Obama joins midterm battle for Congress with rebuke of Trump

Bloomberg

Barack Obama delivered a blunt rebuke of President Donald Trump in the opening salvo of the former president’s campaign to bolster Democrats in the midterm congressional elections.
The former president warned of dire consequences if US voters stand on the sidelines in November’s midterm election, saying the nation is living through “dangerous times.”
“This is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us as citizens of the United States need to determine just who we are, what it is that we stand for,” he told a mostly student audience of about 1,300 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “If you thought elections don’t matter, I hope these last two years have corrected that impression.”
Obama’s speech at the university, where he also accepted an ethics in government award, marked the opening of a cross-country campaign foray by the former president to promote Democratic candidates for Congress and state legislatures. On Saturday, he was expected to be in Southern California, where Democrats are hoping to gain several House seats in the November election.

Dueling Campaigns
Obama will be on the road at the same time Trump is undertaking ambitious schedule of appearances on behalf of Republican candidates as the GOP girds for the possibility of losing its House majority in the November 6 election. It will create a rare display for voters of a past president working directly against a successor.
As Obama spoke, Trump was in North Dakota, where he was headlining a fundraiser for a Republican Senate candidate trying to unseat a Democratic incumbent. “I watched it but I fell asleep,” Trump told his audience.
Obama said voters must resist the “politics of fear and resentment” used by the privileged and powerful to preserve their status. Otherwise, he said, the US risks slipping further from the ideals of the nation’s founders.

Raising Alarms
Obama said the current situation should raise alarms for members of both parties, such as Trump’s criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the FBI.
“It should not be partisan to say that we do not pressure the attorney general or the FBI to use the criminal justice system as a cudgel to punish our political opponents,” he said, “or to explicitly call on the attorney general to protect members of our own party from prosecution because an election happens to be coming up.” Obama raised alarm about a New York Times op-ed, written by an anonymous Trump administration official, that said top government officials are working to thwart presidential actions they consider misguided.
“The claim that everything will turn out OK because there are people inside the White House who secretly aren’t following the president’s orders, this is not a check,” he said. “I’m being serious here. That’s not how our democracy is supposed to work.”
Obama also cited the president’s response after a clash last year between white supremacists and counter protesters in Virginia that turned deadly.
“We’re supposed to stand up to discrimination and we’re sure as heck supposed to stand up, clearly and unequivocally to Nazi sympathisers,” he said. “How hard can that be? Saying that Nazis are bad.” Previous presidents have shied away from criticizing their successors. “Most of these former presidents were too old to be part of it, or like George W. Bush, weren’t interested in re-engaging,” said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. “This has not been a major function of past presidents, but these are not ordinary times.”
Bush, Obama’s predecessor, largely avoided the campaign trail during the first midterm following his presidency and rarely had public comments about the man who followed him into the Oval Office.