TUCSON – Barack Obama cast his White House successor as an out-of-touch elitist who promotes the wrong kind of masculinity, during a Friday stop in battleground Arizona, as he appealed directly to the young men whom Kamala Harris needs to win over to become the first woman elected president next month.
“I have to say, I’ve noticed this, especially with some men who think Trump’s behavior, the bullying and the putting people down, acting all-pretend-tough guy, that somehow that’s a sign of strength,” Obama said. “I am here to tell you that is not what strength is. Never has been.”
Obama stumped for Harris in Tucson on Friday, boosting the Democratic nominee to some 7,000 people in the final stretch of the presidential race.
Obama encouraged Arizonans to cast their ballots early during a 45-minute speech at the Cole and Jeannie Davis Sports Center at the University of Arizona.
Former President Donald Trump has a narrow lead over Harris in swing-state Arizona, which the GOP nominee carried in 2016 but lost in 2020. President Joe Biden won by fewer than 11,000 votes four years ago, and GOP gains in voter registration and a polling slump with young men of color could make winning here even more challenging for Harris now.
Obama sharply criticized Trump, painting him as a self-centered con man who doesn’t have concrete plans for the nation, using Trump’s debate stage blunder against him when the Republican nominee said he had “concepts of a plan” for health care.
“I understand why people are looking to shake things up. I get why sometimes folks are frustrated with politics. I am sometimes frustrated with politics, so I get it. What I cannot understand is why anyone would think that Donald Trump will shake things up in a way that is good for you,” Obama said.
Young men of color are a significant part of who is driving Trump’s polling advantage in Arizona. Trump is ahead of Harris among Latino men under the age of 50, public polling shows. The vice president still leads with young Black men, but she is underperforming other Democrats among that demographic.
Obama is one of the best messengers to reach that group, according to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll. Just over half of Hispanic voters say Obama’s endorsement matters to them, a survey found earlier this year.
Before they took the stage, Obama said he and U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., who is running for the Senate, spoke with a “remarkable” group of Latino men. Obama said he encouraged them to “have those conversations” and talk to people who are thinking about voting for Trump. He specifically mentioned the economy and immigration, two issues that polls show are priorities for young men.
“If somebody says ‘Well, I’m thinking about voting for Donald Trump because I remember the economy being pretty good,’” Obama said. “Say, ‘Well, what is exactly Donald Trump’s plan for high prices?’ Just ask them. If they don’t, you tell them he’s got concepts of a plan and it don’t make sense.”
Obama, who mentioned Trump by name nearly three dozen times, according to a rough transcript, also questioned the 78-year-old’s mental competence. The comments came months after Biden, 81, ended his reelection campaign over concerns about his age.
“You would be worried if your grandfather was acting like this,” Obama said.
He pointed to a recent town hall where Trump stopped taking questions from the crowd and turned the event into a makeshift DJ set, standing onstage and listening to tunes such as Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” and “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People.
“Can you imagine if I did that? Can you imagine if Ruben did that?” Obama asked. “Our playlist would probably be better.”
At one point, he asked the crowd if they thought Trump had ever changed a diaper or a tire. He also knocked him for manufacturing Trump-branded Bibles in China.
Obama is one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party, but he never carried Arizona as a presidential candidate. Obama lost the 2008 presidential race here to home state Sen. John McCain by 8 percentage points and lost again to Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 by 9 percentage points.
Obama: Trump \’didn\’t solve\’ immigration
The 44th president took aim at the Trump campaign’s plans for mass deportations and the use of immigrant communities as scapegoats for the problems facing the country.
“It doesn’t matter what the issue is, housing, health care, education, paying the bills. He’ll blame immigrants,” Obama said. “He wants you to believe that if you let him round up whoever he wants and ship them out, all your problems will be solved.”
Obama said there are “real problems” at the border but acknowledged that America has historically been a nation of immigrants.
“We were built on immigrants looking for a better life,” he said. “We also have to make sure that the system works the way it was supposed to.”
He criticized Trump’s attack on Harris’ time as VP and rebutted by reminding the crowd that Trump was also in the White House for four years.
“Why didn’t he actually solve the problem when he was in power? Why was the number of undocumented immigrants basically the same when he left office as when he took office?” Obama said.
During the first full month of the Trump administration, February 2017, the number of migrants apprehended in between ports of entry at the Southwestern border was about 23,000, according to Customs and Border Protection data. The numbers from the administration’s last full month, December 2020, show that CBP arrested about 74,000 migrants.
A number of factors, including the global COVID-19 pandemic, contributed to an increase in people coming to the border. In an operational update from CBP in January 2021, the agency acknowledged the growing number of migrants attempting to cross the Southwest border, with an average of 3,000 arrests a day that same month.
Obama blamed Trump’s lack of a plan to tackle the issues faced at the border, poking fun at the “concept of a plan” comment the former president made earlier this year during the presidential debate in reference to the Affordable Care Act.
Obama also blamed Trump for killing the bipartisan border bill that he said would have helped fix the immigration system.
“Donald Trump deliberately lobbied against it and told Republicans don’t vote for it because he figured that if you passed it, he would not be able to engage in the same kind of fearmongering that he’s been doing,” Obama said.
