Donald Trump’s candidacy has already eroded important fundamentals of America, President Barack Obama said. | AP Photo Obama urges voters to crush Trump and Trumpism 'Make sure she wins big. Send a message about who we are as a people,' the president says.

LA JOLLA, Calif. — Eager to keep turnout up despite all credible polls pointing to a Hillary Clinton win, President Barack Obama on Monday urged voters to send a clear message by delivering a crushing, incontestable blow to Donald Trump.

Obama, looking out at the Pacific Ocean from the backyard of two longtime supporters at a Clinton fundraiser, called the Republican nominee a danger to the fabric of America whose claims of a rigged election are like a 5-year-old having a tantrum on a playground.


Obama joined Democrats in shifting to the argument that Clinton’s victory won’t be enough to deal with a man the president said makes him “concerned about the republic” and an election that he hopes will be “a moment when America chose its best, and not worst, self.”

“Make sure she wins big. Send a message about who we are as a people, send a clear message about what America stands for,” Obama said. “We want to win big. We want to win big. We don’t want to just eke it out — particular when the other guy's already starting to gripe about the game is rigged.”

He repeated that Clinton is, in his view, the most qualified person ever to run for president, praising her “persistence and a dogged passion for doing the right thing.” But ratcheting up his doomsday talk far beyond where he’s gone before, he said that’s not what’s driving him in these final weeks, or what’s been driving his wife, first lady Michelle Obama, who’s emerged as the most gut-punching surrogate Clinton has out on the trail despite her well-known distaste for politics.

“The passion that she’s brought to campaigning this time speaks to the degree that this election is different. The choice is different,” Obama said. “Part of the reason Michelle’s working the way she is is that she understands, as I understand, that some more fundamental values are at stake in this election. It has to do with our basic standards of decency.”

Obama said despite his faith in America, this election has him concerned — and teed off on Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

“America’s great. America can survive just about anything. But what America can’t have for any prolonged period of time is to have the person who is the only elected official elected by all the people of the United States and who speaks on behalf of this nation in world affairs,” Obama said, “as a fundamentally unserious person and someone whose standards of ethics and tolerance and how they treat other people is corrosive. We can’t have that.”

Trump is a challenge to everything about America, Obama said, from the culture to the laws.

“Do we think of women as equal and full citizens capable of doing anything, or do we think of them as objects of either scorn or lust or our own satisfaction?” Obama said. “Do we think of the Constitution as something fundamental that all of us have an obligation to try to uphold, or do we think that it’s just something we can pick and choose from at our convenience, depending on what’s expedient?”

Trump’s candidacy has already eroded important fundamentals of America, Obama said, and that has to be kept out of the White House: the Republican nominee thinks he “can say anything or do anything without any fidelity to the truth,” Obama said. “My conclusion and Michelle’s conclusion is that we can’t have that in the Oval Office.”

Patriotism, Obama said, was also voting Democrats into majorities in Congress, changing what’s become the norm of the Republicans he blames for incubating Trump and Trumpism to think that gridlock is the ideal. All of those people need to get booted out of Washington, he said, and a reason to reject them even more strongly now that many have shifted to saying that they would serve as a “check” on a Clinton presidency.

“They’re not making an argument that we want to work with her to get things done. They are saying they’re going to say no to everything,” Obama said. “That’s what they mean by a check.”

That’s the philosophy, Obama charged, which has created the anger that exists in the country, and which has driven so much of a campaign that he warned has proven volatile enough so far that anyone who isn’t fully committed now would be shirking their duties as citizens, members of society, parents and more.

“We’ve got to make a bold, sustained serious argument that America can do better than just gridlock, that Dems have a responsibility to work with Republicans, but Republicans have to want to actually get something done to move this country forward,” Obama said. “If your only argument is to do nothing, you do not deserve to be serving in Washington, because we have had enough of doing nothing.”

Asked shortly afterward aboard Air Force One en route to Los Angeles whether Obama’s fear of the damage Trump would do to America would cause the president to think about moving to Canada or New Zealand, White House press secretary Josh Earnest demurred.

“He’s working very hard to make sure that nobody has to leave the country as a result of an electoral outcome that the president doesn’t support,” he said.