US President Joe Biden, together with ex-President Barack Obama, warned of the dangers to democracy in the US shortly before the important midterm elections. “Democracy is literally on the ballot,” Biden said at a campaign event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
Similarly, Obama made a similar statement a short time later at the same event: “Truth and facts, logic and common sense and basic decency are on the ballot,” he warned of the Republican nominees. There’s a lot at stake. “The midterm elections are no joke.”
Obama had recently appeared at several campaign events – now together with Biden in the state of Pennsylvania, which is particularly important for the Democrats. The party is threatened with losing a narrow majority in the US Congress in the vote on Tuesday. While polls suggest the House of Representatives is likely to fall to the Republicans, the Senate could be very close. In Pennsylvania, there is a realistic chance that the Democrats can take a Senate seat from the Republicans. The Democrat John Fetterman competes there against the Republican and TV doctor Mehmet Oz.
Fetterman, 53, had a stroke in May. After a televised duel with Oz, in which Fetterman spoke more slowly and made more mistakes, Republicans questioned Fetterman’s fitness for office. “I had a stroke. It really blew me away. But I got back up,” Fetterman said in Philadelphia, joking about how hard it was to speak rightly in front of Obama. Obama emphasized that the stroke did not change Fetterman’s values.
