Pamela’s pancakes, reproductive rights and diapers: Obama kicks Trump, then praises Harris

Around 7:30 Thursday night, former President Barack Obama jogged up a set of steps, mounted a stage, waved to a cheering crowd, then delivered a 45-minute speech that no other living politician could pull off.

And it could only be done in Pittsburgh.

He called himself the “hopey changey guy,” embracing the phrase Republicans once used as a dig, then talked about abortion rights, Pamela’s pancakes (it’s Pittsburgh, so folks got it), Heinz Field (yes, he called it by its real name), middle-class tax cuts, Dan Rooney, values, diapers and a host of other topics — and no one in the audience was left scratching their heads. No throngs of people headed for the exits. A speech covering several diverse, seemingly unrelated topics did not come off as a rambling, incoherent mess. Who would have thought it possible?

He belittled only one person: former President Donald Trump. Well, he also threw in a few jabs at what he called “Trump’s cronies.” Into that bag of GOP politicians he tossed Trump’s VP pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

This all happened inside a packed 1950s-era athletic venue on the University of Pittsburgh campus, and it kicked off an Obama blitz designed to help carry Vice President Kamala Harris into the White House, with the election 25 days away.

Harris, Obama said, “is as prepared for the job as any nominee for president has ever been.” He cited her middle-class upbringing (he mentioned her teenage stint at McDonald’s to give it some cred), her years as a prosecutor and state attorney general, then a U.S. senator and vice president. He acknowledged that many people are struggling, especially with higher prices since the pandemic, and mentioned the ways in which Harris will help everyday Americans if she becomes president.

But what most jazzed up the crowd were the pokes at the GOP presidential nominee, which brought laughter, and any mention of reproductive freedom. Whenever Obama discussed the harm caused by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the need to codify abortion rights, the crowd roared.

Obama addressed grocery prices, immigration, tax cuts, health care (he mocked Trump for saying he had “a concept of a plan”), housing — and lies. What we folks in the news media often call “misinformation” emanating from the GOP seemed to both worry and exasperate Obama.

He cited the recent flooding in North Carolina as an example. While Harris and President Joe Biden were visiting flood-damaged areas, he said, Trump was making up stories about federal aid going to immigrants instead of flood victims, and help being witheld from communities that voted Republican. “Even local Republicans said it was not true,” Obama said. He suggested Trump may return to this playbook in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, which blew into Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday night. 

This was part of a larger theme — one of values — that Obama returned to throughout his speech. Trump doesn’t have any, Obama said. He contrasted Trump with someone the crowd knew well — former Steelers chief Dan Rooney. He recalled visiting Rooney and marveling that he knew the names of all staff members, from custodians to upper management. Rooney, he said, valued others and was known for his integrity and for giving back to his community.

“It’s so different from what we see in the Republican nominee,” Obama said. “We seem to have set aside the values that people like Dan stood for … those didn’t used to be Republican or Democratic values. It used to be that we’d have arguments about tax policy or foreign policy, but we didn’t have arguments about whether you should tell the truth or not.”

He talked of Harris’ plans to go after corporations for price gouging, for lowering housing costs by cutting red tape and working with governors and the private sector to build 3 million new homes. He talked about Harris’ proposed middle-class tax cuts, plans to lower drug costs and offer financial help for people starting small businesses.

And of Trump’s plan to impose tariffs?

“What he is proposing is basically a Trump sales tax that could cost the average family almost $4,000 a year,” he said.

Some of the digs at Trump were designed to get under his skin — Trump will no doubt be talking about Obama in the next few days.

While praising Harris’ vice presidential running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who Obama said “can also take a vintage truck apart and put it back together again,” Obama paused and asked the audience, “Do you think Donald Trump could do that? Do you think Donald Trump has ever changed a tire in his life? I’m just trying to picture it.”

Moments later, he hit Trump for claiming to have presided over a robust economy early in his term.

“Yeah, it was pretty good,” Obama said, “because it was my economy. We had 75 straight months of job growth that I handed over to him. It wasn’t something he did. I spent eight years cleaning up the mess the Republicans left me the last time.”

Spliced between these attacks were discussions about serious issues. Freedom, for example. 

“For Trump and his cronies, freedom means the powerful can do whatever they please,” Obama said. “Fire workers who are trying to form a union, dodge paying their fair share of taxes, throw out your votes when they lose an election, control what women can and can’t do with their bodies. In other words, for Trump, freedom is getting away with stuff.”

