Obama hits midterm campaign trail

Obama takes on Trump

Barack Obama is attacking Republicans in the US Congress and President Donald Trump, while exhorting people to vote in the November midterm elections.

Obama, the former Democratic President, is hitting Trump and Republicans hard on a variety of issues including health care, voting rights, campaign finance laws, and the economy.

The upcoming elections have created an atmosphere where this is for the first time that Obama is publicly criticising Trump by name in his speeches.

“It did not start with Donald Trump, he is a symptom, not the cause. He is just capitalizing on resentment that politicians have been fanning for years. A fear, an anger that is rooted in our past but is also borne in our enormous upheavals that have taken place in your brief lifetimes,” Obama told a gathering of students at the University of Illinois.

The former president has been telling people that voting in November 2018 midterm elections will be the antidote to stopping the fear and division that Trump has stoked.

Even the emails from Obama, being circulated among his prospective supporters, are appealing people to better organise themselves. “If you don’t like things you see, you can’t just close your eyes and long for something better. You’ve got to open them, embrace reality, and channel that hope into action,”

The sizable amount of time Obama spent on a campaign speech he gave in Illinois made Trump retort: He “fell asleep” watching Obama’s speech. “I watched it, but I fell asleep,” Trump said. “I’ve found he’s very good — very good for sleeping.”

The Republican National Committee (RNC) is every-time calling Obama a new “resistor-in-chief on the campign trail. “2016 is over, but President Obama is still dismissing the millions of voters across the country who rejected a continuation of his policies in favour of President Trump’s plan for historic tax cuts, new jobs and economic growth,” an RNC statement read.

Since leaving office, Obama – the 44th president – has followed the pattern of ex-presidents keeping relatively quiet about their successors. But Trump’s unpopularity seems to be making the Democrats new hopefuls to capture seats now held by Republicans.

According to Organizing for Action (OFA) that advocates for Obama’s agenda, the stakes couldn’t be higher in 2018. “We can elect representatives who fight for our values. On November 6, 2018, we have a once-in-a-decade chance to fight back. That’s why we have launched Organizing For ’18, a new program that will turn grassroots energy into action between now and Election Day.”