The NPR Politics Podcast - Obama Takes On Trump In First Midterm Campaign Speech

Episode Date: September 7, 2018

In his first major political speech in the U.S. since leaving office, former President Barack Obama argued that Americans must rebuke President Trump at the polls this November. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and national political correspondent Don Gonyea. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey all, this is Jimmy Halvorsson from Swedish Public Radio in Östersund, Sweden, where we are preparing for one of the last local debates ahead of our general election this Sunday, after which I get to go on a well-deserved vacation. This podcast was recorded at... It's Friday, September 7th at 2.16 Eastern. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. All right, here's the show. Hard work and sweets. You know, he's got that vacation coming up. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. He's back.

Former President Barack Obama is on the campaign trail attacking President Trump in his first campaign speech ahead of the midterms. People ask me, what are you going to do for the election? Now the question is, what are you going to do? I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Don Gagne, national political correspondent. I forgot what it was like to cover a president who speaks very slowly. I had flashbacks. I had flashbacks. People tend to remember the fiery campaign mode, Barack Obama, but this one was always there.

And that's the one that he felt was more appropriate to bring out for this, his first political speech this year. More measured, more Obama the professor. And this is how President Trump responded to Obama giving a really different kind of speech than I guess Trump would give. I'm sorry I watched it, but I fell asleep. I found he's very good, very good for sleeping. So let's get right into it. Let's hear a little bit from former President Obama, and then we can give the context here and talk about the rest of the speech.

But he was in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. And at the top of this speech, he was decrying the current political climate. It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause. So, Don, you covered the Obama White House. How big of a deal is it to hear Obama even say President Trump? It's significant, I think, because first off, for the last two years, people have been wondering, Democrats, where is Obama? We've seen him parasailing. We've seen him out having exotic

vacations. We've seen him relaxing and not being president. He explained today that he also spent time with his daughters, one of whom is off to college, and he wanted to be part of their lives a little bit more. But for him to come back, for him to get back involved in a campaign in this way, he's breaking one rule he has, which is that ex-presidents don't criticize presidents. He appreciated that about George W. Bush. And so far, he had been taking almost the exact same approach, not quite, because he would put out occasional statements and occasional Facebook heard, it seemed like he was a man with a lot of things that are building up that he wanted to say because he started talking about some specific things that happened recently and also specific things that happened a year ago, referencing President Trump's reaction to Charlottesville. It shouldn't be Democratic or Republican to say we don't target certain groups of people

based on what they look like or how they pray. We are Americans. We're supposed to stand up to bullies. Not follow them. We're supposed to stand up to discrimination. And we're sure as heck supposed to stand up clearly and unequivocally to Nazi sympathizers. How hard can that be, saying that Nazis are bad. So that was Obama hitting President Trump over his comments about Charlottesville, which got so much attention and which were condemned by so many people on the left and the right. to appeal to this idea of civility and maybe to those Republicans or establishment Republicans or moderate Republicans who are just turned off by the way President Trump operates and what Obama does. He does have this way of trying to appeal to the moderate, the middle. There's no red or

blue America. We're all in this together. I do wonder at this moment that's so polarized. Is this Obama's moment when you have people on the left that are very upset and very angry and they want people to be called out, especially, you know, he talked about saying you can't, you know, demonize the whole other side and call them racist and bigots and sexist. But a lot of people on the left say, look, we need to call out racist policies. We need to call it sexism. We need to call it racism and not kind of do this thing where we're trying to make sure we're winning over working class white people by not calling racism, racism. He put it all in the power of your vote. It's like be within yourself. Election

Day rolls around. Find that 30 minutes. Go do your civic duty to do your part to make the world a better place. But I think you're right. That's not exactly the mood of the Democratic populace right now. Maybe it's a way to speak to young people who tend to just not turn out. And I think that's probably what he was trying to do with this particular audience today. And at the same time, President Trump is doing, in a way, what Obama was doing when he was in the White House, and he's going and holding campaign events trying to get his base to show up. And we heard last night at an event President Trump did in Montana, the argument that he said before,

saying, you know, if you don't show up and vote, if the Trump voter who came in 2016, if you sit 2018 out, Democrats are going to take control of the House and they're going to impeach me. They like to use the impeach word, impeach Trump. Maxine Waters, we will impeach him. But he didn't do anything wrong. It doesn't matter. We will impeach him. Aisha, what else did President Obama talk about? Well, you know, he seemed to really talk about the Republican Party and to call them out and basically say they're not the Republican Party that he knew or that he grew up with. The ones that didn't like deficits. They're not the Republican Party that he had to work against when he was president. And basically that under President Trump, the Republicans have not been a check

