“There’s no such thing as a vote that doesn’t matter”. “I will consider it a personal insult – an insult to my legacy – if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election”.
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Obama also implored African-Americans to back Clinton with the same enthusiasm with which they voted for him: “You want to give me a good sendoff?”
The Clinton campaign has used several different tactics to rouse the African-American community, including garnering public support from the Obamas. While Clinton leads Republican Donald Trump by wide margins with young voters, blacks and Hispanics, party leaders are deeply concerned that turnout among those groups will fall short of what she needs to win.
Obama’s remarks followed a speech by Clinton, who accepted an award from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and attacked Trump’s candidacy without naming the candidate directly. That’s despite claims in recent weeks from Trump’s top campaign surrogates that he does believe the fact that the president was born in Hawaii. “The danger is that if you don’t get these voters out, you’ve got the 2004 John Kerry electorate again”.
Indeed, 25 percent of likely voters ages 18-39 say they will vote for either Libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Party nominee Jill Stein. The Clinton campaign is eager to dispatch them around crucial registration deadlines and during early voting windows. “Nobody has seen an agenda for African-American millennials”.
The average of ABC News/ Washington Post polls taken in August and September show Clinton with a 91 percent support rate among Black voters, Trump only had 5 percent. “To those, I saw the following: What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump?”
Obama aides say the president has grown increasingly frustrated this year by the indifference to Clinton among some Democrats, especially given what he sees as an unacceptable alternative in Trump. “In other breaking news, the world is round, not flat”, Obama added, echoing remarks he made during the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, where the president mocked Trump at length as he sat in the crowd with cameras trained on him.
Gillespie says some of those voters doubt whether Clinton will fight racism and aggressive police, while others are irritated by her 1996 reference to some young criminals as “super-predators” as well as President Clinton’s embrace of the crime bill, which imposed tough sentences on nonviolent offenders.
“I’m very pleased to see our wisdom become what it has today”, Rangle said.
But Obama might not have much to worry about. “The idea is that he got [black voters] engaged, got them there, and they stayed there as a result of staying engaged in the process”.
Obama addressed the controversy at the start of his speech to the CBC last night. If his administration represents progress, he said, electing Trump would be a big step backwards. Obama then urged the lawmakers to help get people registered to vote.
Realise everything we stand for is at stake. “All the progress we’ve made is at stake in this election”.
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While the Clinton campaign has focused on fueling minority turnout, hoping to mobilize any disenchanted voters who don’t feel the same enthusiasm for Clinton they did for Obama in 2008 and 2012, getting a high percentage of black voters to the cast ballots for Clinton might not be as daunting a task as it seems. Tolerance is on the ballot.
