Obama tells American voters that he’s betting on them ...
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PRESIDENT Barack Obama harnessed history and all his oratorical skill in a final campaign push to see Hillary Clinton elected the first woman president of the United States.
Obama spent Monday campaigning for her, jetting from Michigan to New Hampshire to Pennsylvania.
But his last speech before electors cast their ballots to replace him — before tens of thousands of Democrats in Philadelphia — indeed felt like a rousing final farewell.
“You gave me a chance” he told the crowd gathered on a chilly night in the City of Brotherly Love. “A skinny guy with a funny name.”
“You bet on me,” he said, “I’ve always had the better odds, because I’ve always bet on you.”
This was Clinton’s event, but it seemed tailor-made for the 44th president.
Obama, critics might say, has never found a problem to which the answer is not a speech. But even his fiercest opponents would acknowledge his rhetorical prowess and his sensibility for history.
He was speaking at the city’s Independence Mall. Beyond the podium, beyond the illuminated sea of faces lay Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were forged.
Obama did what he’s done so many times before — he presented the sweep of American democracy as culminating in a single place and a singular time.
He portrayed electing Clinton as America’s first woman president as the next logical step. “In this place, where our Founders forged the documents of freedom, in this place where they gave us the tools to perfect our union, if you share my faith, then I ask you to vote,” he said.
Obama expressed typical confidence in the outcome.
“I’m betting that tomorrow, most moms and dads across America won’t cast their vote for someone who denigrates their daughters,” Obama said. “I’m betting that tomorrow, true conservatives won’t cast their vote for somebody with no regard for the Constitution.”
“I am betting that African-Americans will vote in big numbers because this journey we’ve been on was never about the color of a president, but about the content of his or her character.
“I am betting that America will reject a politics of resentment and a politics of blame, and choose a politics that says that we are stronger together. I am betting that, tomorrow, you will reject fear and choose hope.”
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