Obama creates ‘new dimension’ of presidency
MIAMI — Something is missing from President Barack Obama’s list.
“Progress is on the ballot,” he said at a campaign rally here last week. “Tolerance is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Equality is on the ballot. Our democracy is on the ballot!”
It’s not as if Obama forgot that Hillary Clinton, the nominee he is campaigning for, is also on the ballot. It’s just that the election is about so much more for the outgoing head of state.
More than most presidents, Obama’s legacy rests in the hands of whoever follows him in office — Clinton, whose platform builds on his record, or Donald Trump, who has vowed to rescind many of Obama’s actions. Thus, Obama is stumping more aggressively for a successor than any president has in modern U.S. history, claiming an unprecedented platform to extol his years in the White House.
He has revived his considerable campaigning skills to sell both Clinton and his own record with the feel of a man on a victory lap, vindicated by his increasing popularity and what he sees as a mission to truth-squad the GOP message of the past eight years.
One of Obama’s main campaign tasks has been to tie Republicans to their nominee, who has been reluctantly embraced by some in his party, outright shunned by others over his divisive candidacy.
Obama has appeared to relish explaining his view that Republicans helped give Trump his opening by their consistent opposition to the president and sitting on the sidelines while Trump amplified the lie about where Obama was born.
Obama mocked Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s contortions this year, when Rubio went from a GOP primary opponent who tried to bait Trump by making implications about the size of his genitals to a supporter of Trump once he secured the party’s presidential nomination.
“Republican politicians and far-right media outlets had just been pumping out all kinds of toxic, crazy stuff,” Obama said last week in Miami, barely keeping his voice from cracking into laughter. “And there were a lot of politicians, like Marco Rubio, who know better, but they just looked the other way.” Trump, he said, “didn’t come out of nowhere.”
He wailed with similarly obvious glee against Rep. Joseph Heck of Nevada, a Republican running for Senate, saying in North Las Vegas on Sunday that now that Trump’s poll numbers have “cratered,” Heck is distancing himself.
“Too late!” Obama said. “You don’t get credit for that.”
Obama, largely sidelined in the 2014 elections by wary Democrats, is starting to exhibit some of the spark of his historic 2008 campaign. He recorded TV or radio ads for three Democrats running for governor, eight for Senate and 10 for the House. He attended 21 fundraisers for Democratic congressional and governors committees and five for individual candidates. He weighed in on behalf of 150 Democrats running for state legislatures.
“Obama’s vigorous campaigning for Hillary Clinton is a new dimension of the modern presidency,” said Robert Schmuhl, professor of American studies and journalism at the University of Notre Dame. “What Obama is doing this fall makes him stand out from his predecessors in a vivid and distinctive way.”
This week alone, Obama is campaigning at least four days. After the stop in Las Vegas, he headed to California to raise funds Monday outside San Diego and Tuesday in Los Angeles, and he will rally for Clinton on Friday in Orlando, Fla.
And he resurrected an old character from his 2008 stump speech — Cousin Pookie, the lazy fictional relative who hasn’t gotten off the couch to vote in several elections.
“Don’t boo, vote!” he told the crowd in Miami. “And get your friends to vote! Get Uncle Joe to vote! Get Pookie to vote! And Javier to vote!” — the last part a twist added for 2016, in which Latino voters, expected to make up 12 percent of the electorate, are more crucial to Democratic turnout than ever.
Trump has begun to complain that he is looking around for the commander in chief.
“I’d like to see him in the White House working instead of campaigning for ‘Crooked Hillary,’ ” Trump said at a rally Monday in St Augustine, Fla.
Obama’s legacy — on health care, climate and other progressive priorities — is at the heart of Democrats’ case. “I ran,” Clinton said recently, “because I really believe that we need to build on the progress that we have made under President Obama.”