By james art Former President Barack Obama, on the first day of early voting in Wisconsin, encouraged people in one of Wisconsin’s main liberal strongholds for Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz.
Dane County is one of two large liberal centers in Wisconsin, a critical state that could swing the presidential election. The area’s importance this year was highlighted by recent visits by Harris herself last month and by former President Donald Trump, who visited Dane County earlier this month, following the advice of Wisconsin Republicans to work to eat up Democrats in the state’s fastest-growing district.
“If you haven’t voted yet, I won’t be offended if you just leave right now,” Obama told an energized crowd at the Alliant Energy Center. “Go vote.”
Gov. Tony Evers, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan and Minnesota vice presidential candidate Tim Waltz also spoke at the rally.
During his speech, which lasted about 40 minutes, Obama argued that electing Harris and Walz would help improve the lives of Americans while criticizing former President Donald Trump.
“We know this election is going to be tense, it’s going to be tense because a lot of Americans are still struggling,” Obama said. Harris, he said, “knows what it’s like to scrap and work hard — to see her mother worry about bills, and so does Tim. So if you choose them, they will focus on your problems.
“Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz have no concept of a plan,” Obama said, referring to Trump’s comment during the September debate about his vague ideas for replacing the Affordable Care Act. “They have an actual plan to make your life better.”
Obama said the plan would include cracking down on corporations for raising prices, making it more affordable to build or buy a home, limit out-of-pocket health care costs and cut taxes for middle-class Americans.
Obama highlighted the Trump administration’s decision not to follow the pandemic his own administration left behind during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If someone tells you that it doesn’t matter if you choose someone who is competent, someone who cares about you, someone who listens to experts and listens to ordinary people and knows what their lives are like and what they’re going to do, it does matter” , Obama said.
Elections are about more than politics, he added, saying they are also about “values.” For Trump and his “cronies,” freedom means getting away with whatever they want, he said. “We believe that true freedom means being able to make decisions about our own lives.”
“Don’t whistle! Vote,” Obama told the crowd. “They can’t hear you. They can hear you vote.
Waltz had a similar theme in his criticism of Trump before Obama.
“There’s something, not just crazy, but cruel about a billionaire using people’s livelihoods as a political prop,” Walz said of Trump’s actions recent shift working at McDonalds in Pennsylvania. “His agenda allows corporations to not pay people for overtime and disparages the very people he represented himself to be… That restaurant wasn’t even open. It was a stunt… I guarantee you the five minutes he was standing by the fryer were the hardest that man has ever worked.”
Waltz also took some jabs at Elon Musk, the tech billionaire and owner of the social media platform “X” (formerly Twitter), which is campaigning for Trump.
“I’m going to talk about his vice partner — his vice partner, Elon Musk,” Waltz said. “Ilan is on that stage and he’s jumping around, jumping around like crazy.”
Waltz accused Musk, who recently offered people $1 million to sign a PAC petition trying to buy the election.
Waltz ended his speech by saying they were still the “underdogs” in the campaign.
“We know we’re going to leave it all on the field, Wisconsin. We have same-day voter registration and it’s open today,” Waltz said. “We need you to knock on the door. We have to call.
The rally’s message resonated with Kerry Medina, 28, of Madison.
“[Walz] he just really seems like a relatable guy and as some of these speakers have put it – what you see is what you get…,” Medina said. “This is amazing. We need this. We need by leaders for the country who work for the people and not for themselves.”
Medina said she planned to try to get to the polls early after the rally and learned some information that could help her make her case to undecided voters. One piece of information she said she learned was that elections in Wisconsin are decided by a few votes per precinct, a point made by Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes Conway, who also addressed the crowd. Both in 2016 and in 2020 were decided by just over 20,000 votes in Wisconsin, or about three votes per precinct.
Medina said the issues at stake in the election made her want to run this year – it will be her first time. She said one of her top priorities is reproductive rights, as well as the separation of church and state.
Reproductive health issues were at the center of the rally for speakers and attendees alike.
Cindy McCallaster, who moved to Madison earlier this year to be near family, said reproductive rights are important to her because of her six grandchildren. Hope Bank of Madison, who attended the rally with McCalaster, said she won Roe v. Wade because she was able to decide not to have children.
Bradley Whitford, the former West Wing actor and Madison native, gave an impassioned speech that highlighted the issue. He told how his father served as president of Planned Parenthood in Dane County.
“He was just a father. He loved his wife and his daughters and thought they deserved to have agency over their own bodies and access to the health care they needed,” Whitford said. “But now the man who brags about sexual assault is also bragging about the fact that he overturned Roe v. Wade and took away those basic rights.”
Whitford pointed to some of the women who have faced the devastating consequences of abortion bans. One of the women, Amber Nicole Thurman, died after taking abortion pills, encountered a rare complication and was denied emergency medical care due to Georgia’s abortion ban.
Obama pointed to Trump’s controversial statements on abortion access, saying he had “tied himself to a bagel.”
“When [Trump] running for office for the first time, he said he would support punishing women who have abortions. Then a few weeks ago, he said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be your advocate,'” Obama said.
With two weeks to go, rally participants expressed concern about the presidential election. Bank of Madison said it was “a little horrified, hopeful, but certainly horrified.”
“It seems unthinkable [Trump] he could have been re-elected, but we were also confident in 2016. There is a sense of dread and terror,” Bank said.
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