September 13, 2016 | No Comments
PHILADELPHIA — Next up: recreating that hug.
President Barack Obama was back here Tuesday, seven weeks and just a few miles from where he gave his big Democratic convention speech for Hillary Clinton — and most importantly for the campaign. He held her in a long, long embrace after she surprised the crowd on stage as he finished. He pointed to her. He kissed her on the head. All those good feelings you’re feeling about me, he was telling the crowd, pick it up and put it on her.
Front pages and cable news footage the next day looked like it had been produced right out of the Brooklyn HQ.
Now, according to people familiar with the matter, the White House and the Clinton campaign are deep in talks for how to make such a moment happen again, perhaps more than once, in the closing weeks before Election Day — and perhaps in the midst of early voting that’s about to kick off in states that Clinton’s looking to lock in well before Nov. 8.
“The time has come for me to pass the baton on,” Obama said to the crowd of over 6,000 on Tuesday afternoon, with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and its famous “Rocky” steps in the background. (Obama even at one point did a Rocky impression, saying that’s how he felt every time something went well for him in 2008, only to find Clinton coming up right behind him.) “But I know that Hillary is going to take it, and I know she’s going to run that race, and I know she’s going to finish that race.”
“I need you,” Obama said, “to work as hard for Hillary as you did for me.”
Obama will focus on four states: here in Pennsylvania, plus Ohio, North Carolina and Florida, with the possible addition of Iowa, depending on how much opportunity the Clinton campaign sees there as they finalize their map.
“He’s her most powerful ally right now,” said Mitch Stewart, Obama’s 2012 battleground states director.
That could put Obama on the road as much as two days per week, in addition to a heavy schedule he’s going to keep up making appearances on African-American radio and other non-traditionally political programs — he did two during the day Tuesday, one that airs here in Philadelphia and Detroit and the other that airs in Miami. The heavy media exposure would boost the Clinton campaign’s effort to pump up enthusiasm among all voters, and particularly the African-Americans, young people and the rest of the Obama coalition who so identify with him and remain wary of her.
“I am really into electing Hillary Clinton. This is not me going through the motions here,” Obama said in Philadelphia. “I really, really, really want to elect Hillary Clinton.”
The crowd cheered him at every turn, with Rep. Bob Brady (D-Penn.) warming up the thousands of Obama loyalists: “You heard those motorcycles back there—you know what that means?” Brady said.
That’s what happens when, according to the Washington Post/ABC News poll over the weekend, the president’s approval rating has now hit 58 percent.
“He certainly can have a galvanizing effect with the voters we know are with us and that we’ll be focused on turning out in the next several weeks,” said Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon on Tuesday morning, repeatedly referring to the 58 percent number.
If Clinton wins, she’ll not only win as the candidate with the highest negatives in history, but as the one who pulls off a feat that’s only happened once this century: a two-term president succeeded by a president of the same party.
“It’s hard for a party to pass the baton, but yet you have Obama’s numbers good, especially in the states that she needs to carry,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Poll.
Obama doesn’t need to have Clinton by his side to campaign for her, and most of the time won’t, as he continues to argue for her from the position of having run against her himself and now being convinced she should do the job. Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and running mate Sen. Tim Kaine will all be fanning out to campaign for her as the election hits crunch time, but none of them make as much of an impact in the local and national media as the president and the first lady, who’ll do her own first campaign event for Clinton on Friday in northern Virginia.
“One of the many virtues of him as a surrogate is that he commands attention unto himself, and he can drive cable with a solo appearance,” Fallon said. “It’s a multiplier effect for our campaign. You don’t need to pair him with the candidate to make his appearance resonate.”
The reason Obama works so well as he talks about working with Clinton during her time as his secretary of state, Fallon said, it that “all the attributes that for us credential her in a contest against a reckless temperament, unfit Donald Trump, he is uniquely qualified to speak to.”
He’s also better than anyone the Democrats have at taking the machete to Trump with a combination of jokes and jabs and obviously informed sense of what actually being president entails.
“He’s spent most of his life trying to stay as far away from working people as he could,” Obama said on Tuesday. “He wasn’t going to let you on his golf course. He wasn’t going to let you buy in his condo. And now suddenly this guy’s going to be your champion?”
Trump went on Russian state-sponsored television to “curry favor” with his “role model” Vladimir Putin, Obama said, just the latest departure of how he sees the country from how Republicans always have.
The Clinton Foundation, Obama said, helped people around the world. The Trump Foundation, Obama said, referring to the latest in a series of Washington Post reports, took other people’s money to buy gifts for himself, including a six-foot portrait that can’t be located.
“He had the taste not to go for the 10-foot version,” Obama conceded.
“There’s an alternate vision for this country that the president wants to make sure doesn’t take hold,” White House principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters flying here on Air Force One.
Obama’s been off in Asia as the race has taken off, stuck talking about the election only when asked about it in official press conferences and making a show of how he doesn’t want to talk about Trump anymore, he’s out of things to say. He does. He isn’t. It’s clearly been building in him the last few weeks, never more evident than when he finished his speech on a favorite topic (and the one that drew the biggest cheer): media criticism.
He mentioned Trump being graded on a curve, which he’s griped about before. He wasn’t done.
“Our standards for what’s normal has changed. Donald Trump says stuff every day that used to be disqualifying,” Obama said. “The press just gives up. And they just say, ‘Yeah, uh, OK.’”
He went right at a lie that’s central to Trump’s candidacy, that the Republican was opposed to the Iraq War from the start, despite the tape of him at the time on the Howard Stern show, first uncovered by BuzzFeed but ignored last week by Matt Lauer in the NBC candidate forum, saying he supported it.
“He wasn’t. But they just accept it,” Obama said.
That’s a contrast to Clinton, whom the president said “has been accused of everything you can imagine and has been subjected to more scrutiny, and what I believe is more unfair criticism, than anybody out here.”
There was even an apparently not self-conscious pause in the remarks as the president walked the crowd through instructions on how to not faint in the heat: “Everybody bend your knees. Drink some water.”
“It is good to be back on the campaign trail,” Obama said, taking in the crowd that was cheering for him as he tried to get them to cheer for her. “I could not be prouder of the leader we have nominated to take my place.”