Obama to black voters: It's a 'personal insult' if you don't vote for Hillary Clinton

Impact

During his final speech to the Congressional Black Caucus on Saturday night, President Barack Obama told the assembled crowd that he will take it as a "personal insult" if the African-American community fails to back his friend and political ally, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, at the polls this November.

According to the Associated Press, Obama said that many issues are at stake for the black community this election year, including social justice, education and ending mass incarceration, and beseeched the crowd in earnest to vote with their best interests at heart.

"I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election," he said. "You want to give me a good send-off, go vote."

The AP report notes that Obama "turned quite serious when speaking about voting," lamenting the ways voter ID laws have impeded black voter turnout at the polls and the community's low voting rate in general.

He also addressed the ways that Republican candidate Donald Trump has tried to galvanize black voters, which included a number of clear misfires — like the time Trump tried to sway the black community towards voting for him by saying, "What do you have to lose?"

"I mean, he missed that whole civics lesson about slavery and Jim Crow, but we've got a museum for him to visit," Obama said, referring to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. "We will educate him."

For Clinton's campaign, securing the black vote has become a major priority.

During her brief address at the same event, Clinton herself stressed that issues that affect the black community are central to her campaign, simultaneously firing shots at Trump without ever mentioning him by name.

"We need ideas, not insults, real plans to help struggling Americans in communities that have been left out and left behind, not prejudice and paranoia," she said. 

"We can't let Barack Obama's legacy fall into the hands of someone who doesn't understand that, whose dangerous and divisive vision for our country will drag us backwards."