The city of Detroit woke up on Saturday covered by a thick fog, whose blanket disappeared around the time that the rally that Barack Obama offered in support of Governor Gretchen Whitmer and other local Democratic leaders began 10 days before the legislative elections in the United States.
So it was difficult not to resort to the meteorological analogy in the face of the gloomy omens of his party, which is at stake for control of the Senate and Congress in Washington, and the ray of hope that the former president (2009-2017) came to project among his own. in four swing states: Georgia, Michigan, Milwaukee and Nevada.
Speaking to a rousing audience of some 3,000 people on the Renaissance Institute basketball court in northwest Detroit, Obama asked one thing above all others: that members of the black community especially vote.
But, above all, he asked them not to get distracted and do it for the Democrats: a
USA Today
survey set the percentage of African-Americans who are inclined to choose Republican this time at the polls at 21%, compared to 12%. of 2020.
“Who will fight for you?
Who will be on your side?” he asked the audience, mostly black and young, who had registered to participate in the rally held amid extraordinary security measures.
"The Democrats have real plans," Obama added.
His supporters waited for him for four hours, dressed to the nines and entertained by the music of the Mighty Phoenix Marching Band and by a selection of songs, from Stevie Wonder to Marvin Gaye, who stood at the opposite end of the soundtrack of the Donald Trump rallies.
They also had to arm themselves with patience: a dozen speeches were served before the main course.
Conservative politicians, Obama said, are too obsessed with "curbing your freedoms" and "getting Trump's approval."
"That seems to be his agenda," he continued.
“They are not, at least currently, interested in solving problems.
They are motivated by making people angry and finding someone to blame for problems.
Because that way they think you won't notice, that you'll be distracted from the fact that they really don't have solutions."
Obama recalled other times, "when both sides could sit down and talk."
And he painted a limit situation: "In these elections we are playing for democracy," he said, referring to the large number of candidates who do not accept the result of the 2020 presidential elections (this state was ground zero of that battle) and that are running for key positions in Michigan.
To the Democrat's credit, Obama scored the push for infrastructure and inflation-reducing laws, which, among other things, have cut the cost of prescriptions and protected health care.” [Governor Whitmer is] focused on the fundamentals: good jobs, reduce costs, improve schools and fix the damn roads [the latter, a whole state problem in battered Detroit]”, he sentenced.
As real as the whiplash of an economy that has put Americans' pockets in serious trouble?
The former president preferred to better define that stitch as "global."
It is part of “a suffering left by the pandemic that wreaked havoc on supply chains” and that the war in Ukraine has only aggravated, especially when it comes to gasoline prices.
Obama clambered onto the dais in his shirtsleeves and behaved like an effortlessly charismatic speaker, flirting with women in the audience, talking about sports and movies, taunting his opponents and gracefully wriggling out of an embarrassing incident early in the speech. his 50-minute speech, when someone began to shout a protest that became inaudible amid the cries of "get him out of here" from the former president's supporters.
At the time, he was talking about political polarization in the United States in light of Friday's attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi.
He had to undergo surgery for a skull fracture after the attack on his home by a fanatic with a hammer who came looking for the president of the House of Representatives.
“You see,” Obama said to the guy who questioned him.
"That thing you just did,
From left, Stacey Abrams, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Barack Obama, and Senator Raphael Warnock on Friday in College Park near Atlanta. Elijah Nouvelage (AFP)
Another of the star issues of the former president's speech in Detroit, and of the elections in Michigan, was the right to abortion.
Women's reproductive freedom is also cited here on November 8 at the polls.
The popular legislative initiative Proposal 3 is voted on (which was supported by more than 700,000 signatures), which provides for constitutionally shielding the right to decide for women, and preventing a 1931 law that is in the Michigan code from entering into force .
The repeal by the Supreme Court last June of the precedent ruling
Roe v. Wade
gave way to the application of that rule, which Governor Whitmer has blocked.
Abortion is also one of the issues that most distinguishes her program from that of her opponent, Tudor Dixon, who defends its prohibition even in cases of incest, rape and risk to the mother's health.
“That law provides for sending doctors and nurses to jail.
We have to agree that women should be in control of their bodies, in conversation with their doctors, without political intervention," Obama said.
Before the start of the rally, that was one of the issues that entertained the conversations of those waiting for its start.
“Republicans always go out of their way to curtail women's rights.
And trust me, I know what I'm talking about: I fought in the '70s for the same cause I do now,” said Susan Clane, carrying a handwritten banner for reproductive freedom.
Elaine Taylor, 22, was in "elementary school" when Obama was elected and remembers how wonderful it was "to wake up to political activism with a black president in the White House."
“I think abortion will be decisive,” she declared.
“Inflation comes and goes, but if you start losing rights, that is the beginning of authoritarianism.”
Obama greets the Democratic candidate for the Wisconsin Senate, Mandela Barnes, this Saturday night in Milwaukee. STRINGER (REUTERS)
The day before, Obama was in Atlanta, where he campaigned for gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock, a Protestant minister who wants to renew his seat as senator in Washington.
His opponent is former football star Herschel Walker, whom Obama defined as "another celebrity who gets involved in politics" - "and we already know how bad that can get," he added, alluding to Trump.
"Skipping off the subject is not an option," warned the former president.
“Despair isn't either.
The only way to make this economy fair is for all of us to fight for it, ”he said to encourage the vote, whose early broadcast began on October 17 and is breaking records in Georgia.
Obama ended his Saturday by repeating in Milwaukee, Wisconsin's most populous city, parts of the morning's speech (“I don't want to hear your booing, I want to hear how you vote”).
Wisconsin is another state where the fight for the Senate, pitting young Mandela Barnes against veteran Republican Ron Johnson in an all-out campaign, is crucial.
On Tuesday he is expected in Nevada, where the future of the US Senate is also at stake.
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