As the presidential election gets down to the wire, Joe Biden’s campaign decided to pull out the big guns in the form of former President Barack Obama, who made his first in-person pitch on Oct. 21 in Pennsylvania.
Obama spoke with a crowd of voters in Philadelphia, helped at a special round-table for Black male voters and urged them not to stay home but to get out and vote.
Typically, Black women vote in stronger numbers than Black men. According to Pew Research, 64 percent of eligible Black women said they voted in 2016, compared with 54 percent of eligible Black men.
“The pandemic would have been tough for any president,” Obama said at a roundtable with 14 Black men. But Obama didn’t make excuses for Trump. He asked the group to consider “the degree of incompetence and misinformation, the number of people who might not have died had we just done the basics.”
The roundtable was an important move by the Biden campaign, Detroit News reported: “The nation’s first Black president urged Black men especially not to give in to apathy. The host city, Philadelphia, is among the Democratic bastions in battleground states where Black turnout four years ago fell off from Obama’s 2012 reelection in large enough numbers to flip key states to Trump’s column and deliver him the presidency.”
Obama also said he understood young voters’ skepticism and disinterest.
“I’ll confess, when I was 20 years old, I wasn’t all that woke,” Obama admitted, adding that young Black men are “not involved because they’re young and they’re distracted,” The Star Tribune reported.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
Obama’s first campaign appearance was discussed on Twitter.
One user posted, “@BarackObama stone-cold spanked @realDonaldTrump like a kid who stole something.We need more of this!”
Republicans for Joe Biden @RepsForBiden tweeted, “We didn’t vote for you but we LOVED your speech today. It’s time to unite and kick out of office the worst president in history. #VoteHimOut”
