AP, Richmond,Virginia :
Marking an impassioned return to the campaign trail, former President Barack Obama made a plea Thursday night to Virginia voters to vote for Democratic candidates in the state’s first elections to be held since last year’s presidential contest.
“We need you to take this seriously, because our democracy is at stake, and it’s at stake right here in Virginia,” Obama told a crowd of 7,500 people at the Richmond Coliseum. “You can’t sit this one out.”
As Obama spoke, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam – the Democratic nominee for governor in the commonwealth – sat on a barstool next to the 56-year-old former two-term president, basking in the glow of the former president’s political star power.
On the presumption that many Virginian’s in the room or watching on TV might be tuning in to the off-year election for the first time, Obama spent a considerable portion of his half-hour speech detailing Northam’s résumé as an Army physician and a pediatric neurologist.
Virginia’s lieutenant governor is locked in a tight race with Republican Ed Gillespie, a longtime political operative who went from high-powered lobbyist to chairman of the Republican National Committee to White House adviser under George W. Bush.
Obama did not mention President Trump by name in his remarks, but numerous times offered broad critiques of the current state of American politics that were clearly an indictment of the current White House occupant.
“Folks don’t feel good right now about what they see. They don’t feel as if our public life reflects our best,” Obama said. “Instead of our politics reflecting our values, we’ve got politics infecting our communities.”
He also said that “our politics just seems so divided and so angry and so nasty,” adding that the nation’s challenge is to “recapture” a more generous and civic spirit, in what was a reminiscence of the hopeful moment in 2008 that swept him to power. “Yes We Can,” Obama said, revisiting the famous slogan from his presidential campaigns.
Obama did call Gillespie out directly, in particular the anti-Northam TV ad run by his campaign that shows heavily tattooed Latino gang members with the words “Kill, Rape, Control” in large letters on the screen.
“There’s some voice, ominous, and everything’s king of dark, and it’s letting you know that somebody’s coming to get you,” Obama said, mocking the ad. He joked that nobody really believed that a physician who’d operated on veterans and children was “suddenly … cozying up to street gangs.”
But he turned serious when he noted that Gillespie has “gone on record in the past condemning the very same kind of rhetoric he’s using now.”
“What he’s really trying to deliver is fear. What he really believes is, if you scare enough voters, you might get enough votes to win an election,” Obama said.
Marking an impassioned return to the campaign trail, former President Barack Obama made a plea Thursday night to Virginia voters to vote for Democratic candidates in the state’s first elections to be held since last year’s presidential contest.
“We need you to take this seriously, because our democracy is at stake, and it’s at stake right here in Virginia,” Obama told a crowd of 7,500 people at the Richmond Coliseum. “You can’t sit this one out.”
As Obama spoke, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam – the Democratic nominee for governor in the commonwealth – sat on a barstool next to the 56-year-old former two-term president, basking in the glow of the former president’s political star power.
On the presumption that many Virginian’s in the room or watching on TV might be tuning in to the off-year election for the first time, Obama spent a considerable portion of his half-hour speech detailing Northam’s résumé as an Army physician and a pediatric neurologist.
Virginia’s lieutenant governor is locked in a tight race with Republican Ed Gillespie, a longtime political operative who went from high-powered lobbyist to chairman of the Republican National Committee to White House adviser under George W. Bush.
Obama did not mention President Trump by name in his remarks, but numerous times offered broad critiques of the current state of American politics that were clearly an indictment of the current White House occupant.
“Folks don’t feel good right now about what they see. They don’t feel as if our public life reflects our best,” Obama said. “Instead of our politics reflecting our values, we’ve got politics infecting our communities.”
He also said that “our politics just seems so divided and so angry and so nasty,” adding that the nation’s challenge is to “recapture” a more generous and civic spirit, in what was a reminiscence of the hopeful moment in 2008 that swept him to power. “Yes We Can,” Obama said, revisiting the famous slogan from his presidential campaigns.
Obama did call Gillespie out directly, in particular the anti-Northam TV ad run by his campaign that shows heavily tattooed Latino gang members with the words “Kill, Rape, Control” in large letters on the screen.
“There’s some voice, ominous, and everything’s king of dark, and it’s letting you know that somebody’s coming to get you,” Obama said, mocking the ad. He joked that nobody really believed that a physician who’d operated on veterans and children was “suddenly … cozying up to street gangs.”
But he turned serious when he noted that Gillespie has “gone on record in the past condemning the very same kind of rhetoric he’s using now.”
“What he’s really trying to deliver is fear. What he really believes is, if you scare enough voters, you might get enough votes to win an election,” Obama said.