For Harris and the Democrats, he said, freedom means the right to make decisions about how we worship or who we marry, among other things.

“We’re going to disagree on how each of us should live our lives,” he said, “and we have to respect other people’s views on these issues. I’ve always said there are good people of conscience on both sides of the abortion divide. I respect anyone whose faith tells them it’s something they don’t support. But if we believe in freedom, then we should at least agree that such a deeply personal decision should be made by the woman whose body is involved and not the politicians.”

At one point, Obama directly addressed men who interpret Trump’s bullying as a sign of strength.

“Real strength is about working hard and carrying a heavy load without complaining,” he said. “Real strength is taking responsibility for your actions and telling the truth when it’s inconvenient.” 

He went on, but the applause at that point made it nearly impossible for a reporter standing in the back of the room to hear his words.

***

At one point, Obama recalled his shock when, as a young father, he discovered the price of diapers. “I remember changing diapers,” he said. “You think Donald Trump has ever changed a diaper?”

Then he paused. Obama is a master at pauses. The audience seemed to catch on and laugh — Obama laughed. Someone in the crowd must have said something to him that the microphone did not pick up. “I almost said that,” Obama replied, “but decided I shouldn’t say it.”

***

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey introduced Obama, then sat on a raised chair behind the former president during the speech. Casey’s in the midst of his own reelection bid — he’s locked in a race with Republican Dave McCormick — and on several occasions Obama praised Casey and called on the audience to return him to Washington.

***

A few hours before Obama spoke, Karen Hassan, 69, hung out beside the stage with a friend. Hassan wore a black T-shirt with sparkly letters spelling out “Vote Harris.” She chairs the North Fayette Democratic Committee and is working in a region that’s “slightly red, but not so much that we can’t do some things.”

How was she feeling about the state of the election?

“With all due respect to you,” she said, pointing to a striking reporter with two days of stubble on his chin, “this election will be won on the backs of kick-ass women who are 60, 70, even 80 years old. They’re writing postcards, they’re making phone calls, they’re doing relational canvassing,” which, she explained, involves approaching people you’re comfortable with to discuss issues, and to make certain people have registered to vote, and know how and where to vote.

Many of the postcards are personalized. Some women, Hassan explained, answered the prompt, What are you most afraid of? Women wrote about reproductive rights, education and LGBTQ+ issues, she said. “They’re really taken it to heart. We’re teaching them to text and to personalize that, too, so it’s not just a fundraising message.”

A few feet away, Pittsburgh firefighter Justin Perry, 41, talked about the day Biden announced he was stepping down as the nominee and was endorsing Harris. That announcement came on a Sunday, after the Republican National Convention and little more than a week after a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump at a rally in Butler.

That attempt seemed to galvanize Trump’s support — he wore an oversized gauze dressing on his ear during appearances at the convention; several Trump supporters swathed their ears in gauze in a sort of Band-Aid solidarity.

“After that happened, you really got the sense that Biden was going to lose the election,” Perry said. “But once he stepped down and Kamala took over, all of that went away, that whole feeling went away. It was like a weight being lifted off your shoulders. It’s now an even race, rather than Trump winning in a landslide.”

Randi Cosby, wearing a “Kamala 47” shirt, chimed in to say that Biden stepped down on her birthday. At first she was bummed because she supported Biden but was thrilled at his endorsement of Harris. Now she’s a Harris volunteer in Robinson, where she lives.

“My Black job, as Trump calls it, is to give out lawn signs,” she said. “So I stay at the headquarters. That’s all I’m doing. Meeting people and talking to people about why you need to be out there voting, why you need to vote for her. And handing out signs.”

Cosby, 46, says she’s disturbed by all of the misinformation she hears when talking to voters, and she tries to point people to credible sources of information. “A lot of people aren’t registered,” she said. “There are people who support Trump — in their mind — but they’re not registered.”

Sarah Daly, 40, who’d been talking to Cosby and Perry, said that if Harris is elected she’ll bring “respect and dignity and honor and intelligence to the White House. And if voters can see that and decide that’s what they want in a leader, then I can be more hopeful about the course for America moving forward.”

“This divisiveness and disrespect and hateful violent rhetoric that’s coming out now, it makes me very nervous,” she said. “And if half of the country believes that, it’s really disheartening.”