Obama returns to campaign trail for Dems
NEWARK, N.J.— Former President Barack Obama on Thursday rallied at the side of his former ambassador to Germany, who is running for governor in New Jersey, and called on the crowd of Democrats to reject politics of “division” and “fear.”
Obama did not mention President Trump in his speech while standing next to Democratic nominee Phil Murphy, but he told the crowd at a Newark hotel that “you can send a message to the country and you will send a message to the world that we are rejecting a politics of division. We are rejecting a politics of fear.
“Some of the politics we see now we thought we put that to bed,” Obama said. “That’s folks looking 50 years back. It’s the 21st century, not the 19th century.”
The event for Murphy marked the first time the former president stepped back into the political spotlight since leaving the White House in January.
Obama later spoke at a packed rally in Richmond, Va. to support Democrat Ralph Northam in his gubernatorial campaign against Republican Ed Gillespie.
While Murphy is widely expected to beat New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s lieutenant governor, Republican Kim Guadagno, the Virginia contest between Northam, the sitting lieutenant governor, and Gillespie is neck-andneck.
Those two Nov. 7 races will be considered a bellwether of Democrats’ strength in the face of Trump’s victory last year.
Obama’s appearance should serve to unify Democrats, who are out of power in the federal government and in most statehouses across the country, experts say.
Obama’s popularity is still undeniable. In an August NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 51 percent of Americans said they have a favorable opinion of Obama, while 35 percent had a negative opinion. In the same poll, 36 percent said they had a positive opinion of Trump and 52 percent had a negative opinion.
Obama has publicly defended his policies that Trump and the GOP-led Congress have set out to dismantle: the Affordable Care Act and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed immigrants brought into the country illegally as children to be temporarily shielded from deportation.