NORRISTOWN, Pennsylvania — Former first lady Michelle Obama warned of the dangers former President Donald Trump presents the country if he is reelected on Tuesday without saying his name.
In her closing address in Norristown, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, Obama indirectly described Trump as a “brazen” and “bombastic” “conman,” contending “once you wink at hate and make it normal to call somebody a bimbo, or low IQ, or human scum,” “you cannot control how fast and how far that fire of hate will spread.”
“Real change, true progress is hard to achieve and it does take generations,” Obama said. “But the wrong outcome [next week] can throw so much of that progress away.”
“See one day, it’s coming for folks you’ve never met, maybe it’s immigrants or black people. Then it’s coming for a neighbor, a friend, a family member who’s a Puerto Rican, or Jewish, or Palestinian. But then it’s coming for you.”
Obama argued that the election is about “reclaiming the mantle of who belongs in this nation,” but adding it does not “belong to any one group.”
“We have been inundated with voices and forces that tell us another story about who we are,” she said. “We’ve had this noise buzzing in our ears for over a decade, but at least for me, y’all, it’s still not normal. It is still unstable. … It is dangerous. It is shameful.”
Norristown is in the Democratic stronghold of Montgomery County, which is part of the Philadelphia metropolitan area. For Harris to win next Tuesday, she has to overperform in Philadelphia and its collar counties to counteract Trump’s dominance in rural areas of the commonwealth.
Despite her dislike of politics, Obama returned to the national spotlight this summer when she and her husband, former President Barack Obama, endorsed Harris before she then encouraged Democrats to “do something” during her address at the party’s national convention in Chicago. She has been selective about her appearances on the campaign trail, making her maiden speech before Harris last weekend in another battleground state, Michigan.
There in Kalamazoo, nicknamed “Kamala-zoo” by Democrats, Obama made the case for Harris and against Trump, whom she charges endangered her family with his racial criticism of her husband.
Criticizing Trump’s economic policies to his pandemic response and attempt to undermine the 2020 election, Obama’s harshest condemnation concerned abortion access and women’s healthcare, more broadly.
Obama also leaned into a Democratic strategy of reminding women they do not have to vote for the same candidate as their husbands.
“If you are a woman who lives in a household of men that don’t listen to you or value your opinion, just remember that your vote is a private matter,” she said. “Regardless of the political views of your partner, you get to choose, you get to use your judgment and cast your vote for yourself and the women in your life.”
Obama adopted a different approach this week, amplifying the message of her husband that Trump’s bravado is not masculinity. On Saturday in Pennsylvania, the former first lady dismissed Trump as a “small man trying to make himself feel good.”
An hour away in Pennsylvania battleground Lehigh County, another Philadelphia collar county, but one that swung from Trump in 2016 to Joe Biden in 2020, Republican women are scrutinizing the strategy.
Wendy Kleintop, 68, downplayed the number of women saying publicly they are voting for Trump but who in private support Harris.
“You have to laugh at that, what they’re doing,” the Walnutport landscaping small-business owner told the Washington Examiner. “I think that there’s some women that are going to vote for Trump or their husband’s going to vote for her. There’s a lot of women in our area that are all Republican.”
Kleintop’s cousin, Doris Eckhart, 68, agreed, asserting she has been surprised when waving Trump flags on the side of the road to passing cars the number of positive gestures she gets from men, compared to rude gestures from older women.
“It’s amazing how many cars go through and the guys are like this [thumbs up], and the women are either [thumbs down] or they whip out the finger,” the Palmerton retiree told the Washington Examiner.
Obama was introduced on Saturday by Alicia Keys, who similarly declined to say Trump’s name, and underscored the importance of women’s suffrage.
“A woman’s right to vote did not come easy,” Keys said. “That’s inspiring to me. Sometimes we feel like it doesn’t mean something. … You do matter. Your vote matters. Your voice matters. And if you don’t use your gift, your vote, the vote that our ancestors fought so hard for, they’ll take that from us too.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), a runner-up to become Harris’s running mate, spoke before Obama and Keys, leading a chant of his modified catchphrase, “We’re getting s*** done!”
“For all the kids out there, ear muffs, OK?” Shapiro said. “As we reach the final three days of this campaign for president, it sure seems to me that it’s coming down to those two things. Who’s going to get stuff done for you? Who’s on your side? And who’s going to stand up to protect your freedom?”
Shapiro, a popular governor whom Harris is embracing in her campaign speeches and literature after choosing Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her vice presidential nominee, specifically criticized Trump for comments about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage” made during his rally last weekend at New York City‘s Madison Square Garden.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“When I hear Donald Trump putting down our fellow Americans, attack people because of how they worship, attacking people because of what they look like, or standing by when one of his surrogates attacks our fellow Pennsylvanians, like 500,000 Puerto Ricans, I don’t like it very much,” he said.
Barack Obama, who has been crisscrossing the country since the start of last month, is scheduled to campaign one last time in Wisconsin on Sunday, the last day of early voting in the Badger State.
