choice between two very different visions of America.”
Biden repeats the misrepresentation that under his leadership “the federal debt” was halved. That’s not true, under Biden only net borrowing was halved. He does not mention the exceptional situation caused by Corona, nor when referring to the unemployment rate under Trump (6.4 percent) and himself today (3.7 percent).
While Biden is in his final sprint before the elections, he is receiving strong criticism from his own camp. Right-wing Democratic Senator Joe Manchin criticized Biden after he said he would shut down coal-fired power plants and rely more on wind and solar power in the future. Biden’s comments were “outrageous and unrealistic,” said Manchin, who hails from the coal state of West Virginia and is financially involved in the energy industry.
Manchin will not stand for election on Tuesday. Biden’s stance on coal energy is “one reason the American people are losing confidence in President Biden,” Manchin said. “It seems that his positions are changing daily, depending on the audience and current politics.”