Obama to support Clinton on the U.S. election trail
The incumbent president’s popularity may help his would-be successor’s ratings
WASHINGTON— Canadians j ust glimpsed the test run of a man preparing to enter the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Barack Obama is hitting the trail. The incumbent president will appear at his first rally Tuesday with his would-be successor Hillary Clinton, just a few days after he showed an Ottawa audience some of the political payload he intends to unload on her rival.
It so happens that two of his most prolonged diatribes against Donald Trump in the pre-campaign phase came during joint news conferences where he was standing next to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — last week’s was the latest.
During events in Parliament, Obama set up contrasts that match the message of Clinton’s campaign.
Her latest TV ads highlight her lengthy record in public service, dating back to early advocacy for children and against segregated housing.
In what Obama himself later described as a rant, he said their mutual nemesis didn’t even merit being called a populist because he lacked any demonstrable history of actually caring about anyone but himself. “Somebody who has never shown any regard for workers, has never fought on behalf of social justice issues or making sure that poor kids are getting a decent shot at life or have health care . . . they don’t suddenly become a populist because they say something controversial in order to win votes,” Obama said.
“That’s not the measure of populism. That’s nativism or xenophobia or worse. Or it’s just cynicism.”
The president is significantly more popular than either of this year’s likely candidates.
His favourable rating is just above 50 per cent — 17 per cent more than Trump, and 11 per cent more than Clinton.
He’ll start using some of that political advantage Tuesday. Obama-Clinton and Trump will hold competing rallies in North Carolina.
It’s a state Obama won once, though he lost it in 2012 and still won a big majority in the electoral college.
“If Hillary Clinton can win the same states, then she’s the next president,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres of North Star Opinion Research, who was the pollster for Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign.