FORMER president Barack Obama is poised to plunge into the fray of the midterm campaign, returning to electoral politics with a frontal attack on Republican power in two states that are prime Democratic targets this fall: California and Ohio.
Having largely avoided campaign activities since leaving office, Obama’s first public event of the midterm election will take place in Orange County, a traditionally conservative-leaning part of California where Republicans are at risk of losing several House seats. And Obama is expected to be joined by Democratic candidates from all seven of California’s Republican-held districts that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016.
Obama intends to campaign next Thursday in Cleveland for Richard Cordray, a former bank regulator in his administration who is the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor. Republicans have held total control of the state government since the 2010 election, and Obama helped encourage Cordray, also a former state attorney general, to seek the governorship.
The former president’s return to public politicking comes at a momentous point in the 2018 election season, furnishing Democrats again with one of their most formidable and popular campaigners in the closing months. While Obama has addressed several fundraising events and issued a list of endorsements, he has otherwise confined his public appearances this year to loftier venues than the campaign trail.
Katie Hill, a spokeswoman for Obama, said he would campaign aggressively to turn out voters in elections for the House and Senate and also “in local, down-ballot races to build the Democratic Party’s bench”.
Hill said Obama would argue to voters “that this moment in our country is too perilous for Democratic voters to sit out”.
Obama’s upcoming campaign swing comes days after his oration for John McCain, the Arizona Republican, whose funeral last weekend became an occasion for scarcely veiled criticism of President Donald Trump from elder statesmen of both parties. Obama is also delivering a speech in Illinois on Friday, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, that is expected to include a pointed message about domestic politics.
By reclaiming an explicitly partisan role, Obama could ignite a volcanic reaction from Trump, who is intensely sensitive to criticism and has made dismantling Obama’s legacy an organising goal. Since leaving office, Obama has avoided directly criticising Trump in many cases, taking a posture of restraint that aides have described as denying Trump the chance to bury important policy debates beneath a personal feud.
Yet, an angry reaction from Trump would be unlikely to trouble voters in California, where the president is deeply unpopular, or in several of the other states where Obama intends to campaign in the coming weeks. Obama is said to be especially determined to make the case against Republican economic policies, and to deliver a forceful message on health care, according to people briefed on his plans.
Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Obama would provide an “inspirational voice and unifying message on the campaign trail”, beginning in California.
Democrats, who must pick up 23 Republican-held seats to capture the House, have made California a top priority and believe they can build a Democratic majority in part by defeating most of the vulnerable Republicans there.
In addition to California and Ohio, Obama plans to campaign this month for Democrats in Illinois and Pennsylvania, two states he carried twice and which have critical contests for Congress and governor this fall, an adviser to the former president said. He will also hold a fundraising event in New York City for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group led by his former attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., that is focused on unraveling gerrymandered congressional maps that heavily favour Republicans, including in Ohio.
Obama’s full schedule is still taking shape, and aides said he is figuring out how best to help a number of important Democrats, including groundbreaking African-American candidates for governor like Andrew Gillum in Florida and Stacey Abrams in Georgia. Obama will probably tread lightly in some parts of the country, though: In many of the red states vital to control of the Senate, he remains a divisive figure and less popular than Trump.
Obama’s foray into the Midwest could be especially telling for him and other Democrats, as candidates like Cordray attempt to regain power for the party in states that Obama won repeatedly but where Trump prevailed in 2016. --(NYT)