on President Trump and his actions. The politics of division and resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican Party. And that they've embraced things that they never embraced when he was president. They're undermining our alliances,

cozying up to Russia. What happened to the Republican Party? And he also got into this pretty timely issue of criticizing Republicans for not criticizing the president or kind of saying, well, we're trying to keep them in check, but we like some of the other stuff, which of course is a big issue in the week of the mystery op-ed. And by the way, the claim that everything will turn out okay because there are people inside the White House who secretly aren't following the president's orders. That is not a check. I'm being serious here. that's not how our democracy is supposed to work these people aren't elected they're not accountable timely obviously also a big theme that the

democrats are really hitting in these house races because poll numbers show that voters are really responsive to the argument that Democrats would be a check on the Trump administration. But Don, I feel like we should take a step back and point out that over the course of his presidency, when Obama tried to generate voter excitement for candidates that weren't him, he didn't really have a good track record. We would not give him a very good grade if we were scoring how he did as a surrogate, as a sitting president during midterms campaigning on behalf of Democrats. He got shellacked, or his party did, in both 2010. That was the rise of the Tea Party right there. And then four years later in 2014 again. So he is trying to do now what he was unable to do as president in terms of

rallying voters to get out. Now, he says the last two years should have demonstrated to you why it matters that you turn out. And that's a real question, because not only in 2010 and 2012. 2016, I was out on the trail with then President Obama when he would hold rallies for Hillary Clinton and people were worked up and he was saying the, you know, don't boo, vote. And he was, you know, calling out candidate Trump and it didn't work. You know, we were in North Carolina. It didn't work for Hillary. So people obviously in the Democratic Party have a love for Obama. Does that translate into votes? And let's listen to one more clip from Obama today because he took that don't boo vote and expanded it a little bit to clearly aim this message at younger millennial voters.

So if you don't like what's going on right now, and you shouldn't, do not complain. Don't hashtag. Don't get anxious. Don't retreat. Don't binge on whatever it is you're binging on. Don't lose yourself in ironic detachment. Don't put your head in the sand. Don't lose yourself in ironic detachment. Don't put your head in the sand. Don't boo. Vote. The problem that he was trying to deal with in 2010 and 2014 is that Democrats just weren't showing up. I feel like we have seen sign after sign this campaign that that might not

be an issue because Democratic enthusiasm is really high. We set a primary in Delaware last night where it was the highest Democratic turnout in a non-presidential year ever. In 2010, 2014, you could argue that Democrats were fat and happy. They just won a big national election. They were content. They couldn't imagine that things could possibly go wrong. Democrats are agitated now. So it's possible that he's like the little kind of final push to keep that energy up. He doesn't have to do the whole lift. And I'm sure he'll be in Ohio next week campaigning for the gubernatorial candidate, Richard Cordray, and other candidates. I'm sure they're really happy to have him out there. Yeah. And I think one other stop that he's doing that says a lot about this election is that he's going to be over the weekend in Anaheim, California, rallying all of the Orange County and Southern California Democrats who are trying to take this traditionally Republican area and flip all of those seats to the Democratic side. It's the top tier of races that Democrats are focusing on right now out there in Southern

California. I think it's pretty clear. Few things in the world, maybe anonymous op-eds in The New York Times, but few other things in the world irritate Trump more than Barack Obama. He's consistently going back to Obama. He's consistently comparison his policies Barack Obama. He's consistently going back to Obama. He's consistently comparison his policies to Obama. Undoubtedly, Trump will want to lash out at Obama, especially if Obama really gets out there and does like you like Don talked about more of those barn burners,

you know, really going after Trump. He will fight back. He as he always says, he's a counter puncher. But it will be interesting to see that dynamic and how far Trump will go in attacking Obama. And whether is there a chance that he could go too far in attacking Obama and kind of so it will be interesting to see how he kind of how he handles that. He loves to have somebody to go after. And this is a big guy to go after, Barack Obama. And I think it's probably safe to say the president will relish having Barack Obama out in this dump for the Democrats. And Obama is much more popular now that he's not president than he was when he was actually in the White House. So his poll, his approval numbers of Obama,, as they typically do, have gone up. All right. This is the last podcast from yet another newsy week. We'll talk to you again next week.

Until then, you can send your time stamps for the top of the show and any questions you have to nprpolitics at npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Don Gagne, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR.org. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Don Gagne, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.