The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Trump vs. Obama in final weekend before midterms
Feuding from a distance, President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama exchanged tough words Friday as they sought to rally their parties’ base voters in the final days before the midterm elections.
Obama urged Democrats in Miami to turn against “a politics based on division” and expressed hope that “we will cut through the lies, block out the noise and remember who we are called to be.” Trump said in West Virginia he watched Obama’s speech aboard Air Force One, reminding some of his most loyal supporters of what he called Obama’s broken promises on health care, freedom of the press and global trade.
“Lie after lie, broken promise after broken promise, that’s what he did,” Trump said during an outdoor rally in Huntington, W.Va.
The competing campaign rallies, including Friday evening events in Georgia and Indiana, placed Trump in a virtual splitscreen moment with Obama and set the stage for weekend campaign events for both party heavyweights.
Trump covets the Senate seats held by Democrats Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, two states that the president won handily in 2016. Democrats, meanwhile, could make history by electing black governors in Florida and Georgia, and are turning to the nation’s first black president to help make their case.
After massacre, Parkland victims set to vote for first time
Nine months after 17 classmates and teachers were gunned down at their Florida school, Parkland students are finally facing the moment they’ve been leading up to with marches, school walkouts and voter-registration events throughout the country: their first Election Day.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student activists set their sights on the 4 million U.S. citizens turning 18 this year. They’re hoping to counteract the voter apathy that’s especially prevalent among the youth during midterm elections. Many of the activists, now household names like David Hogg, postponed college plans to mobilize young voters. Many of them support gun reform, in the name of their fallen classmates.
“It is kind of the culmination of everything we’ve been working for,” said senior Jaclyn Corin, one of the founders of the March For Our Lives group. “This is truly the moment that young people are going to make the difference in this country.”
Corin, who voted along with her dad at an early polling site on her 18th birthday, visited a halfdozen cities in just a handful of days last week, getting up at 3 a.m. to board planes.
It has been a whirlwind for the students, with celebrity support from Oprah to Kim Kardashian, a Time magazine cover, late night TV spots and book deals — but all of it misses their main target unless it motivates students to cast ballots by the end of Tuesday.