Obama, acknowledging pocketbook issues, urges voters not to overlook threats to democracy.
"Watch Obama's closing message to voters in Philadelphia CNN"
‘When true democracy goes away, people get hurt,’ the former president said in Philadelphia.
Former President Barack Obama at a rally at Temple University in Philadelphia on Saturday. Tom Brenner for The New York Times
By Katie Glueck Nov. 5, 2022
PHILADELPHIA — Former President Barack Obama on Saturday issued a stark warning about threats to American democracy, even as he acknowledged that many voters were consumed by a range of other urgent issues in the final stretch of the midterm campaign.
“I understand that democracy might not seem like a top priority right now, especially when you’re worried about paying the bills,” Mr. Obama said at a get-out-the-vote rally in Philadelphia, not far from the Liberty Bell. “But when true democracy goes away, we’ve seen throughout history, we’ve seen around the world, when true democracy goes away, people get hurt. It has real consequences.”
Mr. Obama’s comments came as he and President Biden rallied with Democratic candidates for governor and senator in the evenly divided state of Pennsylvania, stressing the high stakes of the elections to a crowd gathered at Temple University and lacing into the Republicans on the ballot.
They appeared together to support Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the nominee for Senate, and Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general and nominee for governor.
Mr. Fetterman is in a highly competitive race against Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician and Republican nominee. Mr. Shapiro has strongly outpolled his rival, Doug Mastriano, the far-right state senator.
“This is not an abstraction,” Mr. Obama warned. “Governments start telling you what books you can read and which ones you can’t. Dissidents start getting locked up. Reporters start getting locked up if they’re not toeing the party line. Corruption reigns because there’s no accountability.”
Invoking the generations of Americans who “fought and died for our democracy,” and the suffragists, civil rights activists and labor advocates, Mr. Obama said: “They understood that when democracy withers, it’s hard to restore. You can’t take it for granted. You have to work for it. You have to nurture it. You have to fight for it.”
The good news, he told the audience, is “you get to make a difference, as long as you turn out to vote.”
Over the growing roar of the crowd, he continued: “You can fight for it as long as you turn out to vote. You can bolster and strengthen our democracy as long as you get out there and do what needs to be done.”
Katie Glueck is a national political reporter. Previously, she was chief Metro political correspondent, and a lead reporter for The Times covering the Biden campaign. She also covered politics for McClatchy’s Washington bureau and for Politico. @katieglueck
Trump Hoped for a Celebration but Did Not Have Much to Cheer
Congrats Pennsylvania. Trump disconsolate and childishly narcissistically into himself to the end.
"Watch Obama's closing message to voters in Philadelphia CNN"
Trump Hoped for a Celebration but Did Not Have Much to Cheer
The former president endorsed roughly 300 candidates in the midterm elections. With votes still being counted, those in competitive races appeared to have mixed results. [...] Mr. Trump affixed his name to dozens of candidates who were virtual locks to win at the ballot box — including some who had no Democratic opponent — in an attempt to compile a lopsided win-loss record that he started trumpeting Tuesday evening, well before any key Senate battleground contests had been called.
He backed candidates in the five most competitive Senate races, including Mr. Walker in Georgia and Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, both of whom he helped recruit. [...] In governors’ contests, Mr. Trump’s influence was felt most deeply in Arizona, where Ms. Lake, a former local news anchor, fashioned almost her entire campaign on the former president in substance and style. The strategy proved hugely successful in a primary contest against a well-known Republican establishment figure and kept her close in the polls with Katie Hobbs, the Democratic nominee. But Ms. Lake was trailing as votes were being counted early Wednesday. Mr. Trump’s gubernatorial candidate in Wisconsin, Tim Michels, and in Michigan, Tudor Dixon, both lost to incumbents.
In governors’ races that were still undecided early Wednesday, Mr. Trump had endorsed Derek Schmidt in Kansas and Joe Lombardo in Nevada.
In an interview with NewsNation conducted before polls closed, when asked how much credit he believed he deserved for any of the more than 330 candidates he endorsed throughout the cycle, Mr. Trump said, “Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit. And if they lose, I should not be blamed at all, OK, but it’ll probably be just the opposite.”
He added, “Usually what would happen is, when they do well, I won’t be given any credit, and if they do badly, they will blame everything on me. So I’m prepared for anything, but we’ll defend ourselves.”
Mr. Trump is singularly focused on defending himself, preoccupied with not just his win-loss record but with the myriad investigations he is facing and the prospect of challenges by other candidates for the party’s nomination in the primaries. He has been most vexed by the potential of Mr. DeSantis to mount a presidential candidacy.
Watch for more of this stuff -- Philadelphia District Attorney Krasner impeached amid violent crime spike
"Watch Obama's closing message to voters in Philadelphia CNN "Respect, common decency, telling the truth, believing in science, the idea that every vote should count, and the idea that the person with the most votes wins...nothing to do with political correctness or being too woke... fundamental values...honesty fairness, opportunity, hard work""
By Kelly Kasulis Cho November 17, 2022 at 4:40 a.m. EST
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in 2017. (Matt Rourke/AP)
Pennsylvania’s GOP-controlled House voted Wednesday to impeach Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D) over allegations that his policies led to a spike in violent crime, paving the way for a state Senate trial that could lead to his removal from office.
“Every decision I make as District Attorney is with the goal of seeking justice and improving public safety,” Krasner said in a statement after the report’s release. “Public safety has always been my primary goal, and I have never deviated from more intensely focusing on the most serious and violent offenses.”
Krasner said in a Wednesday statement that he was impeached without lawmakers “presenting a single shred of evidence connecting our policies to any uptick in crime.”
“In the hundreds of years the Commonwealth has existed, this is the only time the House has used the drastic remedy of impeachment of an elected official because they do not like their ideas,” he said. “ … History will harshly judge this anti-democratic authoritarian effort to erase Philly’s votes — votes by Black, brown, and broke people in Philadelphia.”
House Democratic Leader Joanna McClinton pointed to two state officials who were previously removed through the impeachment process in arguing that Republicans had gone too far: “This is not 1994, where we have a Supreme Court justice who is caught trying to get drugs illegally. This is not 1811, where we have a county judge who has been accused of injudicious conduct. But once again, the majority caucus is very familiar with wanting to overturn the will of an electorate.”
Republicans portrayed the impeachment as an effort to prevent arbitrary enforcement of laws. “Tomorrow, he may decide not to enforce the laws on assault, or the laws on illegal gun possession. But then again, tomorrow has already arrived,” said state Rep. Tim Bonner.
Kelly Kasulis Cho is a breaking news reporter and editor at The Washington Post, based in Seoul. Previously, she spent four years covering North and South Korea as a freelance foreign correspondent, and she has also worked at the New York Times and Bloomberg BNA. Follow her on Twitter: @KasulisK. Twitter
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