Barack Obama Will Reportedly Use DNC To Warn That American Democracy Is At Stake In November
In a Wednesday statement, a senior Democratic official spokeswoman, Katie Hill, claimed that Barack Obama is planning to use his Democratic National Convention (DNC) speech the same night to warn of the threat to American democracy under Donald Trump’s leadership, The Guardian reported.
“President Obama will highlight the cynical moves by the current administration and the Republican party to discourage Americans from voting,” she said. “He’ll make a pointed case that democracy itself is on the line – along with the chance to create a better version of it.”
The publication highlighted Trump’s purported effort to undermine American faith in mail-in voting, which Democrats have been pushing to expand amid the coronavirus pandemic. As previously reported by The Inquisitr, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders recently linked the president’s attempts to defund the United States Postal Service (USPS) to a plan to undermine democracy. In addition, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed that Trump’s attacks on vote-by-mail efforts are tantamount to an assault on the U.S. Constitution.
According to CNN, Obama will argue that presidential nominee Joe Biden — who was formally nominated on Tuesday — and his running mate, Kamala Harris, have the “experience and character” to guide America through the current economic and health problems that Trump has purportedly failed to grapple with.
On Wednesday, Obama wrote a letter to his supporters in which he hinted at the purported direction of his forthcoming DNC speech.
“Folks, sixteen years ago, the first time I spoke at a Democratic convention, I asked a simple question. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope?”
Per CNN, Obama’s DNC speech — which will be broadcast live before Harris’ — is his fifth in total and his first since he left office. His first was in 2004 during his bid for the Senate.
Obama’s warning comes not long after Hillary Clinton sounded the alarm on the threat Trump purportedly poses to U.S. democracy.
“They’re trying to dismantle American democracy, and using a deadly pandemic they made even deadlier to do it,” she said.
Amid accusations of meddling in democracy via the Postal Service, Trump’s appointed postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, said Tuesday that all planned operational changes to the company would be delayed until after the election. Notably, DeJoy is reportedly under investigation by an internal Post Office watchdog for his recent policy changes as well as his alleged lack of compliance with federal ethics rules.
