NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Standing in a high school gymnasium 10 miles from America’s gambling capital, former president Barack Obama implored any undecided or hesitant voters to place a figurative bet on Kamala Harris.
“Sometimes I talk to folks who don’t think it’s going to make a difference whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins,” Obama said in front of a rowdy crowd of thousands on the first day of early voting in Nevada. To them, he said: “Do not sit back and hope for the best. Get off your couch and vote.”
The rally in North Las Vegas was the second stop in a busy stretch of battleground state travel for the former president, who remains one of the nation’s most popular Democrats. Harris’s campaign is increasingly deploying Obama as its not-so-secret weapon in the race’s waning weeks, leaning on him to whip up enthusiasm in what could be a historically close contest.
In his 40-minute speech, Obama sought to underline the ways politics can have a tangible impact — and how an election “can make your life better or it can make it worse.” The coronavirus pandemic was the ultimate example, Obama argued, accusing his successor of mishandling the crisis and causing hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths.
“People’s grandmothers, people’s fathers, people’s moms who would have been alive if Donald Trump had just paid attention and tried to follow the plan that we gave him,” Obama said.
Sure, he added, a president won’t fix the country’s most intractable problems overnight, but Obama said that Harris would be a leader who “cares about you, who listens to ordinary people, who listens to people who are experts in these areas.”
Harris’s campaign has also looked to Obama to help juice her support among men, especially young men of color who appear to be more open to Trump’s messaging than that of past Republican nominees.
So far, Obama has employed a multipronged approach. He bluntly admonished men who may have voted for him in 2008 and 2012 but who might be reticent about casting their ballot for a woman — “speaking some truths,” he called it at a stop in Pittsburgh, where his frank reproach made headlines.
In North Las Vegas, he upbraided “some men who seem to think Trump’s behavior of bullying people or putting them down is somehow macho or a sign of strength.”
But Obama has also begun taking Trump on more directly than ever, mocking the Republican candidate’s bizarre behavior and mental fitness. He has alluded to the long-standing animosity between himself and Trump, who fueled his early political career by falsely questioning Obama’s birthplace.
“When it comes to health care, Donald Trump has got one answer,” Obama said. “He wants to end the Affordable Care Act. He doesn’t even really know what the Affordable Care Act is or how it works. He just knows I did it.”
But even as he needled Trump for “loony” behavior, Obama called for a return to character and values, drawing a stark contrast with the Republican nominee’s comments earlier in the day at a vulgar rally in Pennsylvania, where he referred to Harris as “a shit vice president.”
Attendees at Obama’s rally in North Las Vegas cheered his barbs at Trump, and some welcomed the tough love he directed at men who “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president,” as he put it at a stop last week.
“I am very blunt, and I like that,” said Anita Freeman, a Las Vegas resident and high school teacher who said she attended the Saturday rally to “hear what the message is firsthand from the Democratic Party.”
She hasn’t made up her mind who she will vote for, she said, but she’s leaning toward Harris. And she has appreciated the messaging from Obama, who she voted for twice and said reminds her of her father. He’s been right to call out sexism in the race, she said.
“There are a lot of people who still hold onto old cultural beliefs that women should not have power,” said Freeman, who said that in the 1980s she was the first female firefighter in the New Jersey township where she grew up.
Michael Dakan, who traveled to Nevada from Los Angeles to canvas for Democrats, said he’s noticed how lately Obama is “less tempered about what he says.”
“But he’s still Obama, he’s still presidential, he’s measured, he’s what we hope to have in a president,” said Dakan, who was wearing a Deadhead shirt that read “Make America Grateful Again.” “When I listen to him speak, he just puts me at ease. He has a certain grace.”
The race between Harris and Trump in Nevada is among the tightest of any state in the country, according to The Washington Post’s polling average, which shows Harris clinging to a lead of less than a point.
The state is one of seven that likely will decide who winds up in the White House next year. Democrats have recently dominated here, winning the state’s electoral college votes in the last four presidential contests and in six of the last eight. But Trump appears to have gained ground as concerns over skyrocketing rents and home prices have some voters itching for a change.
Responding to this newly competitive environment, Democrats have been parading through the Silver State. Harris has ventured here multiple times recently, vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz stopped in earlier this month and former president Bill Clinton will rally voters here next week. Trump has likewise campaigned in Nevada and will return next week.
Voters here may also play a key role in determining which party controls the House. In the race for Senate, Democrats have a considerably larger advantage: Incumbent Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) is leading her Republican challenger, Sam Brown, who has struggled to gain traction and keep up in polls and fundraising.
As in several other states, abortion politics are playing a major role in Nevada. Voters will decide whether to amend the state’s constitution to ensure a right to the procedure. Democrats are hoping the issue will energize voters and spur increased turnout, benefiting them in other races.
Obama — who is set to travel to Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia in the coming days — noted the statewide vote Saturday night. He said that while “there are good people of conscience on both sides” of the abortion debate, “we should at least agree that such a deeply personal decision should be made by the woman whose body is involved and not by politicians.”
The former president’s soaring rhetoric seemed designed to conjure up memories of his eight years in office, a time many Democrats now remember fondly as an era of ascendant political optimism.
In doing so, Obama sought to draw a direct line from himself to Harris — a link he made explicitly at the Democratic National Convention, when he said that “the torch has been passed.”
While the Harris campaign — and Obama, too, in recent appearances — has made a mantra of the phrase “We’re not going back” in reference to Trump’s time in office, they are in fact pushing a different brand of longing for the recent past.
At his Friday stop in Tucson, Obama recalled fondly his opponent in the 2008 presidential election, the late-Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): “He understood that some values transcend parties.”
And on Saturday, he mentioned the late Democratic senator from Nevada, Harry M. Reid, who he said “refused to see politics as just this battle between good and evil.”
The message appeared to be: Remember when times were tamer and politics somewhat more polite?