First lady Michelle Obama this week took the president’s campaign to a niche in the Latino community.
On Tuesday, during a campaign swing through Miami, Obama sat down for a half-hour filmed conversation with contributors to Mamiverse.com, a small but growing website aimed at Latino women, an important voting bloc in the upcoming election.
“These kinds of conversations that I get to have with women around this country are not just for the viewers and for the participants but they are completely therapeutic for me, as a mother, as a working mother,” Obama said. “Being able to hear about the challenges, to be able to share our ups and downs in life, these kinds of conversations become one of the favorite things that I get to do as first lady.”
The conversation was framed as a discussion between seven moms — six Latino moms from various states and Obama — on the “key issues impacting Hispanic families across the nation.” The segment was clearly friendly toward the president’s policies, with the first lady recycling many of the talking points from her campaign appearances elsewhere the same day.
“Our leadership does matter. We have to look for leaders that share our values,” Obama told the women from Mamiverse. “I think there’s only one person out there right now that has a vision that we share and is going to be fighting for all of us every single day.”
The group discussed education issues including the Head Start program, the healthcare reform legislation and “worry” over insurance and nutrition, along with the first lady’s anti-childhood-obesity advocacy, all issues the first lady speaks about regularly.
“I get so passionate about this stuff. Because it’s not OK if just my girls are OK,” Obama told the group of women. “I start thinking about all the deserving kids out there in communities and households who need us fighting for them.”
The first lady, who has increasingly hit the campaign trail this year, turning her popularity into an asset for Obama’s campaign, often emphasizes family as a reason to support the president.
“We’re doing this because of the vision for this country that we all share,” Obama told supporters at a later event at Miami’s Barbara Goleman High School. “We’re doing this because we want all of our children to have those good schools -– the kind of schools that push them, and inspire them, and prepare them for the good jobs and opportunities for the future. We’re doing this because we want our parents and our grandparents to be able to retire with a little dignity because we believe that after a lifetime of hard work, they should be able to enjoy their golden years, right?”
The first lady also noted that Obama has never missed a parent-teacher conference for their two daughters, Malia and Sasha. “Even when they were little, when they were 4 — he was like, ‘What are we meeting about? They’re 4,’ ” she joked. “It’s important for the kids to know that he’s making that a priority, too. … It’s not just when they’re headed to college, it’s starting when they’re 3. And being engaged and knowing what their teachers are saying about them in class.”