\’It was my economy,\’ Obama says
Obama acknowledged voter frustrations with the price of groceries and gas, saying that prices are too high and “it hurts.”
But he threw cold water on the idea that Trump had a better handle on the economy as president.
“It was good, because it was my economy that I gave him,” said Obama, who took office at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. “I spent the previous eight years cleaning up the mess that Republicans had left me.”
Obama criticized Trump for giving tax cuts to “to people who did not need one,” which he said drove up the national deficit.
He said Trump spent the next four years giving tax cuts to the wealthy and warned that Trump would do the same if elected again.
Abortion on the ballot in Arizona
Obama spoke about abortion, saying while he respects views on both sides of the debate, the decision to have an abortion should be made by the woman who is impacted by the choice.
“If we believe in freedom, then we should at least agree that such a deeply personal decision should be made by the woman whose body is involved,” he said.
He criticized Trump for adding three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. As Obama spoke, boos erupted from the audience.
Arizonans will have a chance to vote on the issue of abortion this fall, Obama noted. Proposition 139, the abortion measure, would preserve the right to abortion in the state constitution. Obama urged the public to vote yes on the ballot measure.
“Let’s be clear about what’s at stake here. If you send Ruben Gallego to the Senate, he will vote to restore the reproductive freedom of women to women,” Obama said, adding that if Congress passes such a bill, Harris would sign it.
Obama pays homage to 2008 White House opponent McCain
Obama differentiated Trump from Republicans like “my friend” John McCain, a beloved figure in Arizona.
McCain was a senator who served Arizona for more than 30 years before he died in 2018. He was well known for his service as a U.S. Navy pilot and his time as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War.
Although McCain was conservative and ran for president against Obama in 2008, he believed in “honest arguments” and hearing other people’s views, Obama said, adding that McCain also avoided demonizing his political opponents.
Obama contended that values respected by people like John McCain have been set aside in Trump’s rise in politics.
He recalled when McCain came to his defense during a campaign rally in the 2008 presidential race when a woman in the audience said she didn’t trust Obama and falsely said he was “an Arab.”
“He said … ‘I have a lot of disagreements with Senator Obama, but I served with him. He’s a good man. He’s an honorable man. He’s a patriotic American,’” Obama recalled, noting that McCain was a man of character.
Obama boosts down-ballot Democrats
Obama went out of his way to praise Gallego, the Democrat running for Senate against Trump-endorsed Republican Kari Lake. Gallego introduced Obama onstage and sat beside him for the duration of his speech.
Before Obama came onstage, some of Harris’ most prominent Arizona supporters warmed up the rally crowd.
Supporters chanted “Gabby, Gabby, Gabby” when hometown former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and Sen. Mark Kelly, whom Harris considered for her running mate, appeared.
Giffords reflected on the 2011 assassination attempt that nearly took her life and praised Biden for checking on her as she recovered. Then, she turned to the Democratic nominee.
“My friend Kamala will be a great president,” Giffords said.
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero also spoke about the 2011 shooting and Obama’s memorial speech at the University of Arizona in the wake of the tragedy. Six people died and 13 people were injured.
“He offered comfort as we tried to heal from a mass shooting in our midst,” Romero said. “He understands what it means to be a leader.”
Others addressed Arizona’s status as one of a handful of states that could decide the 2024 election. Arizona has 11 votes in the Electoral College.
Arizona Democratic Party Chair Yolanda Bejarano said, “All eyes are on Arizona this election.”
“We are a battleground district in a battleground state. Votes from southern Arizona will be the key to holding the presidency, keeping the Senate and flipping the U.S. House. So no pressure, folks,” said Kirsten Engel, the Democrat challenging incumbent GOP Rep. Juan Ciscomani in southern Arizona’s 6th Congressional District.
To narrow the gap between herself and Trump, Harris has come to Arizona twice in the past month and is sending plenty of high-profile surrogates to court voters here.
Former President Bill Clinton, who turned Arizona blue for the first time in more than a generation when he won in 1996, will be in the state on Wednesday.
On the other side of the aisle, Trump was in Arizona on Sunday for a rally. The former Republican president has also dispatched surrogates such as House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., to the state in recent weeks.
Seeing Obama on the stump was a draw for many attendees in Tucson on Friday. Supporters lined up hours before the event began. Several people in the crowd sought medical attention once they got inside.
William Coleman, 29, attended the event with Large Alexander, 18, and Denise Williams, 19, who only recently became interested in politics and wanted to see Obama in person.
Coleman wanted to see firsthand how many Harris supporters are in their community.
“Social media, Twitter makes me nervous. Going on there right now, and it’s just so far-right. It’s kind of scary, (they will) put up polls on Twitter of Kamala versus Trump and (how) quickly Trump will go up (in the poll). So I’m like, is that really how people really feel?” Coleman said.
Alexander recently turned 18 and will be a first-time voter this election cycle. They described feeling nervous to go and cast their vote but would be going in order to support the abortion ballot measure.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Barack Obama campaigns for Kamala Harris in Tucson: What to know
