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Barack Obama jogs with ease on stage, climbs the stairs, waves, takes off his mask with “VOTE” written in white letters, votes, stands and smiles. Obama, who actually wanted to retire after the 2016 election to write books and film Netflix documentaries, is campaigning again.
The performance takes place at a drive-in movie theater in Orlando, Florida. It is an event to which supporters travel by car to maintain a minimum distance during the pandemic. It is broadcast live on the Internet. One more week and then the “most important election in our lives,” Obama says. Democrat Joe Biden is running against current Republican Donald Trump. Obama urges viewers to vote. “What we do in a week will continue to matter for decades,” he says.
Fear for American Democracy
It was not clear for long that he would play such an important role during the final stages of the election campaign. Obama remains one of the most popular presidents the United States has ever had. 124.3 million people follow him on Twitter. Trump, crazy about Twitter, has only 87.3 million followers on the platform. Obama knows how powerful his voice is. He just uses them very carefully. In the last three and a half years, he has rarely spoken out on his successor and even rarely attacked him personally. It didn’t fit his ideal of a presidential etiquette.
Obviously Obama has changed his mind. His Twitter timeline is lined with videos of appearances in various formats, small campaign announcements and tweets in which he shares inspiring stories from Biden supporters. A few days ago he made his first election campaign appearance at a rally in Philadelphia, then followed by an appearance in Miami, now he’s in Orlando. Obama visits the important undecided states. There is a reason for his change of mind: he is concerned about democracy in the United States of America.
In Orlando, Obama talks about the failures of the Trump administration during the crown pandemic. Trump complains that there is too much Covid after more than 220,000 Americans died and thousands of small businesses had to close. “He’s jealous of the press getting Covid,” Obama says mockingly. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said in an interview a few days ago that “we will not be able to control the pandemic.” Obama quotes him saying that they realized that the White House was not going to control the pandemic. “Winter is coming and they wave the white flag of surrender,” says Obama.
The unreasonable concern of the Obama team
Obama speaks direct, charismatic, insistent. He’s a very good speaker. He talks about Biden’s plans to fight the crown, about the fact that Trump barely paid income taxes (according to the “New York Times” it was only $ 750 in 2017), about Obamacare health insurance and that Trump is the most important president for blacks in America “since Abraham Lincoln” referred to them. At some point, the crowd begins to shout: “Si Podemos”, “Sí, we can” in Spanish. For a brief moment, it appears that Obama is campaigning for himself.
When he talks about his successes as president that day, he mentions Biden at the same time. Obama worked with Biden to ensure that people with pre-existing conditions can purchase insurance. He and Biden would have created more jobs than Trump.
According to a New York Times article from June this year, the Obama team was concerned whether Obama could outshine Biden if he acted too much. That is one of the reasons why he had not interfered much in the electoral campaign up to that point. One of Biden’s team is said to have responded “outshined us.”
“That is what is at stake. Our democracy.”
Anyone watching his speech at the Democratic Party Conference in late August could guess that Obama would play a bigger role. When he nominated Joe Biden as his vice president twelve years ago, he couldn’t have known that he would find “a brother” in him. He spoke about the importance of freedom of the press and that political opponents are not enemies. “I ask you to believe in your own responsibility as citizens to ensure that the fundamental pillars of our democracy are preserved. That is what is at stake. Our democracy,” he said at the time.
“We have to choose as we have never chosen before”
Obama sounds liberated these days, he seems to take some pleasure in finally being able to publicly reproach his successor for everything that, according to various media outlets, he has been thinking since the 2016 elections. That Trump does not take the office seriously, that he spreads theories of conspiracy and lies several times a day. “We would not accept if a soccer coach did that, why should we accept it if the President of the United States did?” He asks. Obama is sharp in his attacks on Trump, sharper than Biden, who is careful to present himself as a man of cohesion.
That Obama takes his concern for American democracy seriously is also evident from the Orlando appearance. In the past four years, the worst impulses of Americans had come to light. But also the best, for example, when millions of Americans took to the streets together for Black Lives Matter. “America is a good and decent place,” he says, and asks people to remember what America is all about, that is, anyone can do it, no matter where they are from. “We have to choose as we have never voted before,” he says aloud to his supporters.
When he’s done, he stays on stage for a moment. Say hello a few times, smile. His appearances are like brief moments in memory of 2008 and 2012. When Obama’s name was on the ballot. “Like a breath of fresh air,” someone wrote on Twitter afterward.
