Obama in North Carolina Lashes Trump as He Urges Blacks to Back Clinton
Obama in North Carolina Lashes Trump as He Urges Blacks to Back Clinton:- President Obama on Tuesday ripped into Donald J. Trump as a fundamentally indecent person dangerously unsuited and unprepared for the presidency, imploring voters to “turn back the forces of racism and misogyny, and send a message for progress” by electing Hillary Clinton instead.
“He doesn’t have the temperament, or the judgment, or the knowledge, or apparently the desire to obtain the knowledge” needed to be president, Mr. Obama told a raucous crowd of 7,700 at an outdoor rally on the outskirts of this heavily African-American city.
“That was true even before we heard about his attitudes towards women,” Mr. Obama said, alluding to the recording that emerged on Friday in which Mr. Trump boasted in lewd terms of kissing and groping women without their consent.
“You don’t have to be a husband or a father to hear what we heard a few days ago and say, ‘That’s not right.’ You just have to be a decent human being,” Mr. Obama said.
“If it makes you mad, if you say, ‘That’s not somebody I want representing the United States of America,’ you can do something about it, North Carolina,” he added, pleading with listeners to register to vote.
The broadside came as Mr. Obama works to sharpen his argument in favor of Mrs. Clinton, particularly among the young and African-American voters who formed his winning coalition but have been less enthusiastic about his chosen successor.
Mr. Obama, who won North Carolina in 2008 but lost it four years later, reminisced about his appearance in Greensboro eight years ago and listed his achievements as president.
“All that progress goes out the window if we don’t make the right choice just four weeks from today,” he said. “The closer we get, the clearer the choice becomes.”
He trumpeted Mrs. Clinton’s qualifications for the White House and said she had been unfairly criticized for long-winded policy explanations and an uninspiring delivery.
“That’s because she actually knows what she’s talking about, which is helpful when you’re president of the United States, to know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Obama said. “Come on, people! This isn’t auditioning for, like, some show. This ain’t a show.”
Mrs. Clinton, he said, “knows what it means. She knows what it takes.”
Mr. Obama is making the case at a critical moment for himself and for Mrs. Clinton — about a month before Election Day, a little over a week before North Carolina opens early voting and with only a few months remaining for the president to cement his place in history and the fate of his favored projects. One of those, My Brother’s Keeper, the president’s initiative to support young black men, was among the topics discussed at the town hall session, sponsored by an ESPN website called The Undefeated.
The appearance was Mr. Obama’s first public campaign stop since an 11-year-old recording emerged on Friday of Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, boasting in lewd terms of his ability to kiss and grope women with impunity because of his fame. The revelation further roiled what was already a remarkable and unpredictable presidential contest.
North Carolina, where a recent New York Times Upshot/Siena College poll found Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump tied for support, with each holding 41 percent of likely voters, has become a focal point of the race. Mr. Obama won the state in 2008 in large part on the strength of extensive turnout by African-American voters, young people and women who cast ballots early. But he lost it in 2012, when his margins of victory in urban centers shrank and he lost ground with white voters.
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has intensified its effort to galvanize that Obama coalition in recent days, concerned in particular about a lack of enthusiasm for her candidacy among African-American voters. Mr. Obama, in turn, has begun to argue ever more insistently that the election is as much about him — the first black president — as it is about his successor.
On Tuesday, Mr. Obama played up the racial undertones that have driven the criticism of him as president, noting that critics have questioned his birthplace, said he was a Muslim and even alleged that he and Mrs. Clinton were demons who stank of sulfur.
“Ain’t that something,” he remarked, sniffing his own skin.
He alluded to the long struggle for voting rights for African-Americans in the United States, recalling the days when black people — including Henry Frye, the former North Carolina Supreme Court justice who introduced him at the rally — had to pass literacy tests or count the number of jelly beans in a jar to be able to cast their ballots.
Mr. Obama received a rapturous reception from the heavily black audience, lapsing into a familiar campaign cadence of slang and dropped consonants as he reveled in the cheers and whoops of his supporters.
But he was also interrupted several times by protesters, including people holding signs and wearing clothes that said, “Bill Clinton is a rapist.” The claim echoed Mr. Trump’s reaction to the release of the recording of his remarks about women. Mr. Trump spotlighted decades-old accusations of sexual transgressions that dogged Mrs. Clinton’s husband during his presidential campaign and as president.
“Is somebody hollering again?” Mr. Obama asked when another protester began to shout. “Here’s the deal: Try to get your own rally.”
As he worked to increase Mrs. Clinton’s chances, Mr. Obama was also trying to shape the contours of his own legacy. On Tuesday, the White House announced that the president had created more federal grant programs to support his initiatives and draw additional corporate backing for them.
Sprint said it would provide free devices and high-speed data service to one million high school students, and 40 large American companies including FedEx, Gap Inc. and McDonald’s announced that they would participate in a program called #FirstJob to recruit and hire more young people who are unemployed and not in school.
Mr. Obama plans to make the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, a spinoff of the project he started in 2014, a central component of his life and work after the presidency. An administration official said the alliance would work with employers to carry out the new hiring program and begin an online community to promote it.
Source:-http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/12/us/politics/obama-hillary-clinton-north-carolina.html
