Obama to black voters: Trump would undo my legacy

By Tom Kludt and Athena Jones

CNN

In a strong appeal to black voters on Wednesday, President Barack Obama warned that if Donald Trump wins the election next week, the Republican presidential nominee would undo his administration’s legacy.

“If we let this thing slip and I’ve got a situation where my last two months in office are preparing for a transition to Donald Trump, whose staff people have said that their primary agenda is to have him in the first couple of weeks sitting in the Oval Office and reverse every single thing that we’ve done,” Obama said during an interview on the “Tom Joyner Morning Show,” a syndicated radio program.

Obama’s victories in the 2008 and 2012 elections were propelled in large part by his advantages among a broad and diverse coalition, including a mammoth margin of victory among black voters.

But there are signs that this year’s Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton might suffer from lower turnout among black voters, something that Obama addressed Wednesday.

The “African-American vote right now is not as solid as it needs to be,” he said.

“And I know that there are a lot of people in barbershops and beauty salons, you know, in the neighborhoods who are saying to themselves, ‘We love Barack, we love — we especially love Michelle, and so, you know, it was exciting and now we’re not as excited as much.’ You know what? I need everybody to understand that everything we’ve done is dependent on me being able to pass the baton to somebody who believes in the same things I believe in,” Obama said.

The pitch was similar to remarks Obama made in September at the Congressional Black Caucus dinner, when he said that he would consider a Trump victory to be “an insult to my legacy.”