September 28, 2016 | No Comments
First Lady Michelle Obama warned college-age voters in Philadelphia on Wednesday against casting a protest vote in November’s presidential election, telling them that a ballot for anyone other than Hillary Clinton would only help Donald Trump win the White House.
As she did in her speech two weeks ago at George Mason University in Virginia, the first lady laid out exactly how close her husband’s 2012 reelection campaign had been in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and Virginia. She said voters under 30 had provided the margin of victory in all four states and added that in Pennsylvania, the president won reelection by a margin of just 17 votes per precinct.
Obama said that with such a tight per-precinct margin, young voters could once again swing the presidential election in 2016. But she cautioned them that casting a vote out of frustration with the major-party candidates, or refusing to vote at all, could hand the White House to Trump.
“Here’s the truth: either Hillary Clinton or her opponent will be elected president this year. And if you vote for someone other than Hillary, or if you don’t vote at all, then you are helping to elect Hillary’s opponent,” she told the crowd inside La Salle University’s Tom Gola Arena. “Remember it’s not about voting for the perfect candidate. There is no such person. In this election it is about making a choice between two very different candidates with very different visions for our nation. So the question is do you want Hillary Clinton to be your president, or do you want her opponent to be your president?”
The message was similar to one delivered by President Barack Obama earlier in the day in an interview with the Steve Harvey Morning Show, where he said, “if you don’t vote, that’s a vote for Trump,” and “if you vote for a third-party candidate who’s got no chance to win, that’s a vote for Trump.”
“The notion somehow that, ‘Well, you know, I’m not as inspired because Barack and Michelle, they’re not on the ballot this time, and, you know, maybe we kinda take it easy’ — my legacy’s on the ballot,” the president continued. “You know, all the work we’ve done over the last eight years is on the ballot.”
It was the second straight day that an Obama administration official has campaigned in Philadelphia on behalf of Clinton, after Vice President Joe Biden spoke at Drexel University on Tuesday. And like the vice president did a day earlier, the first lady took time during her speech to attack Trump for among other things, bragging during Monday night’s presidential debate that managing to avoid paying taxes made him smart and that taking advantage of the housing market collapse in 2007 was “good business.”
“So if a candidate is erratic and threatening, if a candidate traffics in prejudice, fears and lies on the campaign trail, if a candidate thinks that not paying taxes makes you smart or that it’s good business when good people lose their homes, if a candidate regularly and flippantly makes cruel and insulting comments about women, about how we look, how we act, well sadly, that’s who that candidate really is. That’s the kind of president they will be,” she said.