This Saturday night, Michelle Obama avoided mentioning the former president and current Republican candidate by name. Before thousands of followers in the key state of Pennsylvania, the former first lady made a speech in which her voice broke at times in defense of empathy and in contrast to the incendiary message of “Kamala’s rival.”
“It is easier to destroy than to build… The destruction is rapid and merciless and no one knows when it will stop,” he said in Norristown, a small city north of Philadelphia, in a speech to refute Republican insults against immigrants, minorities, women or political rivals . “Maybe you’re a small man trying to feel big by pouring gasoline on other people’s real pain.”
“We are being inundated by voices telling us that we should be suspicious of our neighbors, that military service is for ‘losers,’ and that there is ‘an enemy within,’” he said, referring to the words Harris’ rival has used when He was president and now as a candidate. “It’s still not normal. It’s disconcerting. It’s dangerous. And it’s shameful.”
Obama insisted on the danger of attacking “the other”: “One day he goes after people you don’t know. Maybe they are immigrants, black people or trans communities. Then, go find your neighbor, a friend, a relative who is Puerto Rican, Jewish or Palestinian. Then he goes after you.”
Michelle Obama remains the most popular figure in the Democratic Party despite her reluctance toward politics and her refusal for years to run for public office.
At Norristown, his speech was interrupted several times with cries of “i love you” and “Yes, we can”. To chants of her husband’s campaign slogan, she replied: “Yes, we did. And we can do it again.”
Amid applause, his voice broke on stage as he told of a 100-year-old woman he met a few days ago in Michigan and that what she felt was compassion and empathy toward others after a life in which she had participated in the effort to win World War II and had lived through the fight for civil rights.
Tonight, Michelle Obama was speaking to thousands of people in a high school pavilion in Norristown, a city where about 35,000 people live. The attendees, a rainbow of age, gender and race, had lined up snaking for hours on campus around the institute. Thousands more were left out due to the lack of capacity in the pavilion where Obama spoke and another space to see her at least on screen.
His message embraced thousands of already convinced people. Many had already voted by mail to avoid possible mishaps on election (working) day.
country of immigrants
This is the case of Meena Raman and Raman Gopalakrishnan, a couple of doctors from a neighboring county who are waiting in line to see Michelle Obama for the first time. They both support Harris, but he is the one who is more enthusiastic and she wanted to see a rally with her “own eyes.” Meena arrives wearing a Barça t-shirt – she and her family are football fans – and wears a “Swifties by Harris”, in reference to the singer Taylor Swift.
Gopalakrishnan, also self-proclaimed Swiftieremembers his first rally to see Barack Obama in 2008. He says that he has always been involved in politics. In a few hours he plans to take volunteers in his car to go door to door to encourage voting and in these elections he has already tried making calls to try to help. This year the country has more at stake than others.
“This is a country of immigrants and we were welcomed with open arms about 25 years ago,” explains Gopalakrishnan, a psychiatrist who moved from India with his wife, an anesthesiologist, to finish his medical studies. “We love this place. It is a place we call home. And I can’t let a tyrant take him away.” Gopalakrishnan says Harris is “not perfect,” but “at least her head and her heart are in the right place” just like Biden. “It’s a fight between good and evil,” he says.
In the 2016 election, he was unable to vote because he did not yet have U.S. citizenship. Justo obtained it shortly after the elections and received a “welcome” letter signed by President Barack Obama. His wife became a citizen a few days later, when the new Republican president’s term had already begun, and she did not receive any letters. “Only a few days apart… No letter. But we know that we are welcome in the country. It is the ideals and values that make it different. And it is something that is made from an idea and there is nothing that can surpass it. “That’s why we’re involved.”
Meena Raman admits to being afraid about what will happen on Tuesday. “Everyone should go out and vote. That’s the key. We are a really important state, we will encourage everyone around us to get out and vote,” he says, explaining that his neighbors are also “engaged.” Their son, 22, has already voted, and they are sad that their daughter, 17, has not yet reached the minimum age to participate.
Turnout in Pennsylvania
Norristown is in a Democratic county north of Philadelphia that Biden won by almost 30 points four years ago similar to the county where this doctor couple lives. Participation is the key now to decide a very tight race.
Pennsylvania is the state that made the result of the presidential elections clear in 2020, in favor of Joe Biden, and in 2016, in favor of Donald Trump.
The state is especially important to Harris considering the tighter battleground states. No Democratic candidate has reached the White House without winning Pennsylvania since Harry Truman in 1948. However, there are more examples of Republicans who have achieved it, the last George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. Biden defeated Trump by about 81,000 votes in 2020 throughout the state, but, as Michelle Obama recalled this Saturday, it is such a large state that it means that on average each census section was decided by nine votes. Now the polls show a tie in voting intentions that makes it impossible to predict the result.
Tonight, the spirit of the majority is one of euphoria between songs and inspiring messages. “I feel very optimistic. All the rallies have been overflowing, at the limit of their capacity. “It’s a good sign,” says Inga, a worker at a county medical center, who arrives with her sister, a lawyer, and makes friends with another group of women in line.
Nurses by Harris
Lexi Abeln, a nurse who works in Harrisburg, did not want to run the risk of not voting, as happened to her on one occasion when she could not leave the hospital on time, and has also voted by mail. She wears a “nurses for Harris” badge.
“I saw the direct impact of what Trump’s first presidency had, a negative effect on health care in the United States. And I believe that a new Trump presidency would be absolutely devastating to the health and well-being of American citizens. “I am a mother, I have children and that worries me,” she explains. “Many people don’t realize how the overturning of Roe v. “Wade affected women’s health in a way that is putting more lives at stake,” he says, referring to the ruling that since 1973 protected the right to abortion throughout the country and was revoked by the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, in 2022. She says that at her hospital she sees people coming in for spontaneous abortions and thinks about how serious it is that in other states “vital care for the mother is denied because doctors are afraid of being punished.”
Abeln’s daughter, who is 25 years old, now lives in Madrid with her partner and has voted at the United States embassy. Also his son, a university student in Pennsylvania. Abeln thinks about how the two experienced the change in the country after 2016. “Then they almost only knew Obama as president. They felt so safe and protected that they couldn’t imagine something like that… They fell into a depression when Trump won. It’s something I didn’t expect. “I don’t want that to happen again.”
#Michelle #Obama #Trump #final #stretch #small #man #feel #big #pumping #gas
