The former president is hitting the campaign trail, beginning in Georgia on Friday night, to try to help Democrats energize voters and regain momentum in key Senate races.
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Former President Barack Obama at the White House last month. He will be hitting the campaign trail in Georgia Friday night.
ATLANTA — With the Democratic Party facing a potential reckoning in little more than a week and its leader, President Biden, largely sidelined by low approval ratings, Senate candidates in excruciatingly tight elections are turning to a familiar face to try to push them over the finish line: Barack Obama.
The former president is no stranger to midterm heartbreaks, having faced a red tsunami in 2010 that cost him the House, then a crushing year in 2014 that cost him the Senate. For much of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, he studiously stayed out of politics, playing the elder statesman above the ugly fray.
But beginning on Friday, Mr. Obama will dive back in, at a rally for Georgia Democrats outside Atlanta, followed by events in Michigan and Wisconsin on Saturday, then Nevada and Pennsylvania next week.
The hope is that he will energize the Democratic base, especially Black voters who have struggled with inflation and rising crime but have been left cold by the Biden administration.
“If the need is to persuade swing voters in the suburbs and energize minority voters in the cities, I think he’s the right guy to have out there in this closing week,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime political adviser, “because that may be the difference, turnout in cities and persuasion in the suburbs.”
Friday’s rally in College Park, an Atlanta suburb on the city’s southwestern edge, has been billed as an event for Georgia’s entire Democratic ticket. But two of its candidates will take center stage: Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor who is challenging Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, in a rematch, and Senator Raphael Warnock, who is fending off a challenge from Herschel Walker, a Republican, for a full term in the Senate.
ImageJameelah Gray, 32, after voting early at Morehouse College in Atlanta. All signs point to strong turnout on both sides in Georgia.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
Georgia Democrats have pointed to sky-high early voting figures as a sign of strength heading into Election Day. Nearly 1.3 million voters have cast ballots in the state, with the strongest performances coming from older Black voters and those in the deep-blue metro Atlanta counties of Fulton and DeKalb, according to data from the secretary of state’s office.
But all signs point to strong turnout on both sides, with Republican voters poised to pour into polling places on Election Day. Georgia Democrats still face considerable headwinds, especially with Mr. Biden, whose approval ratings stood last month at an abysmal 37 percent in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll. And while key portions of the base have turned out en masse, Democrats will still need to outperform with voters under 30 and women in the Atlanta suburbs to find success in November.
“I look at the early vote numbers in Georgia, and see them as is certainly positive news for Democrats,” said Tom Bonier, chief executive of the Democratic polling firm TargetSmart, which is working for the Abrams campaign. “But I think it’s also something that shows the work that needs to be done.”
The State of the 2022 Midterm Elections
Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.
- Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.
- Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.
- G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.
- Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.
Ms. Abrams’ campaign has been particularly focused on winning over Black men, whose votes are also vital to Mr. Warnock if he is to defeat Mr. Walker. Black voters could also make the difference elsewhere, especially in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where lagging turnout from voters of color helped Donald J. Trump secure narrow victories.
“I think we’re going to see Black voters step up to the plate,” said Quentin James, president and co-founder of The Collective, a political action committee devoted to electing Black Democrats. “But you can’t divorce that from the reality that the country hasn’t always stood up for Black voters.”
ImageAt a Democratic event called Georgia Black Men Call to Action, audience members listened to a speech by Stacey Abrams.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
Enter Mr. Obama.
The former president’s earlier forays into midterm battlegrounds were anything but resounding successes. In 2010, he crisscrossed the country trying to rally voters — especially young voters — by telling them that Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and Democrats had pulled it out. Unimpressed, the electorate responded with what he called a “shellacking,” handing Republicans a 68-seat gain in the House, the largest since 1948, along with seven seats in the Senate and six additional governorships.
In 2014, Republicans netted nine Senate seats, cementing control of Congress for Mr. Obama’s final two years in office.
Out of office, however, Mr. Obama is arguably a more popular Democratic figure than the current president — or any other Democratic leader, for that matter.
“There’s nostalgia for the Obama era with a lot of swing voters,” said Tim Phillips, a Republican strategist and former president of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political organization funded by the Koch family. “I think he’s their best spokesperson.”
Mr. James argued that President Biden’s scarcity on the campaign trail wasn’t really about Black voters, saying Mr. Biden was even less popular with white voters. By contrast, he said, African Americans remained deeply connected to the first and only Black president, who drew the highest turnout of Black voters in history.
“Obama’s going to ramp up urgency,” he said, “not just for voting but for voting early. It will be a call to action.”
The political environment for Democrats is far more uncertain than it was in either of the Obama midterms. Unemployment is low and the economy is growing, but Americans are confronting the worst inflation the nation has seen in 40 years, which is driving up interest rates and clawing back any sense of income gains as the pandemic recedes.
On the other hand, the Supreme Court’s repeal of abortion rights and the looming presence of former President Donald J. Trump are energizing the Democratic base in ways that Mr. Obama did not experience in his years in office.
“Presidents look better in the rear-view mirror,” said Mo Elleithee, who was a senior official at the Democratic National Committee during the drubbing the party took in 2014.
With little more than a week to go, Democrats are bracing for either a significant Republican wave that hands control of both the House and Senate to the G.O.P., or a split decision, with Democrats retaining control of a tightly divided Senate and Republicans squeaking out a narrow majority in the House.
Developments in key races have only heightened Democratic anxieties. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s halting debate performance against the Republican Mehmet Oz spotlighted the effect Mr. Fetterman’s stroke had had on his ability to communicate and frayed the nerves of Pennsylvania Democrats.
The Republicans’ main super PAC resumed advertising on television in New Hampshire, convinced that the race between Senator Maggie Hassan and her Republican challenger, Don Bolduc, had tightened. And prognosticators moved the Arizona contest between Senator Mark Kelly and his Republican challenger, Blake Masters, back to a tossup.
ImageSenator Chuck Schumer of New York, in Syracuse on Thursday, was recorded expressing his concerns to President Biden about where Democrats stood in Senate contests.Credit…Kenny Holston for The New York Times
Perhaps most exasperating to Democrats is the Senate race in Georgia, where a second woman this week accused Mr. Walker, the former football star, of having paid for her to have an abortion. Mr. Walker has denied both women’s claims.
Caught on a hot microphone on Thursday, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, was heard telling Mr. Biden, “The state where we’re going downhill is Georgia. It’s hard to believe that they will go for Herschel Walker.”
Jessica Taylor, the Senate analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said, “It really does feel like there is a lot of movement in these races.” She still rates control of the Senate a tossup, but, she added, “If this is a wave, you could see others swept away,” like Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado.
On the other hand, recent polling has tantalized Democrats in Iowa, where Senator Charles E. Grassley, a Republican, is seeking another six-year term at age 89; in North Carolina, where the Democratic nominee for the Senate, Cheri Beasley, remains knotted with her Republican opponent, Ted Budd, and even in Utah, where Senator Mike Lee, a Republican, is facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from an independent, the former C.I.A. officer Evan McMullin.
“This is the trickiest midterm environment I’ve seen in a long time,” said Steve Israel, a former House member from New York who once headed the House Democrats’ campaign arm.
Maya King reported from Atlanta and Jonathan Weisman from Chicago.
Source: nytimes.com
