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Nobody gets under Donald Trump’s skin like Barack Obama

Appearance by Democratic Party’s ageless daystar of liberty at Pittsburgh rally was a wistful look back at past that seemed infinite with hope

Former US president Barack Obama has hit out at his predecessor Donald Trump while campaigning for Kamala Harris in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
Keith Duggan's picture
Keith Duggan Washington Correspondent
Fri Oct 11 2024 - 07:24

Into a big gym in Pittsburgh, he shimmered: the Democratic Party’s ageless daystar of liberty, entirely silver headed now but still recognisable as the skinny kid with the funny name who entranced his party at a convention speech all of 20 summers ago and who drifts through middle age now as the most potent American presidential symbol of the young century.

Barack Obama’s appearance at a party rally on Thursday night was, for Democrats, at once a wistful look back at a not-so-distant past that seemed infinite with hope and possibility and a more anxious wish that his return to the campaign stumps could give Kamala Harris the vital edge in a suffocatingly close election.

It was all so familiar. The blue, open neck shirt. The limby energy. The big, delighted smile. The ecstasy on the faces in the crowd. Bono himself on the loudspeaker, singing City of Blinding Lights. Millions of Democrats, out there across the cities and prairies must have sighed. Was it really impossible to turn back time? Obama gave Bob Casey, the Democratic senator locked in a tight battle for re-election, a high five and then he was behind the microphone.

“Are you fired up?,” he asked.

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“Are you ready to go?”

Just like that, it was clear he’d lost none of it. Nothing of the unrivalled power to tell a story that caught the broader narratives of a bitter election defined by complex ideological questions in a way that seemed simple and true. He rolled into it in that distinctive voice, from loving Pittsburgh to the Steelers to pancakes to a businesslike instruction to Pennsylvanian Democrats to vote for their auditor general, their attorney general, their state treasurer and Casey himself. And then he got to the heart of the message.

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“You’ve already heard tonight: this election’s gonna be tight. Because ... there’s a lot of Americans who are still struggling out there, still striving to make life better for themselves, their families, for their kids,” he told them before taking them back over the past four years. “We had a historic pandemic wreaking havoc on communities and businesses. Disruptions from the pandemic then caused prices to spike, and that put a strain on family budgets. And in many ways it’s felt like the aspirations of working people have taken a back seat to the priorities of the rich and the powerful. So, I get it, why people are looking to shake things up. I mean, I am the hopey-changey guy. So I understand people feeling frustrated, feeling we can do better. What I cannot understand is why anybody would think that Donald Trump will shake things up in a way that is good for you, Pennsylvania. I don’t understand that. Because there is absolutely no evidence that this man thinks about anybody but himself.”

It is said that of all the Democratic speakers, nobody gets under the skin of Donald Trump like Obama, the man he succeeded as president. It is easy to understand why. The New York businessman has managed to whip up an extreme cult of devotion but nobody generates adoration like Obama. They hang off his every word. His popularity continues to transcend party division and loyalty. No president, with the arguable exception of John F Kennedy, has dazzled the public and press so much and his return to the campaign in Pittsburgh reflected that.

Three days after Trump’s election, the Princeton historian Julian E Zelizer was among a group of colleagues who gathered at his university for a conference on the presidential legacy of Obama.

It has seemed to many Democrats that the eight years since Trump took office were at least partly an attempt to erase as much trace as possible of the Obama era

“The mood among the scholars, who had just written papers about the underappreciated accomplishments of the Obama administration, was bleak,” he wrote in a New York Times opinion piece published in November 2016 and titled ‘The Wreckage of Obama’s Legacy.’

“We were discussing how quickly his programs would be dismantled, now that Republicans controlled the White House and Congress. Donald J Trump’s stunning election appeared to many to be a direct repudiation of the essential meaning of 2008, when the country elected its first African-American president. Mr Obama was a great policymaker, but not a great party builder. In the face of Republican intransigence, he still managed to get things done. But the strategies that made him successful – passing legislation by the narrowest partisan majority, refraining from boasting about what his reforms accomplished and, in the end, falling back on executive orders – are exactly what make his legacy so vulnerable.”

And it has seemed to many Democrats that the eight years since Trump took office have at least partly been an attempt to erase as much trace as possible of the Obama era and that even as Trump campaigned against Joe Biden, first, and, now, against Kamala Harris, deep down some part of him and of the Maga movement will always be campaigning and raging against the man who returned to the stumps in Pittsburgh on Thursday.

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It is probably unfair to lay the blame at Obama for goading Trump into turning to politics during the humiliating roasting he put him through at the White House correspondents’ dinner all those years ago. But it was a crossing point. And even now, in Pittsburgh, Obama could not resist indulging what has always been a brilliant instinct for acerbic humour.

“The two-hour speeches word salad,” he said of Trump. “It’s like Fidel Castro – going on and on. The constant attempt to sell you stuff. Gold sneakers and a gold watch! A Bible! He got his name right there next to Matthew and Luke.”

At the Chicago Democratic convention turn by both Obamas on the Tuesday evening, it was through Michelle Obama’s speech that the public got a sense of the deep anger the couple must feel at everything the Republican candidate represents. That night in Chicago, Barack Obama was in big crowd mode. Here, in a more intimate setting, the sleeves rolled and the hands resting on the podium, he hot-wired himself into reviving the politician and human being he had been when the concept of an African-American president seemed fanciful, at best.

“Donald Trump was told that Mike Pence was in the Capitol about 40 feet from an angry mob shouting ‘Hang Mike Pence’. And his response was: ‘So what?’ ... If Donald Trump does not care that a mob might attack his own vice-president, do you think he cares about you? Pennsylvania, we don’t need four more years of that. We don’t need four more years of arrogance and bumbling and bluster and division. America is ready to turn the page. We are ready for a better story.”

Few American public figures have told that story like Obama. He got hearts racing and brows sweating and then he slowed it down and took the crowd back to his childhood. And they watched this man and at some point they must have wondered at the eight years since – the book writing and Netflix shows and the exceptional, almost unavoidable wealth his power of persona has generated and may have questioned if he has fully delivered on the promise he projected in the blinding months before 2008.

The debate on that will rage for decades. But returning the United States to a place of healthy discourse and honourable argument was Barack Obama’s final plea of the evening and he made a call to the Republicans out there, watching, listening.

“It used to be we had arguments about policy. But we didn’t have arguments about whether you should tell the truth or not. When did that become okay? When did we go along with that,” he asked, before returning to the essential message of optimism that marked his first coming.

“And together we will keep building a country that is more fair, more just, more free. That is our task. That is our responsibility. Let’s go do it. Thank you, Pittsburgh. Thank you, Pennsylvania.”